wayne hansen wrote:What leads you to think Adam is able to do that
What groups have you met that train the way you are talking about
Lots of exchanges. Some that stand out for me:
- Family lineage of Sun style in china. The father & the top students came along. They did forms fast & slow, they drilled singular moves & push hands was trained with sensitivity & with real attempts to wrestle & control.
- My sifu with his wu hao, shuiajiow, xylh & many others. His qinna was excellent & I am suspect a big part of the skill came from ji jing shan.
- Shanghai - Yang Style lineage - he was a push hands champion. I got to spend a few days there while he looked after me & introduced me to some local sifu's. He did forms, techniques & we did push hands. He was great.
- Another in Shanghai mixed lineage of sanda, wu & yang style, shuiajow & xylh - he had some great fight in him
- I've also sparred in many open meetings with a different guys who had a mixed background that included taichi. Two come to mind that could hold their own. Exchanges happened. They were good. Not enough for me to say I was missing something & needed to follow up with them but they were good.
And then there's the many others I've met that I would rather forget. I've visited many schools & in this category they fell into 3 groups:
1. Tai chi only being learnt as chi gung. Perhaps the sifu was great at some point but they are not teaching students martial arts.
2. Tai chi guy who is not bad but not great. They at least are happy to give it a shot but there is no point in pushing it too far.
3. Tai chi guy who looks at me & you know there is no way they will openly exchange. I'm not interested in listening to stories about how great they are from starry eyed students & wasting a decade trying to convince myself that the qi will flow.
My biggest thing with Tai chi is that it is like a needle in the haystack. Frankly I never found anyone locally who was teaching it from a fighting perspective & could deliver on the promises. Even my sifu who had the goods simply said - do xylh (& then later mixed other stuff in).
If you have any recommendations then please PM me & happy to meet up with anyone to exchange.