This video has been doing the rounds online, showing some tai chi (taijiquan) fighting applications.
I don’t think there’s much to say about it, but it does perhaps prove useful for answering that question you get a lot: “can tai chi be used for fighting?”.
Let’s just try to say a few things about it though:
Firstly, he’s clearly just taking a tai chi posture (‘Play Guitar’) that looks very like that an ‘on guard’ position and using it in the same way a boxer does to parry and block punches. The hand he has by his chin he’s using in just the same way a boxer does their back hand to parry a jab. Is there anything wrong with that? Maybe not. You could use the posture like that, but is that its purpose?
Is that what that posture is designed to be used for? At this point, who knows. Usually you see ‘play guitar’ used as an arm locking posture, or combined with a foot sweep into a shuai jiao-style throw.
On the positive side, he’s actually getting the guy to throw the attacks properly, which is nice to see. Maybe they could be a smidgen closer together, so the punch would actually land, but compared to most applications you see from non-committal attacks, it’s not bad.
No, it’s not sparring, but not everything has to be. I don’t think it would look quite as much like ‘tai chi’ if it was sparring.
Finally, is there much ‘tai chi’ going on here? I’d be looking for smoothly flowing into sticking, yielding, and neutralising. He follows up a couple of times, but I don’t see much in the way of controlling the opponent here. The opponent is more often than not just blocked, and not controlled.
The bar for tai chi applications is pretty low. There are too many videos of people bouncing away at the slightest touch to muddy the water, so I think we have to say that this is at least a step in the right direction.
The Tai Chi Notebook 
There’s really has limited capture, uproot and control shown. This should be done in a full back stance to control from that posture, which is minimally executed at best. Methinks the basic move is misunderstood here.
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There is a saying in Chen’s Taijiquan to the effect that “You can put Taijiquan into other arts, but you cannot put other arts into Taijiquan”. Basically, Taijiquan is about how the body is used with qi, jin, dantian, and so on. Someone who is “showing Taiji applications” misses the point of what Taijiquan is.
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Thanks for another great video find. I don’t usually go looking for these, so I’m glad you post them — even when I don’t comment, I always get something from them.
Around the 4:00 mark, just as he’s wrapping up, the presenter says something interesting: “so I could begin to get him into push hands range where Tai Chi has an advantage.”
That made me think — if this were taiji sword, staff, or spear, we wouldn’t necessarily expect the movements to look dramatically different from other styles until after contact is made. The unique taiji qualities only become visible when the weapon comes into range to start sticking, following, and neutralizing. So why should we expect barehand taijiquan (quan) to look much different from other styles at longer range?
That said, in my experience, taijiquan range actually begins at the moment of touch — even the initial contact should begin to control the opponent’s structure. So while those blocks do deflect punches, they should also start establishing that control. We should see the attacker struggling to retain his balance.
There are other things too — like the presenters lack of stepping — that feel off from a taiji perspective. But since it’s a demonstration, clarity is understandably the priority. Still, that can give the wrong impression about how taijiquan footwork functions in actual application.
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At that point I want to see him actually spar to see if he can do that in ‘real time’.
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Liked it!
Then went down the rabbit hole and watched this one
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