Recently, I saw boxers on the Internet talking about whether practicing Yang-style Tai Chi requires tendons (ligament pulling). Most people agree, believing that it is good for boxing and health.
It was also said:
"Don't emphasize stretching, emphasize relaxation";
"The muscles and bones of the human body are like rubber bands, long-term stretching will cause aging, elastic failure, and can only go with the flow";
"Stretching and pulling bones is a version of waijiaquan, which is harmful to the body";
"Relax and practice boxing, and everything will be there."
From the topic of stretching, the topic of raising the height of the leg when practicing boxing led to the topic.
Some people say:
"The purpose of stretching: practicing boxing is to have high legs and a good shelf, and people say that you have good skills. In fact, this is all superficial work! In fact, Yang style Taijiquan is divided into legs and kicks: it is not as high as the chest, and if it is too high, the empty door is too big, and it is easy to be controlled by others!".
Similar remarks have been common in the author's online games for many years.
Over the years, the author has seen a variety of sayings on the Internet about the height requirements of Tai Chi leg lifts: no more than the waist, no more than the chest, no more than the shoulders, etc.
In this regard,
The author has always wondered, which one is correct?
Did the Tai Chi ancestors have a clear emphasis?
If you are sure that you can kick the opponent in the head, do you have to follow this requirement and have to give up the high and low?
There is a saying in the martial arts world: The hands are two doors, and they all hit people with their feet. It can be seen how important the legs play in actual combat. Therefore, almost all traditional boxing, whether it is southern boxing or northern leg, pays attention to the training of leg method and leg gong, and Taijiquan, as a traditional martial art, is no exception. In the (Yang-style) Taijiquan boxing frame, there are wing legs, kicks, kicks, and (inner and outer) swinging lotus legs, etc., and there are even lifting, connecting, sleeves, linings, and stepping on legs that are easy to be ignored by practitioners.
In these leg methods, there are high, medium, and low uses. After all, legs are longer than hands, and if you can give full play to the role of your legs, you will have a better chance of winning in actual combat. For example, in actual combat, if someone strikes me above the shoulder with a murder weapon from top to bottom, I can use the high-leg method, such as swinging the leg inside or outside, or raising the leg to kick the murder weapon down. Of course, high legs can also be used low, if the opponent hits me below the shoulder and above the crotch with a murder weapon, I can also use leg swing or kick to deal with him.
In short, as long as the method can achieve the desired effect in practical application, it should be used, and there is no reason to avoid it. You know, in the enemy, the opponent will not beat you on the third path because you are practicing Tai Chi, he thinks about how to cause you to die, but you hope that he will not hit you in the upper part, because you will not use the high leg method, will he be compassionate?
It can be seen from this that in the practice of Taijiquan, it is emphasized that the leg should not be raised over the chest, or even over the waist, artificially making the original perfect Taijiquan lose an instinct, which is a deficiency of Taijiquan. As a teacher or master, you are misleading people's children, and as a student or apprentice, you are underpracticing one exercise that has the potential to win. The title of Yang Invincible will never be made with only two hands!
When the author's master taught the kicking style, he required him to kick high, kick fast, be elastic, and cause a storm. Therefore, the author hopes that practitioners who hold this view should be in the spirit of seeking truth from facts, jump out of the strange circle of self-containment, and use natural laws and scientific common sense to do further in-depth research on the traditional Chinese culture of martial arts, so as to improve their own martial arts and carry forward and pass on the quintessence of the great country.
The author speculates that the reason why some practitioners of Tai Chi (influenced by the teacher or master) will put forward the restriction of using their legs is mostly because they still lack a understanding of the application characteristics and methods of Tai Chi, which affects their correct understanding and training of some related forms in boxing. Let's take a few styles of leg training as an example (take Yang-style Taijiquan as an example), when doing kicks and kicks, both hands are separated from each side while kicking the legs, and when the hands are separated into place, the legs are also kicked out of place.
At the moment, most practitioners don't notice the role of the two hands, thinking that they are just balancing (or some kind of blowing), and only focus on kicking. There are even some Tai Chi styles at this time with a crooked body, and the feet and hands exert force at the same time, thinking that this force is practicing exercises, and it looks like a layman, and it also feels energetic, good kung fu, and good-looking.
Question:
Under the premise that the arms are shorter than the legs, what is the role of hand force?
Will I get the desired effect if I use my legs like this?
Can you subdue the other party without losing your wife or your soldiers?
It seems that it can only be left to luck. So is there a way not to get caught when kicking high legs?
There is a saying in the boxing world: three points of risk. It's true, after all, it's a one-leg support, the stability is poor, and once the kicked leg is caught by the opponent, the consequences are unimaginable. Therefore, some people are taboo to use their legs, so there is a limit on the height of the kick.
Isn't it possible to get caught by the other party with a low kick?
As everyone knows, the ingenuity of Taijiquan in dealing with the enemy.
Either she will hit the other party's horizontal side, and the other party has no back support, and "squeezing to be horizontal" is a typical use case;
Otherwise, use your own face to the other side, so that the other side's hand is not strong, both hands to one hand, let me play, the folding style is a typical use case;
Either it will turn its force and frustrate its heel, and it will come out when it is closed, and the pressing style in the tail of the bird, after pressing with both hands (including the strength), followed by pressing forward is also a typical use case;
Before you send it, seal the other party first, so that the opponent has no power to fight back and hit it, such as the white crane shining its wings, such as sealing and closing the equation.
