What do you think?
Rate this book
Tai Chi Chuan Martial Applications: Advanced Yang Style Tai Chi Chaun
With a wealth of information for novice and advanced students, this book examines the fighting techniques of Tai Chi Chuan, including the martial applications for each movement of the form. The two-person fighting set, Tai Chi fighting tactics, and Tai Chi Pushing Hands training is also included. Unique among Tai Chi books, this volume reveals the martial essence of Tai Chi that most other books ignore. Clearly explained and illustrated, Tai Chi Chuan Martial Applications is a must for those who want to expand their knowledge and add depth and realism to their training.
- GenresMartial ArtsNonfiction
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
31 people are currently reading
89 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 12, 2023
Yang Jwing Ming (YJM) is clearly a proficient martial artist and teacher, but his Yang Taijiquan (TJQ) materials are using the structural framework of some other primary art which is his foundation. He includes many applications of different approaches (pressure point striking, sweeps/takedowns, joint locks) for each basic movement in the TJQ system. These do seem effective in his hands, but they actually do not use the Yang TJQ framework.
For example, there are places where it says to intercept an attack and execute rollback (which is one of 8 basic archetypal movements/energies of Yang TJQ). But YJM is very clearly not using or applying rollback in the example. The photos and the added arrows showing direction of movements only reinforce this fact. At the same time, he is fully straightening and extending his front leg/knee (while remaining lightly weighted in that leg), and double-sinking into his substantial/weighted rear leg with the knee extending past the toes. These aren’t observations that require advanced skills.
Anyway, this sequence concludes by pulling the duifeng off balance directionally to the cardinal directioned side by their arm without connecting and controlling from the structural center. Then he takes a big step in and leg sweeps them down to a face plant in that direction. It’s fine as far as general takedowns go, but clearly not Yang TJQ. Furthermore, the duifeng is attacking in this example and countless others using their right arm while weighting into their right forward leg. Consider that you’d never see a boxer throwing a punch on the right while also weighted in the right forward leg. This is not something plausible unless the system involves extra deep sunken stances like Shaolin, Bajiquan, etc. Such is perfectly fine and is practical within those systems, but again, this is not what Yang TJQ involves. You could say it's irrelevant given it's the attacker/duifeng, but this would be different from how every martial art trains.
There is really just so much stuff here that involves striking and locking or even throwing/sweeping the attacker without connecting to their structural center. That’s fine in other contexts, but, well… Yang TJQ is about listening, sticking/following, yielding off the line of attack of the duifeng to come back through their center on a vulnerable line. Yang TJQ is about striking, locking, or sweeping while controlling the center.
A good example of what I mean here is to look at nearly any video of police using a joint lock on someone: instead of controlling the person’s center of movement and balance, the lock uses brute force on the joint/limb to cause rough damage/pain/submission which makes the person lurch in response, which the police officer will respond to by yanking them around jerkily, aggressively to the ground. For lack of time and with consideration as to what simple techniques are functional enough under stress, actively forced basic arm and wrist locks are what gets taught to officers. YJM’s material here is of this type, though obviously much more refined given this is his field of expertise. Point being he’s locking up the joints and limbs but not doing so for the sake of controlling the person from the center. These are pain submission joint locks as opposed to bodily manipulation joint locks. Subtle but significant difference.
It goes on—YJM explains press and shows it as joint locks in applications that are 1) like before not controlling the duifeng’s bodily center and 2) not press but split. Press is a notable one to look at explanations of, as it’s misunderstood by anyone who isn’t pretty decent at Yang TJQ or who hasn’t at least trained under a real teacher. It’s really as if press is included as a basic movement so that illegitimate teachers of the system will casually reveal themselves! It’s not a "long jing" as he describes, but short, tight, explosive type of jin—one of the only of its kind present in Yang TJQ.
Really, press is not something used to lock or manipulate joints, but a sudden sharp, compressed, explosive strike which comes together in a parabola-like crossover of transitioning arcs of ward-off (peng) energy transferring activeness from one arm to the other. To implement, there must be a continuous listening/adhering sensitivity which involves sticking/following to the duifeng and their root, and should their movement be felt to retreat or change direction as you are following with ward-off energy with a substantial arm, you then can naturally and quickly effect an explosive press suddenly to meet their shift in direction—which you then if necessary smoothly follow with ward-off energy with the other arm or else another type of energy which is appropriate.
