GrahamB wrote:Hmmm... demo against opponent offering zero resistance and holding his arm out in space without moving so he can do 3 strikes in return?
Not saying it's a bad demo, but one of your favourite CMA clips of all time???
This video was taken around in the mid to late 2000's. It was on one of the group trips to Beijing. The smaller guy being demoed on is Roger. He's from Brazil originally, and had studied BJJ for many years in Los Angeles. After meeting with Zhang Yun laoshi, through his introductions, he decided to go to China to study Wu Style Taiji and Yin Style Bagua full time with Zhao Zeren laoshi. At the time this was taken, he just got there, and I think this was at Strider's hotel. He came to meet them so they can go out to dinner later. So this explains the tiny space and the dark lighting.
At this point Roger is new to the group, had no idea what Shi Style Tongbei is, and asked for a very casual, quick intro. It was a spur of the moment thing. Hence the low production value.
The design of Tongbei skills is like most advanced CMA's skills, it starts with a set up, in this case the "Luring Hand", if you block, that springs up the trap - setting up a series of clever follow-up skills. Since Roger is the one asking the question (normally a student can't ask a teacher to show him anything, but since he is a younger brother he can), by Shuo Shou etiquette he was supposed to do what comes naturally but doesn't change, and let the instructor show what comes next.
When Strider first went to China in the 90's he didn't know about this etiquette, and when a gongfu uncle was trying to teach him Ba Wang Xie Jia (an over the shoulder throw where the attacker arm is full extended with palm facing sky), he tried to relax and drop elbow to follow the uncle's motion, the uncle became alarmed right away, made sure he really locked up Strider (almost dislocating his shoulder and elbow) and threw him down very hard. He was really upset and other teachers had to explain to him Strider (18, 19 at the time) didn't know the unwritten rules. Even today that uncle still half-jokingly remind our teacher "you got to watch for that Strider, he tries to beat his uncle."
This is a common thing in traditional circles - there are lots of rules regulating when you can fight with people outside the group. So one the classic ways to make a name for yourself then is to defeat an uncle. Since no one can formally or casually challenge an uncle, they often do it sneaky - like pretending to asking their uncle a question "can you just tell me if I'm doing this right" - you just do the movement yourself. Sometimes you deliberately do it wrong. Then pride get to the best of them, and they show on you what the skill should be like, and you "accidentally" (it is second nature now, I didn't mean it) beat them.
So yeah, it may look strange, but that's how it goes in traditional teaching. Within our group we're actually very careful about this. As Strider's uncle Zhao Zeren like to say "today teachers need to do a lot more da shou (uncooperative fighting), not just shuo shou (demo like this one here). In Shuo Shou the student is supposed to cooperate, so over time in all situations, they cooperate with teacher out of habit. In Taiji this is bad, as this is how many 'masters' demonstrate empty force throws to their student in the beginning, and over time, because it seems to work all the time, they really think they can do it. It starts with teacher deceiving the student, and ends with student deceiving the teacher."