This is about the fine differences between Tai Chi and Xingyi. Watch this video (some wisdom from the pear tree) first, then carry on reading:

Generally, and as written in the classics, the power comes from the ground up in Tai Chi. I’m not saying you don’t want to start striking until your front foot has hit the floor – that would obviously be ridiculous – but in Tai Chi you do generally move your weight onto the foot in a kind for rolling motion. Just look at any Tai Chi form:

Yang, for example,:

But it’s the same for all of them generally speaking. Moving into a forward posture your weight moves into the technique, which could be a punch, for example, or something else. If it’s not meant to be like this, then all the forms must be wrong and for reasons that are unclear we’re all training to do it wrong so we can do it differently in application? I don’t think so. It’s effective, it works, it’s just different to Xingyi.

Xingyi example showing how stepping is different:

It ties into the strategy of tai chi as well – you train push hands to be good at the ‘in contact’ range, where you can generate power from weight shifts forward and back, without the need to step -e.g. Person punches you, you contact their arm, shift your weight back and turn the waist, deflecting them into emptiness, so you can strike back with ease with a forward weight shift. No stepping even necessary. It’s a good range to work grappling techniques as well.

Generally speaking, and ignoring the animals that like to grapple, Xingyi does not want to be in the ‘in contact’ range as much – you want to be out or in. It’s origin lies in sharp weapons – think about that.

As the classics say, it is rooted in the feet, issued by the legs, controlled by the waist, and expressed in the fingers – some, people might call that ‘all together’ but to me that’s more like a sequence. It can all happen in a microsecond, but it happens from the ground up. Xingyi is different, which is why the footwork is so different. Which is my point in the video. Watch again as I demonstrate it physically – when you use words it’s very open to misinterpretation. Right at the end I do both methods side by side for comparison – they both work, they are just different. Like the way Hyenas and Dogs are different.

I’ve written a new training blog, with a video to go with it! It’s on the way, but before it gets here, read this:

http://bjj-australia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/a-hyena-is-not-dog.html?m=1

This is one of the reasons I’m writing it – although I’d actually written it before I read that blog post. But I love the point he makes about seeing differences between things that are very similar. Worth pondering.

Guy trains hard with lions, becomes a lion! Becomes so good he can do it by being soft and using minimum effort. Teaches this soft lamb way to all his students because its obviously superior. None of the new lamb students really get it. The founder dies. The lamb students soon realise that nobody has it and go back to find what the founder did originally to get that good.

It turns out it was to train hard like a lion, with other lions!

Isn’t that the way of all martial arts?

A very interesting post on Fightland about the modern Chinese fighter. I like the point about the increased appetite for realism under a regime where most things are fake. Read it here:

http://fightland.vice.com/blog/the-modern-chinese-fighter

There are two sides to the movement coin in Chinese Martial Arts – particularly the so-called internal martial arts. A Yin and a Yang, if you like.

On side a) of the movement coin you’ve got a kind of basic postural advice. Directions we’re all familiar with like – ‘suspend the head from above’, ’round the shoulders’, ‘droop the elbows’, etc. The goal of these directions is to achieve a level of relaxation (‘Sung’) through working with the least level of resistance to gravity. If we can align with gravity it becomes our friend, instead of our enemy in movement. We can discover a sense of lightness and ease in our movements.

On the other side b) of the movement coin there are more subtle instructions to do with things like ‘moving from the dantien’, ‘intent’, ‘wrapping and coiling’, ‘silk reeling force’, ‘open and close’, etc… While these terms are generally unknown to people outside of the Chinese Martial Arts, they are usually familiar to people within them, even if we all understand them in slightly different things, and are willing to go to war over the small details!

Obviously (like Yin and Yang) the two sides form a whole, after progressing beyond a basic beginner level most people assume that they’re ok with a) and spend most of their time working out what the heck b) is supposed to be anyway.

I tend to think that there’s more to a) than we tend to think there is. I’d like to suggest that we put the focus on a) as much as on b), since it’s a) that really has the most impact on how we live our day to day life.

Here’s an article that can help. It’s to do with something called The Alexander Technique, but don’t let that put you off. It’s just great advice for how we ‘use the self’ in everyday life, and it relates directly to part a) of the coin I talked about earlier.

Have a read and see what you think.

http://alexanderviolist.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/understanding-the-primary-directions-which-way-is-up/

Finally, a translation of the Gu Ruzhang (Ku Yu Chang) Tai Chi book, Taiji Boxing, by Brennan Translation. This is the style (a version of it, in the same lineage) of Tai Chi that I personally practice. The form in the book is the long form that he learned from Yang Jian Hou, and you should recognise the postures from other Yang forms. It’s not just a book on form movements, there’s a lot of theory here, much of it from the Tai Chi classics, so it’s worth a read for practitioners of any style.

Master Gu Ru Zhang was also known as “King of Iron Palm”, mainly for doing things like this:

His approach to martial arts was to take both Internet and External as a whole. He was most known for his Northern Shaolin, but as his Tai Chi book demonstrates, he practiced soft style martial arts as well, including XingYi and Tai Chi. He was an early proponent of the idea of cross training (mixing martial arts). He obviously saw this as beneficial, and trained in many arts, and enjoyed exchanges with different masters.

Find out more about Master Gu.