the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

We have talked a lot about Taiji power generation, yield, stick, follow, ... But I can't find even one thread that Taiji entering strategy and Taiji finish strategy are discussed.

What's your though on this?

Hello, I'd like to maintain a 'cool post count' of 108 posts. This particular post has gone beyond that number and has therefore expired.

I'm sorry if you were looking for some old information but I'll do my best to answer you if you send me a DM with a question in it.

Appledog wrote:reach out and touch someone.

This can be a good starting point for the entering strategy discussion.

1. If the distance is far, how do you move in?
2. Do you use arm touch arm, or leg touch leg, or both?
3. Do you use different strategies when you and your opponent have different side forward? Do you always switch sides to be uniform with your opponent?
4. Do you enter through your opponent's front door, or side door?
5. What strategy do you use to pass your opponent's wrist gate, elbow gate, and then reach to his shoulder/head/chest gate.
6. ...

My favorite concepts for Tai chi strategy are about always adjusting to "distance and angle" and "Enter and make contact.". This is something I wrote in my blog. I have not much further to add for the moment:

"Using distance and angle, position yourself always where you have as much advantage as possible and he has as little advantage as possible. For instance, a kicker or someone with long reach, always try to be inside his reach and closer than his favorite distance. With a little bit of sparring knowledge you could easily learn to determine your opponents favorite distances. Don’t wait until he goes in or throws something at you. Even before you know if you will fight or not, use distance and angle to make sure that you are in a favorable position."

"Enter and make contact – ASAP
If you encounter someone aggressive and you know that there is going to be a fight, don’t wait. Don’t take distance. Don’t go into a chasing punches sparring mindset. Just go in and make physical contact. Don’t do it fast, aggressively or something similar. Just walk in and put your hands on top of his. Now you can either wait on his reaction or you can separate his arms: to the sides, one arm up and the other down, or you can push both arms to one side. All of these methods give you different opportunities to enter and bring him down to the ground. "

I agree that there are ideas for this in the Taiji form, but they have to be worked on in sparring situations to be full understood, but most people don’t go that far in their Taiji practice I guess.......I myself never learned/practiced any specific strategies for entering an opponents space before we where to enter a more free sparring practice. Through sparring practice in Karate I learned about timing and feints, I learned how to sweep the front foot(in self defence shin-kick)of opponents standing in a wider stance as a way to go in to strike, I learned to launch forward(with timing) to “trap” the opponents front hand/arm and at same time(almost)strike with a reverse punch and I strived to attack as much non telegraphic as I could. I learned from experimenting while sparring........I agree with Bao, if outside from the training arena and have to deal with an aggressor one should not let him take a “ready stance”, catch them in their arrogance state, but I’m not sure I would be as kind as Bao to just try to control the opponent arms.

Trick wrote:I agree with Bao, if outside from the training arena and have to deal with an aggressor one should not let him take a “ready stance”, catch them in their arrogance state, but I’m not sure I would be as kind as Bao to just try to control the opponent arms.

Making contact is more or less meant as a transition only. You are not suppose to just stand there. If he does something, reacts in someway, you can take it from there. Or you can control his arms in different ways. If you go in to attack, you can offer the guy a shin kick or something similar as you reach for contact or do something with his arms. Pain might confuse or give you some extra time. But he might also probably go in for defence or attack. So regardless if you do something nasty, I would suggest that you still keep close distance and take control over his limbs (actually, or obviously, from a TJQ perspective, it's the centreline and balance that you want to control through the limbs or any other contact, not the limbs only.)

Absolutely, I agree with that

Absolutely, I agree with that

Some of the taiji "fast sets" may be interesting to see in this regard.

For example, in Ma Yueliang's videos, you can see a kind of quick steps (kind of like a skipping step) before lanquewei.

Yang Shouzhong's taijichangquan may have some kind of advancing movements, too.

Wu Wei, my Doge.

When streamlining the Shanzhaiquan system one of the first things I did was to organise the movements into entering and finishing categories. With the way that most Taijiquan is taught there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell that practitioners can pull off the vast majority of techniques, as a lot of the obvious techniques are what I'd label as finishing moves where one has already closed the distance and set it up. Drilling the techniques individually and then training how to enter and use them against a resisting partner (and not just with harsh language) is critical.

Will you use different "entering strategy" when your opponent has right leg forward, or left leg forward? In SC, you will use a complete different skill set to attack your opponent's 1st side and 2nd side vs. his 3rd side and 4th side.

If you study tai chi this question is moot
It is everywhere
Pushing
Walking 4 hands
Ta lu
San shou
San da
Form application
I can understand if people only have a solo form with no application how it might be a mystery
Tai chi is not about strategy and technique it is about a path to awareness and free form application
Lots of two man work

I was working on two man pole with my students the other night
It is all neutralising and entering
I was blown out by some of the entering they did spontaneously

wayne hansen wrote:If you study tai chi this question is moot ...

When you have right side forward, If your opponent has

- right side forward, when you move in, your right arm will contact on your opponent's right arm.
- left side forward, when you move in, your right arm will contact on your opponent's ...?