My Understanding of Conversion of Power

The main goal of Taiji is the transmission of power.  But what does this mean? In technical terms it refers to the conversion of power from one form to another.  In Taiji it’s the conversion of the straight up and down power of the two legs into rotational power of either the waist vertically or the hips horizontally.  It is exactly the same as pedaling a bicycle: the up and down  power on the pedals is converted into a rotation of the gear because the axle of the gear is fixed in a way that encourages movement (rotational movement) but doesn’t allow wobbling.  We must train our bodies to have the same fixed axle. When you do this your waist becomes a continuous lever.

This is level one and it takes many years of training to achieve, but without this there is no Taiji.  Hong said that Chen Fake was the only one who could do this but Master Chen Zhonghua believes that Hong also had this skill.  Everyone else talks about many different movements and techniques but they do not understand or even know about this one. This is the basic movement of Taiji.

To this end, training Yilu can be compared to spinning a top.  At first you do it slowly to try and figure out how you are going to do it.  But after a while you realize that the faster you do it the greater the chance that it will spin.  So at first you do yilu slowly to gradually try and understand the basic mechanics but later you just do it fast without thinking about it: the faster you do it the more chance that you will rotate.