Tai Chi as a grappling art

Doing both BJJ and Tai Chi I love seeing moves from one art crop up in the other. Imagine my surprise when I happened across this BJJ seminar clip where the coach seems to be cycling unawares through a variety of Tai Chi moves.

At one point he says that one of the moves looks like “some karate bullshit that looks silly but works”, which is funny because you could describe Tai Chi like that as well 🙂

If you do Tai Chi or Bagua or pretty much any long fist style Chinese martial art, or probably Aikido, you’ll recognise these moves. I’ll give them Tai Chi names:

Breakdown

It starts with a grip break, that is similar to Hidden Hand Punch from Chen style (0.00- 4.00)
The first technique from here is like Needle at Sea Bottom (4.17- 6.15)
The second is like Diagonal Flying (6.15 – 9.20)

After that it becomes more traditional wrestling/judo takedowns, but it was nice to see some Tai Chi appearing fora minute there.

While the rest of the video is much more of the usual jiu-jitsu fair, the initial positions have a strong similarity to Tai Chi moves, and could definitely help Tai Chi practitioners become more aware to the martial potential of Needle at Sea Bottom and Diagonal Flying.