By Tu-Ky Lam
The following are the major Taiji training programs that students need to learn:
The routines: These are the major component of Taijiquan. Learning Taijiquan is almost all about learning the routines.
You need to practice the routines correctly with good body alignment in order to benefit from doing Taijiquan. You need the help of a good teacher who can correct your Taiji form so that you will not go astray in your practice. You cannot learn this by yourself.
An interesting question is: why do teachers ask their students to train very hard in the routines? The answer is to improve their skills. How and why can practicing the routines improve our skill? Unfortunately few Taiji teachers can answer this.
A Yiquan practitioner reveals that Taiji routines are like Yiquan shi li (testing of energy), aimed at developing “Hun yuan li” meaning whole body force, which is the core of all martial art systems. I think the assumption of the Yiquan practitioner is correct. We train hard on the routines to develop our internal force. With strong internal strength, our skills will be greatly enhanced and therefore we can overcome our opponent more easily.
But developing strong internal force from doing the routines alone takes too long. That is why we need to do standing practice, which can help us develop internal strength more quickly.
Standing practice: This is the foundation of Taijiquan and all other internal systems as it can make you more relaxed, and help you develop good posture and strong internal strength, which will help you in better performing the routines, push-hands and sparring. Skipping this part means you will not be able to learn Taijiquan properly. Once you have acquired strong internal force, you need to move to the next stage of your training – stepping.
Stepping: This will make you very mobile and so evasive to your opponent, who will find it hard to control you. Stepping and Standing have complementary roles. The former gives you the mobility while the latter, strength. They are both the most important part of your training.
Self-defence techniques: These include some energy moving exercises that are useful in push-hands or sparring, and some individual movements from the routines that are useful for self-defence.
Abdominal breathing: Try to breath with your abdomen in your everyday life – while sitting, standing or walking, and then incorporate it into your Taiji form in order to gain better benefits for health and self-defence.
Power discharge: This involves some exercises where you quickly release your internal strength. Power discharge originates from your feet, up your spine to your hands. It is the force of the whole body. You need to relax in this process in order to produce more power.
Push-hands: Both Taiji and Yiquan push-hands techniques are good and complement each other well. Taijiquan push-hands is well-known for its neutralizing skill while Yiquan for its attacking techniques. Doing both, you will get the best of both worlds. Students will need a lot of push-hands practice in order to improve their skill.
Sparring: The push-hands techniques, power discharge exercises, and self-defence techniques give students good preparation for sparring. They can spar with their mates any time they feel like once they have gone through those stages of training.
A complete Taiji training program should include these parts. They are like different levels of a school curriculum. You need to move from level one to two, and then to three, etc. If you do only level one and do not move forward, it means your skill will remain at level one (the routines) no matter how hard you train. Working hard on all levels will bring good results to your training.