johnwang wrote:You don't need to generate power for health. You do need to generate power to knock your opponent down.
This discussion seems to have migrated to one of "power" generation.
I think it worth noting that Taijiquan has two sides to its practice. One side is "hard", the other "soft". Some practitioners focus on one, others focus on the other and some focus on developing skills at both.
As a general strategy, Taijiquan isn't, traditionally, about whacking a stable opponent with so much force that the opponent is incapacitated. Instead, it is about first unbalancing the opponent, preventing him from attacking you further, and then using as much or as little force as one wishes to deal with the off-balance opponent. For example, using little force allows the off-balanced opponent to fall to the ground: using a lot of force throws the off-balanced opponent to the ground, potentially inflicting greater harm to the opponent.
I've met quite a few Taijiquan practitioners over the last three decades of practice. Of those, in my opinion, the most skilled was a yang stylist who was a disciple of Dong (Tung) Yingjie. His skills were such that as soon as one made contact with him, one had no control over one's own body or balance. One could not hit him, kick him, pull him or push him: the best one could do was try to remain standing. If one tried to push or pull him, one felt the contact of one's skin on his, but nothing more. It was like pushing or pulling air: he simply wasn't there. I saw him repeatedly do the same thing to all-challengers from a variety of styles of martial art. He argued that if one could completely control an opponent, why would one bother hitting the opponent. He could completely control an opponent. He regarded fa jin/fa li as low-level brute-force skill. He was very clear that subsequent generations of Dong practitioners did not have the skills of Dong senior - that is, simply studying with a Dong family member isn't going to get one to the skills of Dong senior.
The closest I have found to those skills is within the Hong branch of Chen Taijiquan. My experience with Hong's Practical Method is that it tends to be more a combination of both sets of skills, hard and soft.
I agree with others in this discussion that chasing styles - Yang or Chen or others - is irrelevant. My focus has been to chase skills: finding people who exhibit skills I want to develop and studying with them. I'm not particularly concerned with their style or lineage, per se. Studying with a lineage holder is, in my experience, necessary but not sufficient. It depends on the skills/abilities of the individual teacher more than who he studied with.
Hong, for example, did not practice weapons, spear or long pole. As I understand it, those practices weren't related to, or required for the skills he developed. For other practitioners some of those things are important training methods. Depends, in part, on what kinds of skills and abilities you want to develop. If the use of "power" is important to your method/strategy, then "power"/"strength" training is important - long pole shaking, for example. If it isn't, they aren't.
