Author Archive
Extreme Boxing Immersion
Every month I put on a mini-workshop to immerse practitioners in Tai Chi Chuan concepts. Immersion allows more time to study peculiar and specific aspects of this Supreme Art. I attempt to move from yin to yang, healing concepts with slow, qigong work to intense, explosive practices with combat ideas. Both are potent pieces.
The best immersion includes both combat and healing, and then emphasizes one or the other. It’s difficult, at least, to achieve real fa-jing, explosive energies without sinking and relaxing enough to generate whip-like actions and ease. Likewise, healing and health benefits are impotent without visceral stimulation and mind-shift states achieved in the shake of combative applications or inside the mind of an awakened-state animal. Each workshop includes both combat and healing work, and, month after month the focus rotates from fight to heal, one after another.
The November workshop was by invitation only. We covered the 4 of 12 Devastating Mother Applications from the Short San Sau. We worked out numbers 4, 5, 6, and 8 as follows
- Squeeze (Ji or Chee) then Elbow, Punch, Angled Elbow
- Press (An) Punches Throat into Vibrating Punch, Neck Clap and Head Smack
- Press (An) Tiger Punches Throat, Wrist Snaps Head Back, Palm Slams Collar, Jerk into Elbow
- Jerks the Arms to Headbutt, Pressing (An) below Collars, Swipe the Neck, and Beak Punches
Read Short Fight Form and Mother Applications »
What Is Great Extremes Boxing?
According to the great Wikipedia.org, Taijiquan
literally translates as supreme ultimate fist, boundless fist, or great extremes boxing….
Great. Let’s Taijquan like that.
Don’t bother with sloppy pushing-hands or pathetic, big and round, backward-stepping applications. It’s important to train in a martial art, that, right from the beginning, gives you immediate self-defense benefits. Right from the beginning folks….right away, right now….not in twenty years. Many Yang Tai Chi Stylists that I know in Salt Lake City (except me and folks who work with me) give you something unrelated to that literal translation.
Many proclaim health benefits or healing or pretend self-defense. Often, they’ll lace their proclamation with in twenty years (or more). Don’t do that. Please. Even if it might be true: are you willing to bet 20 years of your life on it? And—if you suspect, even just a little, that it’s not true, then how much convincing talk-talk-talk does the instructor do to convince his students? Salt Lake City is riddled with these teachers. But I digress. I repeat this topic because I remain pissed that there are so many people who do this crap. I’m tempted to give you a list of instructors who do this. But not here. Ask me later.
I tend to write hysterically about the needs for self-defense but, in real life, I tend to be realistic. To be realistic, I temper training to produce results, not fear-reactivity and to produce toughness, not weakness. That’s also a topic for ask-me-later.
Here, I want to show you why, not what. I offer some reasons, even if outlandish, that you should do a martial art—real, hardy, ass-kicking, head-slamming martial art, like Great Extremes Boxing. But I don’t care what kind; I want you to own the capacity to defend yourself, or me and my family, if I need your help. It must be a grisly, terrifying, vicious, and violent martial art. Avoid Tai Chi, unless you do it with me or other qualified Great Extremes Boxing instructors.
Why I Want Great Extreme Boxing Skills—Top Three Reasons
The following 3 reasons are hysterical and outlandish, but interesting, reasons to learn Real, Live, Great Extremes Boxing. Though wild and over-the-top, if the reasons resemble or suggest the truth, then…well…you be the judge.
Read Three Reasons You Need Self-Defense Right Now »
Autumn Applications of the Tai Chi Broadsword Form
Halloween marks the beginning of the darkness. Split between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Soltice, this famous and fantastic Holiday widens eyes with ecstatic treats and tricky terrors.
Halloween dons dark disguises:
- All Hallow’s Eve
- All Saints’ Day
- All Souls’ Day
- Day of the Dead
- Feast of All Souls
- Hallowmas
- Samhain
Whatever Halloween wears, we know it chops off the harvest season, cutting the waning light with looming dark. It plunges excitement into hearts of candy-loving children, and it slashes images of razor-bladed apples into the minds of parents. Halloween wears a dark shroud, wields a dark scythe.
Time For Big-Knife Form!
With the dead rising from graves, skeletons clanking from closets, and zombies clawing for brains, you better know your stuff. So we’ll study, in-depth, the beginning movements from the Chang Yiu Chung Big-Knife (Broadsword) Form. The first three movements teach us deep relaxation, soft motions, and carrying the weight of a Big Knife. In the next three, we get to—cross-cut, stab, and split! Hack apart Tai Chi Principles using the Big-Knife Broadsword Form and Pumpkin Victims.
Read Pumpkin Plunging with Tai Chi Big Knife »
We continue working on Fa-Jing Taiji Stick on Wednesday nights. Through the weeks, we learn and practice
- Short Preliminary Stick Forms
- Long Fa-jing Stick Form
- Dual Person Fighting Stick Form
- Plenty of Dual Drills and Training Devices
The Taiji Fa-Jing Stick Fighting Methods of the WTBA empower our group of Stick Fighters. All told, it goes very well. Stick Training is naturally potent and fun. Students of the Stick quickly gather the inner Taiji attitude—escpecially the principle of—when attacked, attack first!
Not an easy self-defense principle to get, especially in slow-moving forms, when attacked—Attack First! Principle is the most important internal arts training concept. It’s a kin to the energetic concept of Peng: to ward off by lifting upwards. The Attack First Principle quite literally allows for a Warding-Off by beating the attacker to the punch, which (naturally) disrupts the attack’s force.
