“I tried Tai Chi and it’s not what I expected”

/ Tai Chi Notebook

This is a nicely made video about Tai Chi Push Hands:

Some quick observations:

1) I quite like the emphasis on feeling where the opponent is during push hands instruction – I think this is bang on.

2) “Sensei Seth” correctly identifies very quickly that push hands competitions are very, very, similar to Sumo. And if you’re good at Sumo then you should be good at this, and indeed, he is.

3) There are some fascinating insight into the teaching process here. Seth seems to do a few things that are “wrong” according to the laws of Tai Chi, but are working (i.e. sticking his butt out and leaning forward), however, he gets corrected by the instructor to stop doing it. I just find that interesting. The “Stop cheating, it makes you win!” mentality is rife all over the Tai Chi world. It’s one of the reasons I avoid push hands with people unless the conditions are right (i.e they are the right sort of person). I much prefer the “Hey, if it works, then it works! It’s up to you to figure out what I’m doing and stop me” mentality of BJJ.

4) In the end, with competitive push hands, the better wrestler always wins the exchange (for example, when they are doing the ‘foot outside the square’ push hands). So, if you want to be good at competitive push hands then why not just learn some wrestling? You can even keep things Chinese by learning Shuai Jiao.

5) I like this coach – he’s clearly skilled, but competitive push hands is the problem here. Even this coach gets super tense when under pressure because of the need to win. I just think that Push Hands is better used as a training exercise for learning TCC skills – when it gets competitive, all the principles go out the window (unless you are very, very, very very good).

2 thoughts on ““I tried Tai Chi and it’s not what I expected””

  1. The focus on “competition” is where it all goes wrong.
    Did we forget that NEARLY ALL of the Eastern Martial Arts are rooted in “The best fight is when you don’t need to fight” and yet we want more “competitions” so that we can WIN.
    There is NO WINNER !! Even Bruce Lee knew that !!
    The ULTIMATE BATTLE is the one with your SELF, Ego, Desire, Greed, Ambition, Attention, “Fame”. When we are at peace, there is no ‘self’, no ‘win’, no ego.
    Yes, with its roots in Wushu, “fighting”, it originates from Martial Arts BUT the monks [and those who abhor fighting and violence] realized that being Physically fit and healthy led them to being mentally, emotionally, spiritually closer to “perfection”. But KNOWING the power that one can generate through the slow practice makes one MORE reluctant to become involved in “violence”.

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  2. There’s “Shuai Jiao” as a formal art and there’s the generic “Shuai Jiao” as in “throws and grappling applications. ”All Chinese arts have Shuai Jiao in them”, an old saying, means that throws and grappling have a place in all Chinese martial arts. Taijiquan (the original) is largely based on Shuai Jiao, but we don’t see the kicks and blows so much because everyone focuses on push-hands as being what Shuai Jiao does. Real push-hands is largely shuai jiao, but that’s not the point: the point is to use jin as a basis for movement and training and I have yet to see a westerner who does that.

    For me, one of the first signs of “turn off the monitor and do something else” is when some western guy is parroting stuff he heard/learned from another western guy about some Chinese or Japanese art. It’s a waste of time. I watched about 3 seconds of “Sifu Chris” and went back to more productive things. This video is not about push-hands, but about someone’s mistaken idea of what push hands is about.

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