the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

I just wanted to share this video of a teaching method I came up with. If there's any interest in fan forms later on I can post a video of the Flying Rainbow Tai Chi Fan form which includes moves from Yang, Chen and Sun style.

Anyways, this move (turn body with wrist techniques) is one of the most technically demanding moves for beginners in this form. So I invented a square form for it and long story short it worked and the students were able to get the move down almost 100%.

I got the idea from the Wu style because they have a square form, and Sun style can also be taught this way. I have also seen some movements in Chen style taught in this manner. I am exploring the principle in greater detail and I think it may lead to some interesting results later.

The square approach I've found to be very rewarding.

Take for example pointing your index fingers at each other and make them move in circles in opposite directions.

Most people find this very challenging. The brain has trouble sorting out the signals.

So to square it, square it. Start with the fingers together, move them apart horizontally, move them down vertically, move them towards and then past each other horizontally, move them up vertically, move them towards and past each other horizontally, repeat.

Once they get the hang and rhythm of this, they can start speeding up and rounding it off and low and behold you can do it, and then you can just pick up your hands and do it anytime.

The squareness helps lay in a layer of neural connections that we then bridge to the roundness. Instead of trying to build them all at once with all the complexity, we create the fundamentals and then elaborate/smooth/finish them.

Very grey for a rainbow brand