Tai Chi Punch

[Charles]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KAT2NQ9ynk

Thoughts? Comments? I'll put my comment after this post.

[Mindas Arran]

I'm not sure....... I'd have to see it in person. On the one hand, yes it looks nice. On the other, you have to have a very specific stance, firm and stable footing, and time to set it up. Do you think he could do that stance, set, and throw the technique with someone rushing him, jabbing, kicking, ect?

[Charles]

Yeah no doubt, not sure how well he could set the stance up for that, but since its mostly hip rotation he should be able to deliver that punch at least once or twice from any foot work. The problem with seeing any demo is it looks completely unwieldy because it sticks to strict form. The real question is then how much does he train THAT movement. If he uses that movement in all his Tai Chi (you'd know this better than me) then he's got it subconsciously linked to fire off. If that is the case then he should be able to issue power with it in any situation on reaction (kinda like the foot work and rotation used in a jab after so many months of using it) on the other hand if he's training a different set of movements more then he's not going to have that automatic "fire it off" reaction and any flurry (even a non-powered non-impact one) would throw him completely off balance as his mind tries to find a movement to implement from a large catalog of movements. Like in Xing Yi all power comes from a launch step and a hip rotation, in boxing it comes from a toe launch and hip/shoulder rotation, in Karate it doesn't come at all (ok ok, it's SUPPOSED to come from a hip rotation haha). Yet, back to karate for this one, so many different ways are implemented in certain forms of Karate for issuing power BESIDES it's simple hip rotation mechanics (which would if trained to excess be more than enough) that it looses foundation. After all they train hip rotation, stance shift, launch, lunge, squat, etc, etc, till they can't link the muscles and are unable to issue power.

In short, I'd need to know more before I could say haha. What's your thoughts on the muscle groups used in Tai Chi? Is he working those muscles through a regular Tai Chi pattern every time? If he is then he's gonna have a hellish and capable striking system. If he isn't.... well....

Oh, on a side note, CLASSIC Jeet Kun Do is like an upright side stance boxing the more I dig into my memories of it. The side stance as so you could deliver better kick issuance but it allowed a QUICK foot shift to deliver more traditional boxing movements. The flurry that I do from time to time is actually Bruce's "recommended punching procedure" meaning he suggests his students practice that to no end. The idea being that it generates just enough power to hurt, and hits enough times that you can afford to miss a few on target punches haha. Likewise he preached, up and down, of using the leg/knee/toe launch from the back foot for power in both his side kick and his leading "hammer jab" which the more I look at it, is a Dempsey Jolt.

If only they had stuck with Bruce's plan instead of trying to reconstruct JKD from Wing Chun. Wing Chun issues power in a totally different way than Lee's JKD original forms.

[RyuJin]

lee's traditional stance and striking method is what i've adapted myself....i trained with it till it was automatic, it's a shame he died i would of loved to see what sort of revalations/revolutionary things he could of came up with....as an aside i didn't just train to use my right side (orthodox) but also learned to switch to southpaw at any point with equal results...sometimes i actually start out in southpaw instead of orthodox...it makes no difference to me which side i use

[Scratbuster]

its pretty much the same as any other art, admittedly i dont have any sound, but i would expect the same from any karateka or muay thaifighter

[jdmcowan]

I agree, Adam. The title "The Tai Chi Punch" makes it sound like it's going to be something specific to Tai Chi, but this is a video on basic punching principles. There's nothing there that an experienced boxer, karateka, TKDer, etc. shouldn't be able to tell you. It's a decent video, but not of much use without tons of practice and good feedback.

Jeremy