In one of the books I have on Chinese martial arts, there is a section called “Pugilists’ proverbs” which includes one of my favourites:
“A thousand repetitions makes the skill natural”
At one of his ‘competition’ seminars, Dan gave the example of the British Wushu team, who would run through a 5 minute form twenty times in their training on a regular basis. And those are just perfidious albionese – you can imagine what they get up to out East.
In Wudang style Tai Chi Chuan, there are three weapons forms and three hand forms. End to end, doing them all takes about 45 minutes, one time. I like to run through each form three times (of which one or two is mirror image). That’s enough to get the feel of the form and then work on some corrections, deepening the postures, and so on. Sometimes when I’m training for competition I’ll do 2x3 or 3x3 (generally on weekends!). And, frankly, this is not enough. Ideally I would want to spend around two hours on forms every day. And that’s just forms. We then need a good hour for (basic level) nei gong and a good hour for jiben gong (counting in the minimum syndical of twenty minutes punching weights). So that makes around 4 hours of solo training. You then jump in the train to go off and see your training partners for tui shou and san shou, and maybe you’ll make it to class later on to learn some more stuff, or possibly teach.
As we all know, less is more. I’m constantly trying to get students to understand this and they always want to know more and more and more. With most of them at work and play as well as studying the noble art of Tai Chi Chuan, how can they expect to be any good? If Jean is unemployed and so can practice three hours a day, why should Jeanette be upset that he has learnt more exercises then she has (Jeanette has a full-time job, children and at least two other major hobbies).
There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week and (normally) 365 days in a year. No more.
There’s a story that I’ve heard in at least three guises. Take a large bowl and fill it up with large stones until you can’t put any more in. Is it full? No – take some sand and pour that in until the bowl is full of stones and sand. Is it full? Still no – take some water and you can pour it in. The moral of the story: even after a large steak and some crisps down the pub, there’s always room for another beer. An alternative moral, more apt in this context: put the big things in your life in place first, because there will always be room for the smaller things.
My teacher has made the observation that most people want to do Tai Chi, not to be good at it. If you want to be good at Tai Chi Chuan, then you have to practice, practice, practice. As with the analogy of the stream blocked by a boulder, as time goes on the water eventually wears down the rock. With time, with practice, “the jin is like one hundred times refined steel”. How good you want to be at the art depends on how big a place you’re prepared to make for it in your life. Most of us are not able to do Tai Chi full-time, so be content with a little, but do it a lot. Maybe the stone will grow.
“A thousand repetitions makes the skill natural”
At one of his ‘competition’ seminars, Dan gave the example of the British Wushu team, who would run through a 5 minute form twenty times in their training on a regular basis. And those are just perfidious albionese – you can imagine what they get up to out East.
In Wudang style Tai Chi Chuan, there are three weapons forms and three hand forms. End to end, doing them all takes about 45 minutes, one time. I like to run through each form three times (of which one or two is mirror image). That’s enough to get the feel of the form and then work on some corrections, deepening the postures, and so on. Sometimes when I’m training for competition I’ll do 2x3 or 3x3 (generally on weekends!). And, frankly, this is not enough. Ideally I would want to spend around two hours on forms every day. And that’s just forms. We then need a good hour for (basic level) nei gong and a good hour for jiben gong (counting in the minimum syndical of twenty minutes punching weights). So that makes around 4 hours of solo training. You then jump in the train to go off and see your training partners for tui shou and san shou, and maybe you’ll make it to class later on to learn some more stuff, or possibly teach.
As we all know, less is more. I’m constantly trying to get students to understand this and they always want to know more and more and more. With most of them at work and play as well as studying the noble art of Tai Chi Chuan, how can they expect to be any good? If Jean is unemployed and so can practice three hours a day, why should Jeanette be upset that he has learnt more exercises then she has (Jeanette has a full-time job, children and at least two other major hobbies).
There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week and (normally) 365 days in a year. No more.
There’s a story that I’ve heard in at least three guises. Take a large bowl and fill it up with large stones until you can’t put any more in. Is it full? No – take some sand and pour that in until the bowl is full of stones and sand. Is it full? Still no – take some water and you can pour it in. The moral of the story: even after a large steak and some crisps down the pub, there’s always room for another beer. An alternative moral, more apt in this context: put the big things in your life in place first, because there will always be room for the smaller things.
My teacher has made the observation that most people want to do Tai Chi, not to be good at it. If you want to be good at Tai Chi Chuan, then you have to practice, practice, practice. As with the analogy of the stream blocked by a boulder, as time goes on the water eventually wears down the rock. With time, with practice, “the jin is like one hundred times refined steel”. How good you want to be at the art depends on how big a place you’re prepared to make for it in your life. Most of us are not able to do Tai Chi full-time, so be content with a little, but do it a lot. Maybe the stone will grow.
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