I suppose it’s just really curious the way he describes basic movements/energies in terms that have nothing to do with the Taijiquan classics or the way the Yang family historically described them and never seems to quote from previous materials on them either:
“Downward push jing is a kind of sinking jing that is often used to strike the stomach area to seal the breath. To seal the opponent’s breath, you can grasp the opponent’s throat to stop him from taking air into his lung, or you can strike an area that will cause his lungs to contract and he will be unable to take in any air. The first kind of sealing the breath is obvious and clear; therefore, we will not discuss it further here. When the second kind of sealing the breath is used, you must make the muscles around the lungs contract in order to compress the lungs. There are muscles on the outside of the ribs, but striking these muscles will only cause pain and perhaps some internal bruising—it will not cause the lung to constrict. To seal the breath, you must make the muscles inside the rib cage contract. To make the muscles contract, you need to know the spots where certain nerve endings or qi channels that are connected to the internal muscles are exposed outside of the ribs.”
Again, this sounds like either another system trying to make up explanations of Taijiquan or just his own idiosyncratic methods that are also not TJQ. While technically you could say push is a striking energy, fist/palm strikes are usually implemented as portions of the basic moves/energies of ward-off, split, or roll-back. Split is especially central to understanding how striking energy goes from push hands to free hands sparring; split involving the two arms/hands moving in different directions. Push tends to be used in short and long variations of jin in most applications in order to destabilize or overwhelm the balance and structure of the duifeng (if you wanna see great demonstration of how push works in sparring within TJQ, look up some Yiquan videos of the Yao brothers teaching/demoing sparring!).
Maybe part of the issue here is there honestly are barely any books by high level Yang TJQ martial artists demonstrating the skills properly. This is still a problem: look on Youtube at teacher videos on the basic movements and so many are clearly not really neijia martial artists (or martial artists at all) and cannot actually do moves like press at all. Really, some of these folks are making a living as Chen/Yang TJQ, Xingyiquan, Baguazhang, etc. teachers and are this incapable or dishonest (and this doesn’t even include the countless people out there who have some paid certificate from a Tai Chi program and are teaching either nothing or total new age weirdo snake oil nonsense).
There also are these lines of people doing supposedly Yang style Taijiquan which are very clearly from teachers who went to other arts to get their martial foundation, abandoning the actual Yang system’s principles and framework. Basically there are some lines of people doing Yang TJQ which is more like Chen TJQ movement/foundation in Yang TJQ’s skin, or in other cases it’s not even a TJQ foundation. If you wanted to see a bunch of variations of how a non-neijia stylist or any normal martial artist could do stuff from the postures of Yang forms, this book would be ok if it presented itself in such a way. And I actually find it interesting for the material even though it’s not actually Yang TJQ. But it says it is, and I think it’s questionable to be claiming as such over multiple editions across 30-40 years or whatever of publishing.
For example, there are places where it says to intercept an attack and execute rollback (which is one of 8 basic archetypal movements/energies of Yang TJQ). But YJM is very clearly not using or applying rollback in the example. The photos and the added arrows showing direction of movements only reinforce this fact. At the same time, he is fully straightening and extending his front leg/knee (while remaining lightly weighted in that leg), and double-sinking into his substantial/weighted rear leg with the knee extending past the toes. These aren’t observations that require advanced skills.
Anyway, this sequence concludes by pulling the duifeng off balance directionally to the cardinal directioned side by their arm without connecting and controlling from the structural center. Then he takes a big step in and leg sweeps them down to a face plant in that direction. It’s fine as far as general takedowns go, but clearly not Yang TJQ. Furthermore, the duifeng is attacking in this example and countless others using their right arm while weighting into their right forward leg. Consider that you’d never see a boxer throwing a punch on the right while also weighted in the right forward leg. This is not something plausible unless the system involves extra deep sunken stances like Shaolin, Bajiquan, etc. Such is perfectly fine and is practical within those systems, but again, this is not what Yang TJQ involves. You could say it's irrelevant given it's the attacker/duifeng, but this would be different from how every martial art trains.
There is really just so much stuff here that involves striking and locking or even throwing/sweeping the attacker without connecting to their structural center. That’s fine in other contexts, but, well… Yang TJQ is about listening, sticking/following, yielding off the line of attack of the duifeng to come back through their center on a vulnerable line. Yang TJQ is about striking, locking, or sweeping while controlling the center.
A good example of what I mean here is to look at nearly any video of police using a joint lock on someone: instead of controlling the person’s center of movement and balance, the lock uses brute force on the joint/limb to cause rough damage/pain/submission which makes the person lurch in response, which the police officer will respond to by yanking them around jerkily, aggressively to the ground. For lack of time and with consideration as to what simple techniques are functional enough under stress, actively forced basic arm and wrist locks are what gets taught to officers. YJM’s material here is of this type, though obviously much more refined given this is his field of expertise. Point being he’s locking up the joints and limbs but not doing so for the sake of controlling the person from the center. These are pain submission joint locks as opposed to bodily manipulation joint locks. Subtle but significant difference.
