I was walking down the street to get to my Taiji class early ( it’s like 10 blocks away from my house) when I went past some school teaching Tae kwun do, hapkedo, Mauy Tai, and something called shotwrestling ( I think I spelled a bunch of those wrong. )
Anyway, I saw through the windows some people kicking these really long punching bags like 7 feet tall, they were kicking them like choy lay fut people do with their shins, they were doing boxing stuff with their hands and had boxing gloves on, and they were hitting the bags with knees and elbows too. It looked really cool, so I went into the school, since I had about 45 minutes before I needed to be at Taiji class with Sifu.
I talked to the guy in the front office and asked if it was ok if I watched the class from a chair. He looked at me kinda weird and said We don’t get many kung fu guys in here for Tai Boxing, but I guess it doesn’t hurt anything. ( I had my Taiji stuff with me in my athletic bag, it was kinda hanging out so i guess he must have saw it. ) I asked him if Tai Boxing is the same thing as Mauy Tai, and he said yeah, it is. So I sat down and watched.
They had sparring where they were hitting each other hard, it looked like it hurt bad. I was glad that in Taiji we don’t get hurt in real fights because we have fajing, but the sparring was cool. I don’t like getting hit though. Anyway, I asked someone if I could spar with them and show them some taiji, I told them they could show me some Mauy Tai in exchange. The guy smiled and said OK, just sign this waiver for legal reasons. I signed, and he gave me some sparring stuff to wear and showed me how to put it on.
So, I go out there and fight with a guy who’s like 50 pounds lighter than me (I’m 200 pounds) and he beats me bad. I didn’t want to summon up the fajing, but I would have thought my Taiji would have held up better. I haven’t been training very long, but the Mauy Tai guy told me he had only been training for 3 months.
Practice fighting. Unless you step into the ring you won’t get any better. If all you are going to train is forms and push hands, then make sure you do not fall into the trap of believing that will make you a good fighter.
Im not sure what is included in your taiji curriculum, but my understanding is that in order for tai chi to be used as a fighting style by itself requires many years of training. If available you should learn kung fu and just try to apply your taiji principles along the way(if you really want to learn to fight). Don’t be discouraged that you were no match for the thai boxer…even if you have more months/years trained…he has the advantage of training in kickboxing which is all about fighting…taiji has more depth(meditation, breathing, etc.)
Is there anywhere where we could see what fighting with taiji looks like? I mean like once a fight has started… not just how to suddenly strike or anything. I mean in full speed, too, I hate slow motion demonstrations that aren’t accompanied by the same thing in full speed.
I’m really curious? Someone hook me up with a link.
“I was glad that in Taiji we don’t get hurt in real fights because we have fajing, but the sparring was cool. I don’t like getting hit though.”
why the he1l do you think you can’t get hit in a real fight? If you seriously believe that, I think that this was a good experience for you.
As for taiji, stick with it. It has some awesome combat applications (props to waterdragon for showing me) but you may want to supplement it with another art (muay thai maybe?) as well, because it may be a few years before you are proficient enough to effectively use your taiji. IMO, contact sparring is a necessity.
"Just because I joke around sometimes doesn’t mean I’m serious about kung-fu.
" - nightair
“I asked someone if I could spar with them and show them some taiji, I told them they could show me some Mauy Tai in exchange. The guy smiled and said OK, just sign this waiver for legal reasons. I signed, and he gave me some sparring stuff to wear and showed me how to put it on.”
you’ve never sparred, then ask to step into a ring with a thaiboxer, and show him some taiji…
That just doesn’t sound smart to me. Also, with the gloves on, wouldn’t it be kind of hard to pull of some of your locks, and most of the palm strikes?
Mistake #3
next time, summon up the fajing!
"Just because I joke around sometimes doesn’t mean I’m serious about kung-fu.
" - nightair
Sparring your first time at someone else’s school is real dumb. I’d talk to your teacher, 6 months is not very long, tai chi is not easy at least for me! It may take a while to incorporate the principles into push hands let alone fighting.
I watched my taiji teacher beat the hell out of a 3rd dan kyokushinkai instructor who was 25 years younger than he was BUT he has been training applications and fighting for most of his life.
