does anyone remember this part of “Chinese Boxing” ? Chen Man Ching invites Smith to attack him any way he chooses. Smith attacks blah blah blah then chen man ching unleashes a torrent of a zillion blows, scaring the hell out of Smith. How would you characterize this attack in terms of the internal arts? Smith recalled there was not much force behind the blows, but I don’t know if that is significant here. Just mulling over a section of my favorite book as I often do
Hmmm
Well he also mentions that Cheng pulled all the punches so as not to knock him out with the first one but to repetitively scare the hell out him just to let him know what he was capable of.
right. I guess I thought of chen man ching as being this sickly and strictly yang style guy. But upon refelction of that story, it wuld appear he did know some offense
Would that be a blanket assumption that all Yang Stylers are sickly and can’t fight offensively? I know Yang style in the greater majority has been watered down into a health dance to many, but there are still schools out there who are practicing combat Yang style down from the Yang Shou Hou side… I am a student of such a system.
I have practiced and taught Chen Man Ching Yang style and it is very good for developing awareness of qi and vitalization. I was very surprised at how good it makes you feel and the physical sensations. An hour of Cheng Man ching taiji and you will just feel incredible energy in your body for the whole day until the next morning. You will never get tired. One time , I had a bad flu I had just caught and I had been throwing up the night before, The next morning I felt really hot and sick so I did Cheng man ching form for 20 minutes. All feelings of sickness were gone after 20 minutes and I felt better than if I wasn’t sick and could easily do the things I needed to do that day. This was very surprising to me; I almost couldn’t beleive it at first , and I’ve been doing taiji and qigong ever since. I no longer practice Yang style because I’ve moved on to older and more complete systems like Dayan wild goose qigong , and Chen stlye taiji . But Cheng man ching style is still very good especially when done very slow at the beginning
stick to the topic please. (the fight and techniques employed by CMC against this particular opponent) thanks
Robert Smith is a hack. Look at his Bagua book. He knows nothing of Gao baguazhang. Nor do his students.
Buddy
Chen Man Ching Taiji doesn’t get allot of respect in my corner of the world, from combat oriented Taiji practitioners… it’s all push hands and nothing else!
I guess he knew some shaolin
Well, Erle’s shi.t catches a lot of flak, too.
The difference is that if you go to any of Erle’s or his students classes, it’s always combat & health oriented with a very comprehensive curriculum mirroring the training styles of Yang Shou Hou. You go to a Chen Man Ching and it’s just health and push hands! Push hands has nothing to do with realistic fighting whatsoever…
That’s true.
(btw, my school does not affiliate itself with any CMC groups/organizations for the reasons stated in your last post)
Hmmm
Strange that because Cheng had obvious fighting skills. A lot of the American Cheng schools, BUT NOT ALL!!!, teach the absolute shell of Cheng’s Taiji. And if you feel that push hands has nothing to do with fighting then you’re not doing your push hands properly. Push hands has everything to do with fighting. I’ve come home from push hands classes plenty of times with bruises and dead legs. What on earth do you do in your push hands classes.
And believing that all combat aspects of Yang Taiji exclusively comes down from Yang Shou Hou’s lineage is not just laughable but naive and insulting.
maybe he wasn’t using any style in particular, just educating smith. Letting him know that he as leaving himself open to attacks by focusing too much on offense. Still…
Old man Cheng would whoop Smith’s ass. However, Smith could probably whoop most all of Chengs students -
How about putting Cheng up against Hung I Hsiang? LOL - poor old Cheng would be crushed! (literally w/ beng chuan!)
Oh dear, we’ve hit a nerve… o.k
Strange that because Cheng had obvious fighting skills.
I don’t have a problem with Cheng himself, but rather what passes as his system without his overseeing.
A lot of the American Cheng schools, BUT NOT ALL!!!, teach the absolute shell of Cheng’s Taiji.
So do the one’s in Australia…
And if you feel that push hands has nothing to do with fighting then you’re not doing your push hands properly.
