robert w smith vs chen man ching fight

[Syd]

Oh dear, we've hit a nerve... o.k

Strange that because Cheng had obvious fighting skills.

I don't have a problem with Cheng himself, but rather what passes as his system without his overseeing.

A lot of the American Cheng schools, BUT NOT ALL!!!!!, teach the absolute shell of Cheng's Taiji.

So do the one's in Australia...

And if you feel that push hands has nothing to do with fighting then you're not doing your push hands properly.

Push hands is a training application in order for the student to get in touch with many techniques. But if you think out in the street a crazed freak is going to settle down into a sung bow stance and engage you in push hands you've got another thing coming.

Yes there are applications in push hands and yes there is a method to the training. But at the end of the day there are many people who do only push hands and think that this is Taiji as combat! Competition push hands is such an example...

The Cheng Man Ching guys is our locale repeatedly stress push hands as the be all and end all. I'm afraid this is a drop in the ocean of Taiji combat jiben gong.

Push hands has everything to do with fighting.

I guess that makes you a Cheng Man Ching guy then...

I've come home from push hands classes plenty of times with bruises and dead legs.

You'll get more than bruises and dead legs in a street fight my friend...

What on earth do you do in your push hands classes.

We train the technique, as it is supposed to be understood, just that, a technique. It is not a fighting system.

And believing that all combat aspects of Yang Taiji exclusively comes down from Yang Shou Hou's lineage is not just laughable but naive and insulting.

Find for me where I made such a blanket statement as what you have stated above. The fact that you make such a claim is not just laughable and naive, but equally insulting... to yourself. I could care less whether you care to be accurate or not, your kidding yourself and nobody else.

Njoy...

[scholar]

Pushing hands is a vitally important training tool for fighting skills, but it is just training, it isn't fighting. For fighting, actual fighting with people who may be trying to kill you, there has to be a synthesis of in contact and out of contact technique; accurate timing, coordination and positioning on the part of the student (brought about by free-sparring, mostly) that will allow the student to instantly translate pushing hands' principles into an actual empty hand or weapon-oriented conflict.

CMC only studied 7 years with YCF. In practical T'ai Chi Ch'uan terms, that isn't very long at all. CMC had the reputation among Yang Ch'eng-fu's and Wu Chien-ch'uan's senior disciples of having some push hands skills, and at 7 years with a very good teacher one would expect that. But there are trainings that wouldn't be addressed at 7 years into the traditional curriculum because the student wouldn't have the conditioning yet to handle them.

This is what has led to the biggest problem associated with CMC's forms. The famous "T'ai Chi Knee." Every CMC group that I have had experience with (including CMC's personal students whom I have met) has chronic knee problems, whether they care to admit it or not. When CMC shortened his forms (not just in the number of postures, he shortened their reach as well) he put the back leg out of a correct alignment when weight is shifted back onto it, causing chronic, long term damage to the knee joint and to a lesser degree the ankle. This is something which is the cause of great debate at a cyber-remove, but quite easy to demonstrate in person. Suffice to say that the modern Yang family has gone public in saying that CMC's forms are not Yang style, that they have been changed too much to qualify as such.

The next problem is a tendency among some prominent CMC stylists (the Robert Smith, Doug Wile bunch and others) to assert publicly that their study is the end-all of the T'ai Chi tradition, that CMC's modifications are somehow the highest expression of the art of T'ai Chi Ch'uan. I have seen this in print many times, implicitly and explicitly stated, and it always amazes me. As far as I know, there are still many teachers from the Ch'en, Yang and Wu families (with many more than 7 years experience) teaching bang-up T'ai Chi which, coincidentally, doesn't cause chronic health problems.

Rant over...

[Syd]

Here, here....

[backbreaker]

I've never had a problem with my knee doing taijiquan . My cheng man ching style teacher is powerful and so was his teacher who learned push hands from cheng man ching. There also was a yang long form taught by that teacher but I only learned the shorter form. I don't see how the stepping is so different from chen style exept that when you step out with your heel your leg might be too loose noodleish , but when you shift your weight forward from what I remember of cheng style , it's very similar to chen style. How is it so different? Chen protects the center line better I think

[scholar]

Yeah, there is no doubt that CMC had good push hands skills, I've been told so by his contemporaries (I've even been told that personally by the late Ma Yueh-liang).

I'm glad that you haven't experienced any problems. I know too many CMC stylists who have had knee problems to not wonder about it, though.

[Vapour]

I should add to this thread that CMC's Eastern Lineage (mainly from Taiwan) is baishi based.

