One common question I always get especially from people who are not familiar with tai chi chuan is how can tai chi be effective in combat when it moves so slowly. I am not surprised because once I asked the same question too. This perception comes about because we often see people performing tai chi chuan very slowly. We hardly see people who do tai chi chuan in fast pace. In fact in olden days students begin tai chi chuan with slow and expended movements to build kung fu and once they have mastered it, they will gradually increase the speed and contract the form.
In traditional yang style tai chi chuan, students start with a 20 minutes form and work their way up to 45-60 minutes. To do this, they have to consciously slow down the movement considerably. A very slow form builds physical strength, calm the mind and excites the chi. Once they are very strong with the slow form, they will speed it up from 45 min to least than 10 min. This is to tell in olden days, they did practice tai chi fast form for martial art purposes.
Having shared the above, it doesn’t mean a tai chi expert who only did slow form cannot move fast. Because tai chi chuan advocates relaxation and letting go of all stiffness and tensions, a good tai chi player can react in blinding speed. Tai chi experts can punch as fast as wing chun experts if not faster. However, this doesn’t mean tai chi people can have the false sense of confident that they can punch very fast and without much practice. Though tai chi chuan requirement of been soft and loose provided the device for great speed, we still need to practice punching, striking, moving fast to truly master it.
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