Push hands is a training application in order for the student to get in touch with many techniques. But if you think out in the street a crazed freak is going to settle down into a sung bow stance and engage you in push hands you’ve got another thing coming.
Yes there are applications in push hands and yes there is a method to the training. But at the end of the day there are many people who do only push hands and think that this is Taiji as combat! Competition push hands is such an example…
The Cheng Man Ching guys is our locale repeatedly stress push hands as the be all and end all. I’m afraid this is a drop in the ocean of Taiji combat jiben gong.
Push hands has everything to do with fighting.
I guess that makes you a Cheng Man Ching guy then…
I’ve come home from push hands classes plenty of times with bruises and dead legs.
You’ll get more than bruises and dead legs in a street fight my friend…
What on earth do you do in your push hands classes.
We train the technique, as it is supposed to be understood, just that, a technique. It is not a fighting system.
And believing that all combat aspects of Yang Taiji exclusively comes down from Yang Shou Hou’s lineage is not just laughable but naive and insulting.
Find for me where I made such a blanket statement as what you have stated above. The fact that you make such a claim is not just laughable and naive, but equally insulting… to yourself. I could care less whether you care to be accurate or not, your kidding yourself and nobody else.
Njoy…
Pushing hands is a vitally important training tool for fighting skills, but it is just training, it isn’t fighting. For fighting, actual fighting with people who may be trying to kill you, there has to be a synthesis of in contact and out of contact technique; accurate timing, coordination and positioning on the part of the student (brought about by free-sparring, mostly) that will allow the student to instantly translate pushing hands’ principles into an actual empty hand or weapon-oriented conflict.
CMC only studied 7 years with YCF. In practical T’ai Chi Ch’uan terms, that isn’t very long at all. CMC had the reputation among Yang Ch’eng-fu’s and Wu Chien-ch’uan’s senior disciples of having some push hands skills, and at 7 years with a very good teacher one would expect that. But there are trainings that wouldn’t be addressed at 7 years into the traditional curriculum because the student wouldn’t have the conditioning yet to handle them.
This is what has led to the biggest problem associated with CMC’s forms. The famous “T’ai Chi Knee.” Every CMC group that I have had experience with (including CMC’s personal students whom I have met) has chronic knee problems, whether they care to admit it or not. When CMC shortened his forms (not just in the number of postures, he shortened their reach as well) he put the back leg out of a correct alignment when weight is shifted back onto it, causing chronic, long term damage to the knee joint and to a lesser degree the ankle. This is something which is the cause of great debate at a cyber-remove, but quite easy to demonstrate in person. Suffice to say that the modern Yang family has gone public in saying that CMC’s forms are not Yang style, that they have been changed too much to qualify as such.
The next problem is a tendency among some prominent CMC stylists (the Robert Smith, Doug Wile bunch and others) to assert publicly that their study is the end-all of the T’ai Chi tradition, that CMC’s modifications are somehow the highest expression of the art of T’ai Chi Ch’uan. I have seen this in print many times, implicitly and explicitly stated, and it always amazes me. As far as I know, there are still many teachers from the Ch’en, Yang and Wu families (with many more than 7 years experience) teaching bang-up T’ai Chi which, coincidentally, doesn’t cause chronic health problems.
Rant over…
Here, here…
I’ve never had a problem with my knee doing taijiquan . My cheng man ching style teacher is powerful and so was his teacher who learned push hands from cheng man ching. There also was a yang long form taught by that teacher but I only learned the shorter form. I don’t see how the stepping is so different from chen style exept that when you step out with your heel your leg might be too loose noodleish , but when you shift your weight forward from what I remember of cheng style , it’s very similar to chen style. How is it so different? Chen protects the center line better I think
Yeah, there is no doubt that CMC had good push hands skills, I’ve been told so by his contemporaries (I’ve even been told that personally by the late Ma Yueh-liang).
I’m glad that you haven’t experienced any problems. I know too many CMC stylists who have had knee problems to not wonder about it, though.