My main doubt about the style as realized in Europe is that most of the practitioners, even if quite skilled at their own thing, tend to be rather inward looking and focus, in practice if not in theory, on tuishou as an end in itself. Not as a means of winning tournaments, but as an ‘end in itself’ within general training. There often seems to be something of a ‘glass wall’ between their tuishou abilities and then letting these flow into more general applications, free play/sparring etc. As soon as the (friendly) action moves outside the boundaries of what is covered by the (very good) fixed patterns they do, their skills and functional softness tend to break down quickly. This also applies to people who have been training the system for many years.
To my mind this may have a lot to do with the overall curriculum and teaching methods of the top teachers.
Giles wrote:My main doubt about the style as realized in Europe is that most of the practitioners, even if quite skilled at their own thing, tend to be rather inward looking and focus, in practice if not in theory, on tuishou as an end in itself. Not as a means of winning tournaments, but as an ‘end in itself’ within general training. There often seems to be something of a ‘glass wall’ between their tuishou abilities and then letting these flow into more general applications, free play/sparring etc.
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