Rugby player and firefighter – My first meeting of the Chen Taiji Practical Method.

My name is Paweł Maciejny. I work as a teacher, I am also a player and a trainer at the rugby club
in Bielsko-Biała and a volunteer firefighter at the Volunteer Fire Department Żywiec – Sporysz.

I found out about the Taiji Practical Method by accident. First, I had a few tai chi qigong trainings – although
undoubtedly calming – they did not bring me much satisfaction.
Then a friend told me about a man who teaches Taiji with a slightly different method, she did not go into details except that she said that I would be surprised … but what may surprise me in the relaxation training of raising hands …
I went to the training with the attitude that I would look at what this “different method” is,wave my hands a bit and feel my duty well done, I will return home without sweat – I did not even
take a change of T-shirt – because why should I…
A group – like a group – diverse, different people, of different ages with a totally different build of the body.
Coach – Damian – normal man – nothing special – you can see from his body build that he was trained but “not crazy” – not some “packer”.
First of all at the beginning he surprised me with the fact that in the conversation he was based on the concept of physical education (I teach computer science ) and not on mystical energy flows – it was completely unexpected for me and it made me think that it might actually look completely different than I expected.
Training started – it was one of the most unexpected events in my life – First of all, zero mysticism – pure physics – the strength generated by the trainer surprised me completely (and I train rugby and take part in often exhausting rescue and firefighting actions and I think that it is not easy to surprise me).
Proper body positioning, movements – completely incomprehensible to me – allowed me to generate a force to which I could not respond or oppose it in any way.
Additionally, after half an hour I was totally sweaty – and they weren’t !!!
They generated power in a completely different way than I did, they did not get tired so much. It was a shock to me. After a few trainings, I started to transfer elements of this method to my other activities and suddenly it turned out that I can pass the ball over a much longer distance using less force, or lift heavier objects thanks to the appropriate leg positioning.
I am still far from understanding and assimilating at least the basics of this method.
But I am very positively surprised and see great sense in practicing it.