johnwang wrote:Appledog wrote: if you don't do what I said you can never go on to learn the rest of the art. Learning applications is nice, but you have to have the basic skills in order to use them. Otherwise you might as well just learn judo or some other martial art that doesn't require Tai Chi's fundamentals.
If your focus is to be a good
- fighter, Taiji path is not your only choice.
- Taiji master, Taiji path will be your only choice.
I don't think the OP's "focus" is to be a good Taiji master.
MaartenSFS wrote:No, it's not. I suggest only that one decides what they want to be good at and teach and to be able to prove that against a fully resisting opponent in whatever format they choose. Push hands and sticky hands are not acceptable in this regard, as they are too limiting and do not represent realistic combat - nor should they, as they are training methods designed to drill specific skills.
I think you hit the nail on the head J. However there is a limit to how far you can cross-analogy different arts and I think we've reached that point by now. I do find it interesting to listen to how people talk about Tai Chi through the glasses of their own arts. Longfist, tongbei, xingyi, others -- all interesting -- but I would have to say Tai Chi shed it's direct roots to those arts a long time ago. When M says that push hands is too limiting and does not represent realistic combat, he is simply talking about Shanzaiwuan, and is not correct from a Tai Chi perspective. However, since his own art does things a different way, he is actually correct -- push hands is, in fact, too limiting to accommodate the way M does things in Shanzaiquan. This is not anyone's failure. It is a different approach to learning; a different way of thinking. I think a very rough analogy could be it's like starting to learn guitar via scales or chords. Actually you are learning the same thing but you are learning it in different ways.
If I had to pick one art that I was going to practice instead of Tai Chi I would have a hard time choosing between any of the major styles -- hung gar, praying mantis, xingyi, etc. I think it's just that in the end the way I think and approach things has led me more towards the Tai Chi way of doing it. In fact I cannot imagine myself eventually coming up with some form of Tai Chi on my own, based on my understanding of how things work. This must mean I've been poisoned by Tai Chi or that I am too old and can no longer change
One thing I have learned is that CMA in general is very functional. It doesn't do anything which doesn't have a use. For a while I used this to figure out what certain things were for and how certain things worked. This was based on the (sometimes false) idea that there were no flowery movements. In the end I got lucky and my teacher had a reason for everything he was doing. I would then have to admit that we very rarely pushed hands -- perhaps no more than once per year.