Tai Chi as a combat art?

[Shrewsbury]

Iwth all do respects I have studied juijitsu to agreat extent, as well as Okinawa, Japanese, American, chinese external and internal gung fu. To claim any style lacks anything is to not have studied in depth in the style. CMA's has numerous grappling, wrestling, and juijitsu style arts, in fact mos arts are born of chinese influence.

sure you may have to train long to be good at the internal arts, and you can be good faster with external arts, such as juijitsu, but by age 60 (since that age was mentioned) your external will be long on their way out. speed, strength, endurance, and power will be a thing of your youth, but the internals work with out all these physical limitations and will continue to work.

to state tai chi is ineffective as a combat art is to never have seen people who can use it, and yes I will agree most people can not, or if they do it is used hard like karate or gung fu, but the internals are meant to be effortless. being fast big and strong only lasts so long, effortlessness can last forever.

 

[charyuop]

I don't know if it is true or not, but my teacher's Master told me that the above part of the Tai Chi body (as in movement) was taken by karate and the bottom part was taken by TKD (or was it the opposite?). In fact if you talk to her those 2 MA are incomplete and no match to Tai Chi...but I am sure every Master is convinced their Art is superior.

 

[Shrewsbury]

but I am sure every Master is convinced their Art is superior.

this only limits our ability to continually grow and reach higher skills. Though some good arguments can be made about art versus art superiority, it is truly the individual. We can only train in what we are exposed to or have the oppurtunity to find a good teacher in, though we can become highly skilled in our art and reach a master level in that art, we all should be wise enough to know there is much we haven't been taught or discovered, we may like our style better because we have vested much time into it, but to think we or it are superior to ALL others, only limits our potentials.

 

[pete]

Shrewsbury, i like your style and wholeheartedly agree.

i like to think of it in terms of yin and yang, fear (yin) and arrogance (yang) in terms of either the art or particular level of skill when compared to an adversary. too much either way is trouble...

 

[Xue Sheng]

Well it appears I am going to have to contradict myself here at least a bit.

Neither to start a problem nor to open old issues but I have been doing a lot of thinking about why I have a problem with the terminology "Combat Tai Chi" And although I previously stated that I had a problem with the Taoist side of things realized, after much thought and reading, it was not the Taoist bit at all, well maybe a little, but not that much really.

It is simply this; to call something Combat Tai Chi says, at least to me, that Tai chi is NOT for fighting, therefore it is necessary to come up with something else, something new, that is for fighting based on Tai Chi and that is not at all true. Tai Chi is a martial art and always has been and there is no need to separate Tai Chi and combat Tai chi. Tai Chi is Tai Chi.

Yes there are those out there doing Tai Chi without the martial arts and that is just fine with me as long as you do not try and force it on me, and they have before and I suspect they will try again soon, but that would be another post.

I understand that based on the tai chi for health some may feel the need to work on Tai chi based on other martial arts and separate themselves from what they have seen as Tai Chi and call what they do Combat Tai Chi. But if you find a real Tai Chi teacher you will learn martial arts are part of Tai chi so there is really no need for the label "Combat Tai Chi"

I also have seen those that do not want to take the time to study Tai Chi like they should in order to understand the martial arts of it and they to go off and apply other martial arts to what they have learned in Tai Chi and call it Combat Tai Chi and in this sense I do see a difference between combat Tai Chi and Tai Chi because if this is what has been done it is not Tai Chi at all anymore that JKD is Wing Chun, nothing wrong with it in my opinion, it just is not Tai Chi

If you are applying the ideas and applications form another martial art that is not an internal in order to use Tai Chi as a martial art, you are not using Tai chi at all. When I started Tai Chi my most recent style prior to it was TKD and before that Jujitsu and in the beginning although I thought I was doing Tai Chi based on my previous experience when I finally began training with my Yang style Sifu I discovered I was not.

Nothing against anyone that practices combat Tai Chi I just do not see the need for the separation if you are training Tai Chi as it was originally designed by the Chen, Yang, Wu, Hao, Sun, Zhaobao, and etc families including Cheng Manching. It is already a martial art and fully capable of combat.

And you know, now that I have typed this and reread it I no longer have a problem with the terminology, I just do not think it is Tai Chi as I know it and have been trained in it.

What the heck call it what you want, enjoy the training.

 

[Steel Tiger]

Xue,
I agree wholeheartedly. Taijiquan was conceived as an effective and vicious fighting art and it still is, if you take the time to learn it.

Taijiquan has fallen victim to the 'quick fix' nature of modern culture, like many other arts.