Wen Hsiu Quan

  My office is in a building situated in a busy shopping centre. Among my neighbours there is a Chinese beauty salon run by friends of mine. Well... we say we are family... The owner's Aunt Hu came over to visit from Shenyang. When I drove back home one day I passed by the shop and found Aunt Hu practicing Taijiquan outside the salon. I think you can guess what happened next. Aunt Hu agreed to join me for a practice session that Sunday. While she showed me the 24 step Yang Set of Taijiquan I have shown her Qigong and a Wenhsiuquan form.  My warm-up starts in Horse Stance from where I stretch my calves and sink into a half-split. When I got into Horse Stance, however, Aunt Hu stopped me very quickly. What followed was a stern admonishment in Mandarin, but it was basically this: "No! This is not horse stance! Your feet is turned all wrong! Turn your feet to point outward like this! From here you can move this way, that way and that way!"  (accompanied by sweeping hand gestu...

Weird as this may sound these days- Judo was the not only the first martial art that I took up, but it was also the first "soft" martial art that I have learnt. With the standards of competitive grappling having gotten really high we hardly see anything that appears to be soft in Judo these days. Then I won't even mention anything about the Founder's maxim of minimum effort, maximum effect. Judo nowadays seems to be about: I was happy to learn my first throws and found that some worked even on people that were bigger than I was at the time. Still- I have found that I easily got toppled sometimes by a completely untrained person. Well... as you all know by now I have found the bugs, fixed it and wrote a book about it... The first major bug-fix came from Karate. And- it was not even Japanese Karate, but an Okinawan-based style, Shukokai (a style that was derived from Shito Ryu). Karate taught me the value of a good stance. Now... the stances that...

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...

Hi, everyone! During this week Sifu Randy Brown from our G+ Community collaborated with another favourite member of mine-Sensei Ando to give us a really good demonstration (good meaning practical and straightforward) of how to deal with a rear bear hug. Because I know both instructors are Kungfu instructors and because Kungfu has a very special place in my heart (Wenhsiuquan is about 70% Kungfu) I felt like sharing my take on this classic Taijiquan move with them. You are welcome to see it too. Now- I must apologise in advance. My ability to get a partner for a demo video is about the same as a Jehovah's Witness getting invited in. So- I had to create my own Uke for this post. :D I know he is not as good as a real person, but he gets the job done... Now- Although I will agree that modern arts like BJJ and Krav Maga have done a lot to teach us real solutions to real problems I still have a strong preference to a martial art that you can study your w...

Hello again! This is acutally one of the simplest of movements that appear in every Taiji form that I have seen. I was planning to do a post on its application as a simultaneous lower parry and push and show how other similar techniques get used in the Wudang arts, but must admit that Sifu Iain has a much cooler application for this movement- as is shown in the Youtube videos that I have linked below... In Shaolin Kungfu we have a move called the "Green Dragon" and to put it very simply it is a downward block that is accompanied by a tiger palm strike. The value of attacking while defending cannot be overemphasised since a lot of seasoned fighters only provide you with an opening when they are actually attacking. Fighters who are too focused on evading or blocking at the cost of their own counterattack miss that opportunity to attack. The ability to defend and attack at the same time of course also stops your opponent from letting his attack escalate into somet...

Weekend is finally here and I can finally get to writing this weekend's post! :) Today's Taijiquan move is also found in almost all forms being taught in the world today. Readers who practice Tai Chi, but who have never bothered to find out about any of its combat applications might find the applications of this move interesting. If you are a Karate student you are most likely, just like me, used to techniques having simple names. Gyaku Zuki, Mawashi Geri and so forth. The trouble with the names of Kungfu movements, especially Taijiquan's, is that the absence of a visual demonstration would leave the uninitiated at a loss for any idea what the move's function is or even how it is performed. Fortunately- I have found photos and videos to give non- Tai chi folk an idea of how this movement is performed and what use it has in a fight.   In Shotokan Karate's kata Enpi we have a similar move that looks like this: The two claw-hands look really ...

Today's post is about a movement that is as identifiable with Taijiquan as the Age Uke is with Karate. Nowadays I find a lot of DVD's and literature on Taijiquan that go into detail about movements, but do not bother to give any explanation of the martial application of these movements. My first book on Taijiquan did just that. My teacher before then did not want to teach me the fighting applications in the hope of curing my anger issues. After 5 years or so from learning Taijiquan for the first time I got this book by David Gaffney and Davidine Sim on Chen Style Taijiquan. The book itself is a valuable source of information on Taijiquan technique while it does not do anything to teach a form to beginners. The book had this to say about the Single Whip: What is described in this poem is a posture akin to Happo Biraki in Japanese martial arts. This posture keeps the stance relaxed, but firmly rooted while the arms are spread wide open. The purpose of this po...