I spoke with a friend recently, explaining how happy I was to find the Yang Family Curriculum for training the martial aspects of T’ai Chi. She asked, “You mean T’ai Chi can be used for sparring and fighting?” I said, “Yes, of course”. T’ai Chi is often taught for fitness and health but when taught as a martial art it is called T’ai Chi Chuan (Chuan means fist in Chinese). T’ai Chi Chuan is legendary as an effective martial art, but it is difficult to find an instructor who teaches this aspect.
Martial Skill is Not Automatic
Even so, the martial aspects of T’ai Chi are front and center for any beginner to see. The hand movements in the form, where almost everyone starts, look like martial arts moves. These hand movements have poetic names like “Wave Hands Like Clouds” or “White Crane Spreads Its Wings”. With practice, a T’ai Chi student becomes more familiar with them and may even be shown how they can be used in a martial way. When I began learning T’ai Chi, I often heard “just practice the form slowly and you will learn how to fight”. Well, after 50 years of training, I can tell you that this is definitely not true.
A Secret Code
Even though there are martial-type movements in the T’ai Chi form, these movements are just hints at what the real movements are like when used in partner work. One of my teachers said these movements were a “secret code” And, strangely enough, the most important things to practice in the form are not the martial movements but more fundamental skills that support the use of these movements. Luckily, for the posterity of the art, there is a well-defined and complete training system that leads a student through the steps of developing martial skills using T’ai Chi, this system is callled “the Yang Family Curriculum”.
An important part of this curriculum is two-handed Push Hands (*Touishou* in Chinese). This exercise helps train the principles of Taichi for martial applications. Note that this is a “fixed step” exercise, neither player is expected to move their feet unless forced to do so by variations in the pattern.
It took me quite a while to find a school that actually could use martial ideas from the Taichi Form in *Touishou*, but I finally did. I am very happy to share this video of two of my teachers, Olesya Amacker and Vlasta Pechova, demonstrating advanced Push Hands during which several martial applications from the form are shown.
First the Flow, Then the Martial Ideas
In between the expressions of martial ideas each player stays connected to the other’s movements in a very particular way, by perceiving the mutual Taichi between them, this Taichi feels like a rolling ball.
Note that this demonstration was not choreographed, it was entirely spontaneous. The shift of the mutually perceived Taichi between the two players signals what is changing and the other player’s job is to sense what change is occurring and respond appropriately. Staying connected and sensitive to the unexpected spontaneous movements of your opponent trains awareness and responsiveness. This is just a small subset of what is possible in Touishou.
I have listed timestamps for many of the moves in video, enjoy:
00:08 Wave Hands Like Clouds
00:19 Box Ears
00:36 Fist Under Elbow
00:44 Fist Under Elbow
01:00 Box Ears
01:28 Fist Under Elbow with Elbow Strike
01:34 Box Ears changes to Upper Cut after neutralization
01:55 Box Ears and slow demo showing how to neutralize it