TAI CHI CHUAN AGAINST OTHER MARTIAL ARTS
Covering an opponent adequately before countering is very important
Eric
Shaolin Wahnam Ireland
14th February 2011
Thanks to Sigung for the Wonderful Tai Chi Chuan against Other Martial Arts Course
Hi All,
Firstly i want to give thanks to Sigung for the wonderful and amazing Tai Chi Chuan course i attended in Killarney this week. The course Tai Chi Chuan against other martial arts opened my eyes to the effectiveness and practical nature of Tai Chi Chuan.
I also want to thank my Sifu Mark Hartnett for recommending the course to me. I have been practicing Shaolin Kung Fu for almost four years and he mentioned that participating on the Tai Chi Chuan course would be very beneficial to me for combat application and also to observe the differences between Tai Chi Chuan and Shaolin Kung Fu.
We started the first day with an excellent stance session and also did grasping sparrows tail. Sigung spoke to us about the importance of waist movement and having the correct mechanics. We then used double dragons (hope my names of handforms are correct if not my apologies )hand forms in right bow arrow stance to defend against boxing / kickboxing / karate / tae kwon do / muay thai spread over the three days. I found just from simply palming away strikes , sinking back using waist movement in bow arrow stance then countering with a strike/throw/kick was extremely effective.
It re-affirmed to me the importance of good stances / fundamentals.
The course also gave us the opportunity to use chin-ya gripping techniques and we also practiced some grappling / wrestling which was great fun and also very practical.
The most enjoyable aspect of the course for me was when we spent one hour practicing green dragon shoots pearl and did it very slowly also trying to make sure our mechanics were correct. My hands felt charged with force and my mind felt very clear after practicing this.
Just a brief note on how practical I found the things learnt
I previously practiced Tae Kwon Do for 8 years from when i was 10-18 years old. Our training was based around traditional Tae Kwon Do which we were told was not practical for a streetfighting and this was just for grading us to move up in belts and we used to practice a lot of hand sparring and free sparring. We used to kick and punch eachother up and down the hall where we practiced when sparring. After a few years i thought of myself as an ok fighter and could defend myself reasonably well.
This week training with Sigung it brought me back to those days as i got to revisit those high kicking days when helping demonstrate some Tae Kwon Do kicks. Sigung asked me to attack with full speed using left jab, front kick , side kick and back side sick. In my old Tae Kwon Do days it would have been enough to knock down an opponent and win a fight but Sigung simply palmed my first strike away, used white crane in false leg stance twice to counter-act my next two kicks and as i attempted the backside kick before i knew it i was on the ground, my arms and legs pinned down and a Leopard Punch an inch away from my ribs.
I thought to myself afterward, how simple / how brilliantly effective. Wish i hadn't spent 8 years kicking bags and other people!
Thanks
Kind Regards
Eric
Shaolin Wahnam Ireland
Avoid an opponent's kick before moving in to fell him onto the ground
The above discussion is reproduced from the thread Thanks to Sigung for the Wonderful Tai Chi Chuan against Other Martial Arts Course in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum.
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