7 star praying mantis vs American kempo .

[Slimmist]

which one gives you more to work with in a fight?
I am thinking about taking Chen style tai chi chuan and 7 star praying mantis together or American kempo and yoshinkan aikido.
I know the secret techniques of tai chi chuan that make the art effective like, golden bell iron shirt, internal iron palm, poison hand, fajing, and a lot more that you can't learn in a regular tai chi chuan school these days

 

[KangTsai]

Depends how good you are at fighting. Also, those "secret techniques" are all kinds of tomfoolery. If they worked, there is absolutely no reason it wouldn't be taught on the regular.

 

[Slimmist]

Depends how good you are at fighting. Also, those "secret techniques" are all kinds of tomfoolery. If they worked, there is absolutely no reason it wouldn't be taught on the regular.

These techniques were usually only taught to a selected few (1-2) students who were considered disciples by there masters, and the rest would go one to be tai chi chuan teachers without being taught everything that the martial arts had to offer that made the martial arts effective, but there is a guy from the Chen family that was willing to write a book on tai chi chuan in the early 1900's that contained all the teachings that the martial arts had to offer. And it was even a while before the new frame form of Chen tai chi chuan was brought out into the open by a Chen village practitioner.

 

[KangTsai]

These techniques were usually only taught to a selected few (1-2) students who were considered disciples by there masters, and the rest would go one to be tai chi chuan teachers without being taught everything that the martial arts had to offer that made the martial arts effective, but there is a guy from the Chen family that was willing to write a book on tai chi chuan in the early 1900's that contained all the teachings that the martial arts had to offer. And it was even a while before the new frame form of Chen tai chi chuan was brought out into the open by a Chen village practitioner.

I still won't take any notion of a "secret technique" seriously until I see it.

 

[Slimmist]

I still won't take any notion of a "secret technique" seriously until I see it.

Well ever since he wrote the books it's not a secret anymore, but only 1000 copies were made.
His name was Chen Xin and the book he wrote was "illustrated explanations of Chen family tajiquan". Over 750 pages long and finding a book is very hard which is why most people by the ebook that's about 48.00 dollars. Found one on Amazon for over 2000.00. I know it's a lot, but I wanna buy it cause I see it as treasure.

If you're skeptical go check out Richard clears combat tai chi website. Just google it.

 

[Touch Of Death]

I still won't take any notion of a "secret technique" seriously until I see it.

How secret would it be if they showed you?

 

[Touch Of Death]

Well, some techs that should be kept secret from children, at least, is throat, and eardrum attacks. How may kids need to lose an eardrum, before we teach Billy that Karate is only for self defense?

 

[Midnight-shadow]

I still won't take any notion of a "secret technique" seriously until I see it.

It was quite common back in the day for the old Chinese Masters to hide their best techniques, out of jealousy that someone else would steal them. These techniques were usually hidden inside the forms and you had to look very closely to find them. That flowery-looking hand waving you scoff at in a kungfu form could actually be one of those secret techniques. As the OP said, these techniques were usually only taught to 1-2 senior students who were usually the ones to take over the art once the current Master died or stopped teaching. This secrecy was made more necessary later on when the Chinese leaders decided to try and rid the nation of Martial Arts, destroying anything related to it and killing any practitioners they found. Any Masters that were left went into hiding or abroad to teach in secret.

I know it seems a little ridiculous and I was sceptic too at first, until my Instructor showed me one such hidden technique from one of the forms I practice.

 

[JowGaWolf]

which one gives you more to work with in a fight?
I am thinking about taking Chen style tai chi chuan and 7 star praying mantis together or American kempo and yoshinkan aikido.
I know the secret techniques of tai chi chuan that make the art effective like, golden bell iron shirt, internal iron palm, poison hand, fajing, and a lot more that you can't learn in a regular tai chi chuan school these days

Learning how to fight using kung fu is really hard. You have to be willing to commit fully to the technique, even if you are going to get punched in the face. If you aren't willing to do that then I would go with American Kempo. Kung Fu gives you more to work with but that isn't always a good thing. For me personally, I enjoy it. I enjoy that one Jow Ga technique has 10 different uses / applications. I was only taught 3 or 4 and the rest I had to learn myself. In terms of being able to actually use the technique. I can use 3 out of 10 possible applications and I'm currently working on trying to figure out how to use the rest. I have already accepted that I'm going to get punched in the face a lot as I try to learn it. Things like, timing, using the technique at the right time, make the learning process a challenging one.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Oh by the way. If you don't care about using kung fu for fighting or self defense then you'll probably enjoy kung fu more as there are many techniques. Learning the techniques are easy, using them just requires a totally different training.

 

[Flying Crane]

These techniques were usually only taught to a selected few (1-2) students who were considered disciples by there masters, and the rest would go one to be tai chi chuan teachers without being taught everything that the martial arts had to offer that made the martial arts effective, but there is a guy from the Chen family that was willing to write a book on tai chi chuan in the early 1900's that contained all the teachings that the martial arts had to offer. And it was even a while before the new frame form of Chen tai chi chuan was brought out into the open by a Chen village practitioner.

Did you learn these things from that book?