the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

That story reminds me of a local Chen teacher now deceased
He would charge by the form no matter how long it took
At the time he charged 1000$ for the Chen form
Then the same for the left form
Fool me once your fault fool me twice your fault

D_Glenn wrote:At a seminar with Chen Xiao Wang someone asked him how come we don’t practice the left side or mirror image of the form, and he was confused by the question and responded, you should have been practicing the left side all this time. He said that in a teacher student environment, that the teacher only teaches the right side of the form. Then the student can teach themselves the left side of the form when they’re practicing on their own.

That's exactly how I was taught TCC. The student was required to teach themselves the reverse side of the form set section by section. When Section One could be performed to both sides in turn, without a stop in between, ending back on the original starting point, then the right side of Section Two would be taught by the teacher, leaving the student to work out the opposite left side performance. The same process was used for all three sections of the form set.

This helped clarify the normal, right side standard performance, since an inability to clearly visualize any of the postures or transitional movements in the normal direction would guarantee a failure to visualize and perform them to the opposite side. In so doing, the process engages the use of both brain hemispheres for optimal mental capacity in any endeavor.

D_Glenn wrote:Since most people are right handed the left side is usually practiced first ...

That's how I train too. When I

- train drills, I like to train left side first.
- stretch my legs, I like to stretch my left leg first.

I like to do the hard part first and easy part later.

We also did both sides, starting after having practiced the right sight for 3 months.

Imo it would be more efficient to work on individual drills and practice all sides from the beginning. But then you may end up missing some transitions in the form. Can be fixed by adding some step patterns and footwork.

Nowadays I have to admit I can't do any one form to completion. Never really saw their value as that high, but perhaps that's just me.

I once heard that once you have the correct body, everything you do will become Tai Chi. So I preferred to focus on this part.

Quigga wrote:Imo it would be more efficient to work on individual drills and practice all sides from the beginning. But then you may end up missing some transitions in the form.

Some transitions in the form have no logic connection.

For example, if your book contains 2 sentences, "This is a book. To do is to be." There is no logic connection between the last word of the 1st sentence "book", and the 1st word of the 2nd sentence "To".

Whether you may train your form as "This is a book. To do is to be.", or "To do is to be. This is a book. ", it won't make any difference.

Sometimes I like to ask a question, "How many logic combos (sentences) exist in your 108 moves Taiji form (book)?" Assume the number of logic combos is N, you should have N! different ways to train your form.