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Mixed martial
arts
The mixed martial art approach is very
popular these days...
It may work with the external arts, but not the internal arts.
Tai chi as an
add-on?
Karate, aikido and wing chun students sometimes take up 'tai chi' as a means
of supplementing their existing practice. Tai chi, qigong and neigong are used
to cultivate whole-body strength.
The problem is... it doesn't work.
What is the problem?
Conventional martial arts people sometimes seek to bolster their art by training
tai chi. Whilst this may sound reasonable as a proposition, it is
fundamentally unsound in practice.
The body usage habits of their arts are
external.
In a nutshell
The tai chi instructor tells you to relax your muscles at all times. Your
external martial arts instructor tells you to tense-up.
The tai chi instructor tells you to stay calm and composed. Your external
martial arts instructor tells you to use your aggression.
The tai chi instructor tells you to circumvent force. Your external martial
arts instructor tells you to meet force with force.
Tai chi is
an art where all the principles of other martial arts have been turned upside
down.
They practice fast, we practice slow.
They practice hard, we practice soft.
(Cheng
Man Ching)
Conventional martial art habits
These habits inhibit your
ability to use tai chi:
• Military-style warm-up
exercise
•
Existing body habits
•
Mechanical
•
Jerky
•
Typically focuses on striking or
grappling, seldom both
•
Blocking/resistant, force
versus force
•
Favours the younger, stronger student
•
Fighting/competition
• Aggression/emotion
• Forcing
• Speed
• Isolated limb use
• Extended
• Linear
• Struggling
• Being in your head thinking about what to do next
• Denying your vulnerability
• Contracted, locked musculature
Catch-22
The person creates a vicious circle: the existing habits of body use prevent
the individual from performing tai chi correctly,
thus diminishing any desired improvement in their existing art.
See the issue?
A lot of martial arts will basically destroy your body.
(Bruce Frantzis)
Internal is
advanced
Internal martial arts skills
cannot be learned quickly and then mixed in with others arts.
Tai chi involves a whole approach to the experience of combat, and
every action is an integral part of
the system.
A student may spend a decade learning just one style and still miss
much of the meaning.
Made to order
Whole-body strength can only flourish in the internal martial arts. The
systems were made for neigong. The very nature of
whole-body strength precludes its existence in the conventional martial
arts.
The moment you tense your muscles or move your
limb independently of the body, there is no neigong.
Context & meaning
Meaning requires context, otherwise the information does not make sense.
Hoping to learn the complete set of neigong in order to incorporate it into
a conventional martial art is fruitless.
Why? Context.
Internal arts train internally
Fish do not just live in water. They are part of the water. They cannot
survive without water. It is simply the nature of what they are. Context is
everything.
Tai chi fighting method
How can whole-body strength exist in a conventional martial system that
does not use whole-body strength? That was not even designed with whole-body
strength in mind?
Conventional martial arts approach kinaesthetic
awareness and the entire experience of combat from a
fundamentally different perspective to
tai chi.
Where’s the elegance, where’s the grace, where’s
the art, where’s the expression of what it means to be a human being in
movement?
(Paul Gale)
Kidding yourself
A martial arts dilettante might well attend a tai chi class alongside
their existing martial art without telling the instructor that
they are doing this. Unfortunately, this will backfire.
There will be no real progress and the instructor will spend the
whole time telling the individual to 'relax' and stop
using 'external' bad habits.
3 methods
Our students study 3 kung fu
methods:
Chin na (seizing)
Shuai jiao (take downs)
They all use the body in an
internal way. Chin na and shuai jiao are fighting methods rather than a
separate system.
Bogus tai chi
If an external martial artist studies sport tai chi and learns competition
forms, then the extended stances and exaggerated
performance aesthetics may not jar with their existing training.
However, this is not tai chi. Sport tai chi is not even remotely
martial.
Find another external martial art
If you want to cross-train a martial art, find compatible systems that can
be practiced independently of one another; systems that do not contain
conflicting principles of body usage.
Yoga
A conventional martial artist might be better off training yoga rather than
tai chi.
Tai chi for health &
qigong
Tai chi for health and qigong may seem like viable alternatives to tai chi
but they still require a deep level of muscular relaxation.
If you continue to train a tension-based
martial art then no real progress can be made with qigong or tai chi.
Meditation
Meditation can help any martial artist. Tranquillity, peace and harmony can
be cultivated.
You will see karate students
who are learning tai chi, for instance, coming from a long background in
karate. Unable to see the new art through anything but the filter of their
karate experience, they come up with a weird hybrid. They have not learned
how to see beyond their past experience and open
up to a new one.
(Dave Lowry)
Page created
23 September 1995
Last updated
3
October 2012
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