Hi Newbie question

Weird I came from an Aikido/Muay Thai and had no problem converting. Could be your instructor.

The Bear.

 

your skills must be far greater than those of the students I train with..

Tai Chi is very different to external Arts ie Karate and requires a very different skill set even in the basics of striking.

 

I reckon that Aikido/Muay Thai would be a pretty good base to work from. You'd know how to punch and kick hard, and the Aikido would give you an idea behind the 'softer' skills. Using the opponent's force against them.

Me, I came from Origami and macrame!! er...

 

Holly newbie question!

no i know nothing about it,(goes back to sipping ever clear).

 

Actually no it's not, it works on exactly the same principles they are just applied differently. Traditional Aikido and Tai Chi are so similar infact that you can use the techniques interchangably. Slap the face leads perfectly in to Irimi in Aikido, its one of my favourite combos. I have used my Muay Thai strikes to create openings for many Tai Chi applications. As long as you train the principles of martial arts the individual style is irrelevant.

Regards,

The Bear.

 

I dont think it has anything to do with skills... I think its more to do with the lines one is fed or the mind/belief set that one has or is led to have... if you believe that its going to take you 10 years to learn something you already are hindering yourself...

 

off Topic

Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha... :love:
I,m sorry both of you have very valid opinions and points, but nothing to do with what I said.
so please don't quote me if you want to talk about something else.

"Tai Chi is very different to external Arts ie Karate and requires a very different skill set even in the basics of striking."

I never mentioned "principles" not now long it takes to learn.

Back to the original question you could certainly do far worse than Chien style as its usually very combat orientated if that's what you are looking for if they don't teach you how to strike look somewhere else.
So good luck.


"I don't fear the man who knows a 1000 kicks , I fear the man who has practiced 1 kick a 1000 times" Bruce Lee

 

riiight... well at least you are happy... but to master true happiness you must embark on the path of at least 10 years...

 

I see your pedantry is strong grasshopper ... but my practicality is stronger.

The Bear.

 

Hi Hedgehogzilla - funny handle, lol. Karel is pretty well known as a name on the "scene" but I can't recall ever seeing his martial art, so I don't know, but his teachers are certainly top level.

As for taking taiji for martial art and health, the important thing is to honestly assess what you want and what you will enjoy doing. If it really is that you want some genuine self defence, then have a good look around. To use taiji effectively against a real, determined opponent requires a very high level - hence, really, almost no one can, although, they'll tell you that they can, of course. So, have a good look first - look at the more senior students and how they train - what kind of level have they achieved? Does it look real? Look at demos on youtube if they have any - does it look ridiculously unlikely, or pretty serious? As far as I know, there are no videos of Karel Koskuba knocking about - so, I guess go and have a look, see if it tickles your fancy, and as in all things, trust yourself.

 

Kembang, I'm pretty sure they set up and run that national body - it's pretty easy to do that in the Uk.

 

Hmmm... That's wrong and right. If by "obsessed by movement flow" you just mean making a nice form, or looking nice in movement, then yes, that's partly true, I guess. But by the same token, focussing only on techniques is also wrong, because that's what used to be called "the superficial".

The real point of taiji isn't to teach you specific techniques per se, it's to teach genuine whole body integration skills.

These days a lot of people say "whole body movement" as just an alternative to the "qi" explanation, and then just do techniques without whole body movement. It's a great shame, actually, and is really a hijacking of the movement that sought to re-establish that understanding of CMA. But what can you do about it? Life - always like this.

Actually, whole body movement is a specific way of moving, very flowing - an integrated movement skill which takes some learning in most cases. In that case, focus on the flow is actually quite important. And immediate focus on combat application might not be the right way at all. It's very hard to use integrated movement when sparring - hence, so few people can do it... so actually trying to "get it" whilst doing combat stuff - well, too difficult.

As for integrated body movement skills, I've seen very, very few Westerners who have it.

 

I agree with FQ, flow is improtant. To my mind it is the most important quality to aquire at the outset. MA in a very practical sense is an art of movement and to move seamlessly with "whole body" integration requires that you can know/feel/be aware of where all your body parts are at the same time. One part of the body cannot move without it directly integrating involvement from other parts.
In this sense, flow is equally important to practice in daily life ... not just when practicing in the club area.
Slow, relaxed and focused movement is a good method IMO to begin the process of aquiring the body knowledge to embody flow.
For learning mechanics of particular strike or application, JK's methododlogy is also correct, because it allows you to isolate the series in movement.
Combination of both toolsets gives overall perspective and fluency.

Cheers

 

We do everything and more (or as I used to say when I was little - "all of it and a bit of it!")

 

Sadly, whole body integration skill has become a buzz concept, and something that people feel they must claim to have, without actually having the skill.

 

I think "expert" opinions are a bit like that.

 

I often wonder, what's the difference between really knowing, and just thinking you really know.

 

Heheh ... it seems we all three agree.

Everyone can say "it feels like this" or "that", in the end it is just talk ... how it feels can only be intuit by the person who is practising.
What is important for anyone wanting to "aquire" the feeling in the body ... is that they start to "feel" it and recognise through the repetition of sensation. The degrees of awareness becomes acute through our evolving and intelligent application of our own intuition.
Where is the feeling of the centre when feeling the whole body in space? How does the awarenes extend around/inside the entire body? How does gravity affect our structure ... and how does that feel. How relaxed are we ... do we contain body stress that is surplus to requirement to keep our body structure dynamically relaxed?

 

... and occasionally try it out against a fully resisting opponent to gauge progress.

 

I think this is a fantastic question and one I have given some thought to. One of the things I love about martial arts is that they give you the opportunity to "test" your knowledge. If it doesn't work, maybe one doesn't really know. Something I have noticed in my training is that the way I thought something would be before I could do it, very often isn't the way I experience it to be. I am, if you like, surprised by the way things actually work. Whilst I accept that this is not definitive I find it more reasuring than discovering that things work the way I expected them to as I suspect that this is more likely to be a created reality. After all it seems less likely that we would create a reality we hadn't imagined being possible beforehand.
Reading this back it seems a little unclear but I guess this is one of those questions that it is more helpful to ask than to answer!