When Taijiquan responds to the enemy, it is characterized by never attacking easily, and when the opponent is not blocked or controlled, that is, when I am not in the back of others, it will not blindly attack and do not fight uncertain battles.
Therefore. The skill is deep, and the skill is fine. When applied in the future, you can do it without legs, and once you use it, you will hit the opponent's hitable parts, no matter how high or low. There is no need to worry about being held by the other party, and it will be self-defeating, but it will be controlled by others. (Forgive the author for laying a foreshadowing on the role of both hands when using the legs, so that the reader can figure it out.) ）
To have a good leg technique, you must have considerable leg skills and waist leg flexibility. This requires relevant basic training, such as: leg slipping, leg wrenching, waist pressing, standing piles and various kicking methods, so as to make the waist and legs flexible, stable and powerful. It is thought that it is the foundation of boxing, and it will be able to show off and move in actual combat in the future. The flexibility of the waist and legs depends on the elasticity and elasticity of the tendons and ligaments (tendons).
Physiological common sense tells us that as we get older, our waist and legs will become more and more sluggish, less and less obedient, procrastinate when walking, and it is easy to fall, unable to bend down, unable to straighten up, and even the older we get, the shorter we become. This is the natural phenomenon and law of aging.
The main reason for this is that the tendon and soft tissue toughness declines, and the ligaments (tendons) atrophy, resulting in stiff joints and inability to move the waist and legs freely. Therefore, proper waist and leg exercise training is not only the foundation for practice, but also the best way to delay limb aging. The author has a deep understanding and harvest of this.
When the author was young, because of his competitiveness and brutality, he seriously flashed his waist in a seedling picking, and he was in pain every year thereafter. Old back disease and tight ligaments, when doing leg straightening and bending down, the fingertips can only pass the knees, and they can't touch the ground at all. Since I learned and practiced Tai Chi, according to the master's requirements, I insisted on practicing bending and pressing legs, and soon my fingertips could touch the ground, and then the back heel touched the ground very easily, and after 2 years, the back disease was gone.
Now the author is a person who has run six, although he has not practiced any kung fu in Tai Chi, but his mental outlook is very good, his body is strong, his waist and legs are still relatively flexible, his steps are light, and the stairs of 7 or 8 floors can be raised two steps at a time, and the atmosphere is basically not breathing.
Although the author's master had passed the sixtieth year, he was still vigorous and kicked his feet too much. Getting on the bike is light and easy, like a guy. The force is obvious with the lumbar spine, and the strength is transparent. When you shake your arms, it's like throwing a towel, and you can hear a slight "pop" sound. When he goes out on foot, he can go on foot for hours without stopping, and the speed is relatively fast, it is difficult for ordinary people to keep up, and it is not at all obvious that he is an old man of this age. There are many people who have benefited a lot from waist and leg training, and the list is endless.
In the Yang-style Taijiquan series of training content handed down by Tian Zhaolin's ancestors, there is an exercise called auxiliary gong (commonly known as "Baduanjin", which is completely different from the popular fitness "Baduanjin" today), but it is not passed on to the outside. Because of the serious practice of the complete set (a total of eight sections), it is not only time-consuming, but also quite tiring, so it is also called "pulling out the broken tendons" according to its homonym. It covers most of the basic martial arts skills, such as: stretching muscles and pulling bones, exhaling luck, dantian explosiveness, palm, fist and finger power, force speed, a variety of pile steps, limb flexibility, major joint movements, and even including one-character and eight-character splitting. Poke here to try the best Baduanjin decomposition teaching on the whole network, it's worth a copy!
Therefore, the master often told us back then: This Baduanjin is a good thing that is secretly passed down by the Yang family, and we must insist on practicing, even if we don't have time to practice boxing, we must practice Baduanjin, which is very long. It can be seen that the Yang family originally had training requirements for stretching muscles and pulling bones and ligaments, which can not only keep fit, but also practice certain skills, so why not do it?
We should learn and practice Tai Chi with a scientific attitude, and we should not follow the crowd and accept it for our own use without thinking and judging, but in the end it will inevitably be a waste of effort and sighing!
Practicing Tai Chi requires a calm mind and a relaxed body. But pine is not a panacea, not a panacea for all the kung fu you want to practice. Because the pine of Tai Chi is different from the pine we know in our daily life. The relaxation of Tai Chi is not something that can be achieved by thinking about it, but must be gradually improved through years of unremitting training.
Therefore, too much emphasis on looseness is biased, and it is easy to go astray, and the gains outweigh the losses.
Notice:
Pure yin without yang is a soft hand, pure yang without yin is a hard hand;
There are only five yin and five yang, and yin and yang are unbiased.
Yin and yang are combined, Fang Wei understands strength, and after understanding strength, the more you practice, the more refined you become, the more you know and figure it out, and gradually do what you want. If you want to practice Taijiquan well, you must study more boxing theory, deepen your understanding and knowledge, and use boxing theory as the criterion to guide the practice of Taijiquan, which is the correct method and way, and do not seek the near and far.
To sum up, regardless of whether you practice or not, it is necessary to insist on doing appropriate waist and leg activities, especially for middle-aged and elderly people. Regular activity keeps things in good shape. Life is in motion!