Sunday, November 25, 2012

Train As You Fight, Fight As You Train

Something which came to me while practising pushing hands. A simple principle, to train as you fight, but I came to realise how important it really is.

When practising your forms, it is not just about making sure you have the principles of taiji correct (such as keeping your body upright, relaxing the kua, sinking shoulders/elbows, linking upper and lower body, etc.) but also, you must keep in mind how you are going to apply each move. This constant thinking about how to apply each move is the intention (意) part of taiji. So you are constantly making sure your body moves in the manner you want, while thinking about how to use each move.

Then, when applying taiji, not only must you be thinking about how to use each move, you must still continue to make sure that your body is moving in the manner that you want (or rather, have been trained to do). Thus, while thinking about how to push someone, you still need to continue to check to make sure that you are moving in accordance to the principles of taiji.

Otherwise, your practice will be form with no meaning (just an empty shell), and when applying taiji, you may end up being overly obsessed with the end effect and not really apply taiji (end up using brute force because you are too focused on the pushing part, and not pushing in the taiji way).

1 comment:

victor.beng said...

My name id Victor Yen, from Malaysia, if you happened to be in K.Lumpur or any friends that like to do push hand with other please contact me at 6-016-3308292 so that we can catch up for meeting new friends while doing push hand. TQ!