Thursday, November 08, 2007

"Your moves are too right" part 2

My teacher brought this up again today, and so I tried to get some clarification on what he meant.

My moves are too orthodox, too "by the book". Especially when practising Yang style, my movements mostly follow a single speed (slow), which is not necessarily bad (it trains up leg muscles) but just doesn't seem good. My teacher told me that in order to improve, I need to drop that single slow speed, and be able to speed up and slow down when needed.

Practising my movements in a single monotonous speed makes it a chore to watch. Taiji, if done correctly, should look nice. While movements that look nice may not necessarily have meaning to them, movements that have meaning to them will definitely look nice. And how to add meaning to your movements? You must know when to speed up and when to slow down, be able to show the application of each movement without being too obvious.

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