Being in condition entails:
• Increasing your strength
• Improving your ability to last (endurance)
• Overcoming fatigue
• Being fitter
• Being more efficient in your body use
• Being more capable
• Overcoming stress
• Improving circulation
Thursday
Low stances
Low stances are a throwback to a time when martial artists wore heavy body armour and fought battles in muddy fields. The urban sphere is quite another scenario altogether.
Horse stance training is about developing leg strength, not combat. Your body usage needs to feel as comfortable and as natural as possible.This will improve mobility, attract less attention and protect your knee joints.
If you cannot get power from an everyday standing position, you are overly dependent upon the hips and the solidity of your base. Whole-body movement generates power in a wave-like fashion.
A low stance is simply redundant.
Wushu
The modern off-shoot of Chinese martial arts is called 'wushu'. It combines martial art-style movements, gymnastics, acrobatics and dance choreographed to look exciting.
Wushu is all about aesthetics, theatrical displays and entertainment.Traditional martial arts are not a performance art, nor are they sport.
Wednesday
Name-dropping
Some tai chi people love to 'name-drop'. They travel to see all manner of visiting masters and add them to their tai chi curriculum vitae.
Collecting forms and snippets of information is a popular pastime in tai chi.What can you really learn from one workshop or a weekend seminar? Is a visiting expert really going to bare his secrets to a room of total strangers?
Be honest about this. Training with a renowned expert in no way translates to mean that you have been given that person's skill. Do not be naive.
The only proof of skill lies with the individual. What can you personally do? Your master may be brilliant at tai chi but you might be lousy.
Similarly, your instructor may be mediocre yet your skills are excellent.
Slow martial art
External martial art schools frequently add tai chi to their syllabus because it attracts students seeking something more relaxing.
Unfortunately, these classes often have no understanding of tai chi whatsoever. Instead of tai chi, they offer slow-motion movement. And that's it.The tai chi principles are completely absent and the instructor is unaware of their existence. It may as well be a karate class practiced in slow-motion.
This is not tai chi, regardless of what is advertised.
Judging
(i) Hidden
Chinese martial arts were usually a family or village system used for self defence. Sharing with outsiders was not encouraged.
Tai chi was designed specifically to hide the applications and skills within an innocuous-seeming range of forms, drills and exercises.
(ii) Feeling
Tai chi skill can only be determined by how it feels. Martial arts are hands-on.
If your tai chi is generating the effect using the correct means, then this will be physically evident when you partner up with somebody else.
The very definition of 'jing' is somebody else's experience of your tai chi.
(iii) The Tai Chi Classics
Tai chi must adhere to the tai chi principles. Given the internal nature of tai chi, many of these cannot be gauged through observation.
(iv) Aesthetics
The danger with aesthetic concerns is that the context is askew.
People look for particular alignment considerations based on how nice they look instead of determining how they add to your ability to generate jing.
Tai chi is a living, breathing martial art in the hands of the right person. Arbitrary aesthetics will rob the practice of any viable self defence application.
Tuesday
Qigong in tai chi
A tai chi beginner is not adept with tai chi so they need to do a lot of qigong. It provides the necessary fitness benefits by serving as a stopgap pending higher level tai chi skill.
An advanced student starts practicing the round form version of the Long Yang form. This increases the fitness benefits of form; allowing them to spend less time training qigong.Neigong replaces qigong as the primary source of power. An expert is more adept with higher level tai chi skill, so they only do a small amount of qigong.
There is simply no need to stand for an extended duration since greater benefits can be gained through whole-body movement.
Standing
(i) Muscle tension
Some qigong teachers expect students to hold static qigong postures for lengthy periods of time; even up to an hour.
This may be a challenge but the side-effect might easily be varicose veins, massive amounts of muscular tension and a decrease in higher level mobility.
(ii) Stop standing
Once the student has learned the weapons form they can cease standing qigong altogether if they want to. Prolonged standing may hinder higher levels of mobility with form.
(iii) Varicose veins
If you have varicose veins you should not undertake prolonged standing qigong.
The same thing every week?
If you are practicing the same thing every week, you are not making any progress. This is not education. It is a plateau; stagnant, dead and pointless. Learning requires development, change and growth.
In class and at home in-between lessons.
Friday
Make the time
Each stage of the syllabus offers new opportunities to build strength. There is plenty of time to learn the new material.
Aim to supplement class tuition with home practice. Home practice (optional but recommended) is usually staggered across the week.
Be selfish
Life offers many obstacles, surprises and set-backs. When it comes to your own fitness and wellbeing, you need to be very selfish.
Children grow up and leave home. Jobs end. Marriages fail.
There is never a time in your life when your fitness ceases to be fundamental. Put your fitness first. Invest the time. Find the time. Make the time.
Thursday
Conditioning exercises
The main qigong exercises contain all of the fundamental movements used in tai chi. But it takes time to really understand these methods.
You must train diligently for many years. By patiently working through the exercises day-after-day, you slowly become stronger.
Your clumsiness fades. Improved body awareness enables you to perform the exercises more effectively. Layer-upon-layer of detail increases your comprehension and your fitness improves significantly.
High repetitions are not recommended
High repetitions dull the mind. Aim to train little and often instead. Be thorough, accurate, aware. Cultivate familiarity and ease.
You want your movements to be natural, relaxed, smooth and controlled.
New starters
Beginners focus upon practicing (and learning) a series of fundamental standing and moving qigong exercises. These are quite easy to perform and build a foundation level of strength.
Partner exercises are mild, with the emphasis placed upon awareness and sensitivity.
Tuesday
Why is tai chi trained slowly?
Some of tai chi is trained slowly, but not all of it. Certain concerns are practiced slowly in order to improve accuracy, control, balance, rhythm and flow.
Smoothness and relaxation are paramount. Performing the material slowly is far more difficult than doing it quickly. It will tax your muscles.
Be realistic
Set aside talk about relaxation, qi, softness and other concerns... Your body is flesh and bone. It is moved by muscles.
In order to be strong, agile, flexible and adaptive in combat - you need to strengthen your body.
Hard work
Most new starters are not prepared for the amount of physical work involved in learning tai chi. The public image of tai chi creates a false sense of effortlessness.
Few people expect to train hard. This is naive.
Monday
Can you teach an old dog new tricks?
Most adults have totally forgotten what learning entails. They placate themselves with excuses about not having a young, flexible mind... or having no time.
But this is not the truth at all. The truth is far simpler - they have become old and lazy...
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