Tai Chi Chuan uses movements and concepts from the hand form in a practical and efficient way. Push Hands drills and applications go hand in hand to build listening skills, re-directing, good timing, borrowing force among other things.
Free lesson available on Tuesday evening
Strategy of the Five Step Path
Before being able to apply the tactics of Tai Chi Chuan in combat, we must first understand the strategy which governs there use.
- Adherence
- We must maintain contact with our opponent, remaining sensitive to there
force, movement feeling there weaknesses and strengths .
This allows us to move first and in the moment. - Spontaneity
- Our reactions to any attack should follow the principle that as soon as our opponent moves our response should be completed before our opponents attack, the time between the start and the finish of our opponents action is lost to them.
- Softness
When applying the principle of adherence, we should maintain only a soft or relaxed contact with our opponent. The sensitivity thus developed enables us to detect any changes in our opponents intentions. It is an early warning system. Our softness also makes it difficult for our opponent to detect our own intentions. - Yielding
- Once we have detected the direction of our opponent’s force we must go with it, not against it. This is the key to the Tai Chi tactic of using `four ounces of force’ to divert even the fiercest attack into the void. While our opponent is using all his energy to attack us we are able to conserve ours.
- Rejection of Brute Force
- Arm contact with our opponent must be both soft and continuous. We must neither withdraw the arm nor let it become tense. This constant soft contact enables us to detect change and to make spontaneous response without unnecessarily wasting energy.
By adopting the strategy of the Five Step Path we are able to achieve the ideal of using the minimum amount of force necessary to produce the maximum effect.
To sum up, we must intercept any attack in a relaxed manner, adhering to it while we use only a minimum force necessary to guide it gently away from its original target, and to the void. By doing this we can detect any changes that may occur in the attack and respond to them accordingly. This would be impossible if we used brute force to block the attack. Our actions must be harmonious and continuous.
One of the special characteristics of Tai Chi Chuan is the emphasis placed on diverting attacks and using our opponent’s own force against him. This is why we adhere to the strategy of the Five Step Path.
Adherence is useless without softness as we can only be sensitive to our opponent’s changes if we are relaxed.
Yielding is useless without adherence as we can only monitor our opponent’s movements and know when to counter-attack if we keep in contact with him.
Brute Force used against our opponent’s force will prevent us from detecting his weaknesses and this runs against Tai Chi Chuan principles which demand that we know the opponent as well as we know ourselves.
This then is the strategy we must follow when applying the Tai Chi Chuan combat tactics. These tactics are practiced when we do the `Pushing Hands Exercise’ which is the first step towards developing our ability to apply in a practical way the fighting tactics of Tai Chi Chuan.
Text Taken from : www.taichichuan.co.uk/
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