We have all read and heard stories about the near magical skills achieved by some Taijiquan masters of the past. Many people find the skills for which the art became famous illusive. Nonetheless we strive to achieve the best we can and keep the art alive.

It is safe to say that there are many causes for such a lack of true skill development in Taijiquan, from poor teachers to lazy students and so on.

One of the primary causes is simple misunderstanding; people misunderstand both what to train and how to train. Thus the causes being incorrect the effects can only follow to be incorrect as well.

The Yang family divided the training into three aspects. Each one has its purpose and time, each one has an effect on the other and must be trained in the right proportion and be trained correctly to achieve success.

The three components of training are :

• Lian (练) or practice
• Yong (用) or usage and
• Biaoyan (表演) or show.

Practice is the solo training, the body of the work. This includes jibengong or basic body methods, zhan zhuang or standing post, song gong, nei gong, gong li or power exercises and deep work on different postures and internal methods and much more.

Usage is the partner work, the pushing hands training, application and sparring. Working on stick, adhere, join and follow and applying the different jins and skills developed in the practice component of the training.

Show is what we see as Taijiquan these days, it is going through the entire Dalu set, focusing on things like even tempo, smooth movement and looking graceful, traditionally it was used to show the art to outsiders without divulging the practice or the usage of the style.

These days most practitioners of the art only work on the ‘show’ aspect of training, neglecting the essence in the ‘practice’ and the application in the ‘usage’. This leads to an attempt to reverse engineer the practice and the usage from the show. It is easy to see how things go wrong from here.

All of the Practice and Usage aspects of Yang style Taijiquan are covered in the Discover Taiji online training course  and trained in all of my live seminars.

This post was authored by Adam Mizner

by Phillip Starr

In the classic martial arts movie, “Enter the Dragon”, the famous martial arts actor of the day, Bruce Lee, faced off against the opposition’s main axe-man who began the match by tossing a board into the air and breaking it with a quick thrust. “Boards don’t hit back”, Lee sneered…and then went on to pummel his foe into the ground. Another well-known martial arts figure once stated that, “Bricks and boards give a resounding thwack, but bricks and boards don’t hit back.”

True enough. I’ve heard the same thing from numerous martial arts teachers over the years but I always wondered if they’d ever considered that heavy bags and striking posts don’t back, either. I realize that they were saying simply that the ability to break various objects with the bare hands and feet are not necessarily indicative of one’s martial skill in so far as fighting is concerned, but then…neither is striking the heavy bag. I think that people who makes such statements are missing the point. After all, silhouette targets that are used by firearms enthusiasts don’t shoot back, either…

They would likely argue that hitting the heavy bag fosters the development of strong technique (if it’s done correctly… and a great many people use it incorrectly). I think I would counter with the same argument regarding board and brick breaking. More importantly, the breaking techniques promote the development of a strong spirit and teach practitioners how to extend their yi (mind, intention, will…), which isn’t always the case with using pieces of equipment like the heavy bag. Different training devices assist in the development of different aspects of a chosen martial discipline; there is no single piece of equipment that helps to develop all of them.

The legendary Masutatsu (“Mas”) Oyama, founder of the Kyokushin style of Japanese karate, emphasized the importance of the breaking techniques because he regarded them as invaluable aids in the promotion of a strong spirit. Although he said that they can be used as a sort of barometer by which we can measure the power of a given technique, the main idea was the development of an indomitable spirit and it is this point that so many contemporary practitioners miss.

If you fail to make a particular break, it’s because:
Your technique is flawed one way or another
You failed to extend your yi properly, or
Your spirit is weak

Or any combination thereof. All of these things are necessary for the development of real fighting skill. At the same time, you can hit the heavy bag incorrectly (which is something that many people do everyday without knowing it), you can strike it without extending your yi (ditto), and it does not necessarily reflect a lack of spirit. So there.

The breaking techniques were not intended to be used as a form of showmanship. Back in the old days it was practiced primarily in the training hall, out of sight of the public at large. It was when the martial arts were brought to the West that these practice routines were used to enthrall audiences. The idea snowballed and before long, we had people performing all kinds of breaking techniques that had little to no value as far as training goes, but the public loved them! Of course, the same happened with freestyle sparring and the demonstrations of forms.

So, to those who say that breaking techniques are without value, I say, “take a closer look.” You’ll be surprised at what you find…