If you want to learn how to fight better, start fighting.
Don’t be disheartened by defeat at the hands of a Thai Boxer. Fighting is all we train for. If you don’t get good quickly, you get creamed a lot. Thai Boxing is simple, and the best part about it is that it takes very little time to learn. Most MT guys are fairly proficient within a few months. Taiji takes much longer. Don’t lose faith in your own style. I found my limited (2 years) time in Choy Lay Fut was helpless against Muay Thai. But now that I understand the MT style, it will complement my Wing Chun.
Try a little time training MT. In about six months you’ll be able to look after yourself while still learning your Taiji. Cross training rulz!!!
“Through strength, learn gentleness. Through gentleness, strength will prevail”
Chen, don’t be discouraged, don’t feel bad: you learn more from mistakes than from success, you learnt a lesson that could be very valuable, and that some people will never have the chance to learn, staying in the realm of illusion and false-confidence.
I second everyone who mentionned that Taiji is definitely a great and deep art that can lead you to combat proficiency only after long years of dedicated training…10 seems to me a minimum…
Chen, don’t get in the illusion that without sparring you’ll be able to fight…there is a great difference between applying internal principles while training and applying them while sparring…here’s a lil training example: you should start some sparring just for fun with a classmate, it may even be some kind of slow sparring, really light, in which you will try the best to apply the principles of Chen taiji with the “opponent”. Think of it as a game in which the one who will lose will not be the one getting hit or touched or whatever, rather the one that did an action that was contrary to Chen’s taiji principles. Then, when the both of you are so comfortable that this kind of game has become ridiculously easy, get more serious, increase speed or contact while still striving to apply the purest principles. Then change partners, to get confronted to different body types, reactions and tempers, while making clear how you want to train and why (it can be much harder than you think to find a good sparring…a good sparring is not the one wwho agrees with everything, it’s one that counters you when and where necessary for your own growth). Do not let ego get in the way, be serious and objective about when you failed to apply the principle, when the sparring partner was better than you, be very demenading to yourself, only then can you evolve little by little on the way. Train dilligently and patiently, one day you’ll be able to fight very well while using nothing else than your Chen Taiji.
Internal training is like this: you train little by little, diligently, and the flowers will bloom only years and years after you planted the seed…
If you feel like crosstraining, why not, it’s always good to learn new stuffs and open your mind to new theories but do not lose your goal in mind and set your priority straight: train your chen taiji so well that it becomes the terrible weapon it can be.
Cheer up, you may feel terrible today, but trust me, learning the lesson you just learnt is far better than staying illusioned for a life-time of training
What valid T’ai Chi Ch’uan things did you try that seemed to not get executed well?
I got the impression that you dropped your relaxation, tensed when you met his strikes, were rigid, were at least partially significantly double weighted, and were intimidated.
You asked how to be a better fighter. Fight less!
Fighting when you don’t have to is Vanity and playing games and Soul-searching. Observe, run things through, in your head how, why, Least Common Denominator… Do only what you are going to do (martial Art) but pay attention to every other MA to look to understand it. Analyze how you would deal with a situation knowing what you do. Theoretically, this process over years will be immensly helpful when the random situation of fight that CAN Not be avoided except by not fighting back, occures.
Muay Thai might not have enough relax elements to allow it to be good with your T’ai Chi Ch’uan. Both use the same body. Without relaxing down from your Thai boxing training you are not learning two styles. You are wasting your developmental time~…There was a game where one chooses professions. Choosing to have more than one profession at the same time reduced the experience gain for either (both). It took longer to gain levels when having more than one profession at a time. It doesn’t seem different to martial Art :-).
Very some such, perhaps might have been, likely say some, some not.
man ive been doing martial arts all in all for almost 10 years now and 2 years of that has been tai ji and i prolly still cant use it for sparring , 6 months is nothing !!!
IF you wanna get better at fighting do some of the muay thai lessons in your spare time , if not and you can wait listen to what your teacher says and 10 years down the line you will be able to dish it out well to those thai boxers
what do bin laden and general custer have in common???
They’re both wondering where the fu(k all of those tomahawks are coming from. - donated by mojo
