Wen Hsiu Quan

Hello again, everyone and welcome back to my breakdown of this form. Today's movement from this form I got from Taijiquan, which, by the way, has really awesome grappling moves. In the book the movement is shown like this: In Taijiquan this move is known as "Snake Creeps Down. I found a demonstration of the movement on Youtube to show you how it looks in most Taijiquan forms. The application of this movement is really awesome and very simple to pull off once you have figured out the mechanics thereof. For me- just knowing the taught application of a movement is not enough. I have to know how I would use it in a fight as it is a given that you have to make any technique you learn your own in order for it to work under pressure. The simplest application I got was against a straight reverse punch.  With this response I do not start by moving into the opponent, but rather turn my body as I guide the punching hand past me and firm...

When you look at the nice slow movements of Shotokan's Heian Yondan wrestling is the last thing that comes to your mind- if it ever comes to mind at all. With Taijiquan the uninitiated observer will also not think of grappling when he sees much of the movements shown in Taijiquan forms. This particular move took my karate mind a while to get around. Sure- in Karate we have a back stance that looks like this half-split stance used in the move we call (look at the post's title!) "Snake Creeps Down". We have a hand movement that looks very much like the one in this move which we know to be a knife hand block. Now I want to know why the hell I'd want to crouch all the way down to deflect a kick away from my shin... Hehe! Sure- forms have lots of blocks and punches, but not everything is a strike or a block. If we leave the cannonating pushes and heart-stopping punches out of the discussion for a while we can take a closer look at w...