I can’t help but to be amazed by this young lad. Just look at his posture alignments. God! He is going to grow up to be an amazing TaiChiQuan master.
Amazing Kid!
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Model Yilu
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
He trains hard, that’s for sure!
Let’s pretend that he is a grown man, and compare his move to practical method student, what i find is that there is a lot of ‘leak’ . I once heard, “an old master who can not bend down has a more open kua than a gymnast”. The point is that flexibility is not a criteria of judging taijiquan skill.
imho, it is better for young person to take external martial art, since there is a clear criteria of progress, and build up stronger joints. Later can take up taiji, just like Brennan did who has black belt in tae kwan do http://practicalmethod.com/lang/en/2011/07/new-yilu-records-set-on-daqingshan
Well, if pretending him being a grown man; i would say what he is most lacking is “Ji” ability. Most of the leaks i find are due to “tossing”. A lots of tossing of the hands. But there are times that they are really good due to how honest he is expressing himself and does not stiff-up. The other major leakage is due to how he is doing the low stance. His hipbone collapsed is bellow the knee area and the hips bent inwards causing leakages for the kua. If he wanted to go that low, i would say spread the legs wider rather than allow your hips to collapse inwards.
Although flexibility is not a criteria, it is definitely better to flexible than rusty. If you are rusty, you have to start slow and flex out little by little. Otherwise, you can accidentally tear your joints. On the other hand, if you are flexible; you already have range of most of the motions.
As for doing external martial art while being young, i say it depends on your objective. If your objective is to see results right away, external all the way. But i say that for doing anything, it is best to start young. First, there is a lot of less habits you would have to correct later on. Most external martial arts don’t have low stance so, as they grow up; their knee joint weakens. But if you keep constant low posture training since young; you are best likely not to have those problems later on. And i would say that most external martial arts train for strong muscles than joints. I find myself taxing the joints in TaiChiQuan training more than anything else.
Most external arts don’t have low posture training? I don’t know about that.. Shaolin has plenty of low stance work, and they don’t just train muscles, they train the joints and tendons as well. The main difference between external school and internal school is external schools focus on optimizing momentum based methods. Whipping and smashing power. This kid has good coordination and strength but just not trained the Practical Method way. Looks like more of Chen Village style which does have more whipping/tossing methods than Practical Method.
Even you repeated it, I said “most” not all. Shaoling is one of the biggest exceptions. Start counting down other external styles and you find they rarely have low postures. Boxing, Thai, Karate, Judo, etc. Sure, they may include a few rare low posture training but most of them are muscle oriented and not joints oriented. And the ones that do include joint oriented training are mostly of Chinese origin.
The Yilu performed in this video is certainly a non-practical method style. Since Wilkin talked about leakage; i just had to mention the tossing movements. Hong Junsheng/Practical method removes most of those fancy whipping movements in order to emphasize on Peng. Which it has done a great job doing so, otherwise i would have no idea what peng is (unless explained) when practicing the other Chen styles.
Me, as someone who started practicing TaiChiQuan from New Frame Chen Style; i would describe practical method’s yilu as “spiky”. Like as if you see a trap of spikes with small space where your body just fit. So you try to avoid the spikes by walking around the small empty spaces. But the real trap is to make you walk around the spikes.
On the other hand, other Chen styles have all kind of stuff blended together to the point you don’t know which one is peng and so on; unless you have a teacher with the knowledge to tell you what is what. One example is how practical method doesn’t emphasize much on ChinNa. Well, those whipping motions have many of ChinNa hidden applications. But you need someone who knows the differences to tell you what is what otherwise you would have no clue.
The real reason i posted the video was because i liked the final posture alignments; not his “Ji” method or how he is moving from posture to posture. Nor how he allowed his kua to go bellow the knees. Just look at his hand, elbow and shoulder positions when he stops on every posture. His hands are not away from the torso and thigh lines. He maintains a straight head and spine. He even has very good eye contact on the direction he should looking at before every move is executed. I just hoped it to inspire others to practice harder.
Mind our own business and train hard. The kid is doing fine, and beautifully. He has his own path ahead of him. Wish the best.
Thank you for sharing the video. It was enjoyable and inspiring to view. I focused on the positive aspects of which there are many. Tonight I will try in my sleep to connect to the Dao to find that Traditional Chinese Medicine elixir that will reverse the aging process so I can be that flexible. Unfortunately, drinking a can of WD-40 won’t work. The kid train hard and is an inspiration!