Secondly, I used to study in one of a school with this Eastern lineage (Taiwan-Singapore-Malaysia) and I have used CMC form to fix my knee which I damaged in Judo. If you fail to relax your hip and back leg, yes, you could misalgine your knee. But getting the correct knee position (avoiding tight rope standing) is one of the first thing I was taught in this school. I found CMC one of the easites one to properly align the knee due to its short stance. But if you get the knee wrong, i could certainly see that CMC will mess up your knee due to its extrem weight distribution rule of 99/1.

[Repulsive Monkey]

Strange though I have actually corrected a long held knee injury through 100% weight in one leg stances.
If the alingment it right then it only serves to strengthen the leg.

[GroungJing]

Very few on this net have been in an actual fight.


Even fewer on this net have been in an actual fight with a skilled opponent trying to rip their head off. Chen Man Jing was in several and all were well documented

Can this be said about his critic's?





I have a friend who is a major Wu disciple and according to him an Older Wu family member who knew him said Chen Man Jing was a very good fighter when he was young. However, by the time he moved to the west, he had given up his fighting ways. Hence, he didn't want to teach fighting anymore. I’m not sure I believe this, I believe he left the martial side in his system, students just have to pursue it like he did when he was young. Yang Chen Fu didn’t like to fight either when he taught Chen Man Jing.

But it’s only a second hand source. I tend to believe it though. In Taiwan, It's known that he was defeated several times by some well-experienced boxers, but he improved greatly after every defeat, until it was very hard to beat him in a fair fight. Around this time few-dared attempt it, those who did lost convincingly. I think this would be the time frame Mr. Smith would have known him and wrote about him in his book. Later, he would give up the martial side saying "It was a contest best played by young tigers" or something to that effect.



Bottom line is.... He had a huge impact on internal arts in two different corners of the world. Pretenders usually don't achieve this; so I believe he was legit and I believe he was a great teacher. He’s been dead for how many years and we are still talking about him.

For the record, I don’t practice Chen Man Jing style

[Unmatchable]

Doesn't William Chen from New York teach the combat side since he learned it from Taiwan for many years? I heard however that his son mostly teaches there now and all the san shou fighters are trained in kickboxing not tai chi to fight.

[GroungJing]

Originally posted by Unmatchable
Doesn't William Chen from New York teach the combat side since he learned it from Taiwan for many years? I heard however that his son mostly teaches there now and all the san shou fighters are trained in kickboxing not tai chi to fight.

I have not heard this. I have mixed opinions about him and TT Lang.

[taijiquan_student]

Why is that?

[GroungJing]

I hear things and see things .....that's all.

No flame war tonight

[jun_erh]

as an early christmas present, could one of you psychos comment on the actual topic?

[cerebus]

Heh, heh. I have read a comment by Cheng Man Ching where he was asked if he thought Shaolin was a good martial art. He said that if he thought that to be the case he would be doing Shaolin instead of Tai Chi. When he let loose on Smith it was only a training situation, not a fight. I seriously doubt he used Shaolin or any other arts. Cheng was a Tai Chi man all the way and his Tai Chi was all he needed. For those wanting to read more about the effectiveness of Cheng's Tai Chi (the art, not Cheng himself) I would recommend the book "Searching For The Way" (I think that's the title) by Nigel Sutton. I know only very little Tai Chi (mainly a Hsing-I & Bagua guy) but I've had it demonstrated on me and was left with NO doubts that it can stand well on it's own. T.

[Repulsive Monkey]

I know it sounds not too nice but if you want to see the legacy of Chengs martail ability I think you need to lok at the lineages that came down through his Taiwanese disciples and not that much of his American students. In this respect I do understand why some people have said here that Cheng didn't seem to need to fight much he was older and therefore didn't show it much. I can assure that his 12 main Taiwanese disciples did learn how to fight with Cheng. All of them probably had a different apititude and some excelled in certain areas more than others (some were known to be better than others), but I think , although I haven't read it, that Nigel Suttons book could testify to this partially if not wholly about his Taiwanese disciples getting their fighting skills from him.

It's true that Cheng's fights were seen by quite a few people and some famous encoutners like the one with the famous White Crane Master who he trounced where no one could see what he did yet repelled him back hitting a wall and knocking him out, was one witnessed by critics from both sides and therefore totally verified.
I think Cheng whilst learning his fighting skills from Yang naturally elvolved to prove Taiji was an excellent martial art but it weas more than that and hence later in life decided to concetrate a particular generation, i.e. his USA years, more on health. Cheng never taught so much information which he had whilst in America, I mean he never taught yang family Spear to any one in America, and he mostly taught people his modified short form, I'm quite sure there are American swho never got his Yang family long form. Another fact is that the Bear Classic Qi-gong which he gave as a parting gift to his 12 Taiwanese disciples was something which I don't think was openly taught to his American schools. Of course I'm not 100% sure about that one but I have it a source from a student of one of Chengs top Taiwanese disciple that that was the case.