Ha! Challenge! To arms and argument!
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Originally Posted by Omnirizon
isn't Tai Chi that _real slow_ martial art. the kind that old men do?
my friend practices that. he says it isn't a 'fighting' martial art but is purely a sort of mind-body-soul thing.
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The slow thing that is done in tai chi is called a
form.
Yes, the form is often practiced real slow, and yes, many old men do it. Once you are good you can also perform the form fast (if you want to), and some of the old people can do more than just the form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUf1llA3HXg
Also, moving slow isn't easy. Does your friend sweat during the form? I didn't, until I slowed down. I had been doing it too fast for several months!
That's what you get for not having a teacher.
Many tai chi teachers don't even know that tai chi is a martial art, and of course anything they teach won't be a martial art either. It doesn't mean that your friend can't practice his meditative tai chi, or that other people can't practice just-for-show modern Wushu. I, however, am not interested in learning just the form, or in learning gymnastics. I want to learn the martial art, which has forms and (some) show, but also lots of fun stuff you won't get from the other two.
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Originally Posted by K
While all I have is my personal experience, I can tell you that after several years of Tai Chi that a lot of it is not practical. You honestly can learn all the "moves" of an entire martial art in about three months. The rest is just physical conditioning like speed and strength training and learning to react both instinctively and intelligently with the correct move.
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I bolded the parts that tai chi teaches.
I speak about "tricks" instead of "moves", because sometimes similar movement can be done in slightly different ways. It's still a single "move", but at the same time, several "tricks". Learning all the tricks isn't what martial arts are about, because in a real fight you don't know what tricks are allowed and what the other guy is going to do.
A form can have a hundred movements, and the flowery names are a great help for learning all the tricks. I was taught to use "grasping bird's tail" to parry a straight punch while blocking the attacker's other hand, like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2co2w288Tho
In addition, the form helps with posture, footwork and balance, doing the posture very slow and very low will strengthen your legs, and practicing daily will help you learn to perform it more precisely. There are other ways to practice the same stuff, of course.
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I also studied Karate under a streetfighter ex-Marine and I can tell you that the stripped-down version looks nothing like the moves you see on TV. He basically said "I'll teach you to fight first, then I'll teach the impressive stuff if you still want to learn it." I watched the Capoiera club at my school for weeks before deciding that presenting my butt to an enemy is just not practical in any form. Saber fencing and Tai Chi saber fencing also can be mastered in any practical way in a few weeks (I fenced with an Olympic saber fencer and could beat him 1 out of 4 times and I was nowhere near the athlete and half-blind to boot).
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It looks like you have practiced more martial arts than I, and I'm impressed with your fencing merits.
Regardless, I disagree. The movements "that work" are simplifications. "Boxing is about punching" is a simplification, because a good punch relies on good footwork and balance and bluffing.
You can learn lots of useful tricks very fast. These tricks can be stripped-down street-versions, or applications based on tai chi form, or aikido wrist locks. They can be useful and save your life, but they're only one part of the story.
The tricks you use don't matter as much as the other stuff: your balance and speed and reflexes, your attitude, your ability to think fast and outsmart others, if you noticed you're in danger ot not, etc. I think it's the same thing you're saying in here:
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Mostly, I think martial arts get great marketing and religious stuff added to it so that teachers can get students. Learning to fight well is simply a matter of practice so that even the best trained warrior can be beaten by a street-fighter who has cobbled together a style from kung-fu movies and a little formal training (see Bruce Lee).
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(What do you mean about Bruce Lee, btw? Was he beaten up by some fan or something?)
In the short time I practiced tai chi (about a week) I didn't learn much about balance, but I've been practicing what little form I learned and it has helped a little. I did go through nice two-person drills where you have to react to your partner's movement, follow him when he steps backwards and change direction when he changes direction, and I'd love to do them again. They are very fun to do, and challenging, and teach reflexes and footwork.
Here is a great video about pushing hands practice. It starts with basics, and then moves to showing applications.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkyq9FljlG8
Now, before I go any further, I have to say I can't fight with tai chi. Not yet, at least. However, in a week of tai chi I learned more than in the ~2 years I practiced a Korean kicking art. In there, I only learned tricks: kicks, punches, counters to different kicks, parries to straight punches, etc.
In tai chi, I learned lots of new tricks, but also the fact that tricks alone won't be enough.
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Originally Posted by vfb
It sounds like you're basing your argument (regarding whether studying martial arts is practical) on Tai Chi and Fencing. That's pretty funny! I've yet to see anyone in MMA whose martial arts style is "Tai Chi". If there was anyone, probably he didn't make it very far.
My personal experience is with Aikido, which may also be impractical in a street fight (or MMA), but it's great for keeping the wife and kids in line (see my wife and kids).
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I have seen one (1) MMA match which a tai chi- bagua-sanshou fighter won. I think it was his first MMA match. I'm trying to find it, but I haven't had any luck. It didn't look like tai chi, of course, because he wasn't doing a form.
I've been learning aikido for about half a year now. Aikido as I've been taught is nowhere near as brutal or direct as the tai chi I was taught, even though it shares some similar ideas. The practice has been too static, for one thing. We almost always practice a spesific counter-move to a spesific attack. The tricks are good, but we always practice from the same, static pose. I'd love to have this kind of practice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK7w1j-zRCQ
That's from a martial arts school in Rome, but that kind of practice could work in ANY martial art. Wonderful stuff.
Re: OT: Western v. Eastern martial arts
Relevance? Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that with martial arts, it's not necessarily so much learning the moves as perfecting the technique and acquiring the reflexes required for it. Being properly fit for the school helps too.
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