It goes on—YJM explains press and shows it as joint locks in applications that are 1) like before not controlling the duifeng’s bodily center and 2) not press but split. Press is a notable one to look at explanations of, as it’s misunderstood by anyone who isn’t pretty decent at Yang TJQ or who hasn’t at least trained under a real teacher. It’s really as if press is included as a basic movement so that illegitimate teachers of the system will casually reveal themselves! It’s not a "long jing" as he describes, but short, tight, explosive type of jin—one of the only of its kind present in Yang TJQ.
Really, press is not something used to lock or manipulate joints, but a sudden sharp, compressed, explosive strike which comes together in a parabola-like crossover of transitioning arcs of ward-off (peng) energy transferring activeness from one arm to the other. To implement, there must be a continuous listening/adhering sensitivity which involves sticking/following to the duifeng and their root, and should their movement be felt to retreat or change direction as you are following with ward-off energy with a substantial arm, you then can naturally and quickly effect an explosive press suddenly to meet their shift in direction—which you then if necessary smoothly follow with ward-off energy with the other arm or else another type of energy which is appropriate.
I suppose it’s just really curious the way he describes basic movements/energies in terms that have nothing to do with the Taijiquan classics or the way the Yang family historically described them and never seems to quote from previous materials on them either:
“Downward push jing is a kind of sinking jing that is often used to strike the stomach area to seal the breath. To seal the opponent’s breath, you can grasp the opponent’s throat to stop him from taking air into his lung, or you can strike an area that will cause his lungs to contract and he will be unable to take in any air. The first kind of sealing the breath is obvious and clear; therefore, we will not discuss it further here. When the second kind of sealing the breath is used, you must make the muscles around the lungs contract in order to compress the lungs. There are muscles on the outside of the ribs, but striking these muscles will only cause pain and perhaps some internal bruising—it will not cause the lung to constrict. To seal the breath, you must make the muscles inside the rib cage contract. To make the muscles contract, you need to know the spots where certain nerve endings or qi channels that are connected to the internal muscles are exposed outside of the ribs.”
Again, this sounds like either another system trying to make up explanations of Taijiquan or just his own idiosyncratic methods that are also not TJQ. While technically you could say push is a striking energy, fist/palm strikes are usually implemented as portions of the basic moves/energies of ward-off, split, or roll-back. Split is especially central to understanding how striking energy goes from push hands to free hands sparring; split involving the two arms/hands moving in different directions. Push tends to be used in short and long variations of jin in most applications in order to destabilize or overwhelm the balance and structure of the duifeng (if you wanna see great demonstration of how push works in sparring within TJQ, look up some Yiquan videos of the Yao brothers teaching/demoing sparring!).
Maybe part of the issue here is there honestly are barely any books by high level Yang TJQ martial artists demonstrating the skills properly. This is still a problem: look on Youtube at teacher videos on the basic movements and so many are clearly not really neijia martial artists (or martial artists at all) and cannot actually do moves like press at all. Really, some of these folks are making a living as Chen/Yang TJQ, Xingyiquan, Baguazhang, etc. teachers and are this incapable or dishonest (and this doesn’t even include the countless people out there who have some paid certificate from a Tai Chi program and are teaching either nothing or total new age weirdo snake oil nonsense).
There also are these lines of people doing supposedly Yang style Taijiquan which are very clearly from teachers who went to other arts to get their martial foundation, abandoning the actual Yang system’s principles and framework. Basically there are some lines of people doing Yang TJQ which is more like Chen TJQ movement/foundation in Yang TJQ’s skin, or in other cases it’s not even a TJQ foundation. If you wanted to see a bunch of variations of how a non-neijia stylist or any normal martial artist could do stuff from the postures of Yang forms, this book would be ok if it presented itself in such a way. And I actually find it interesting for the material even though it’s not actually Yang TJQ. But it says it is, and I think it’s questionable to be claiming as such over multiple editions across 30-40 years or whatever of publishing.
March 6, 2017
This spectacular book answers the question "How do I really use Tai Chi as it was originally intended?" Most teachers will not share, or just do not know, how to truly use Tai Chi as a martial art. Dr. Yang gives you applications for each movement, AND inspires you to study and develop proper applications of your own. Amazing. If you like this, you may also be interested in Tai Chi Chin Na: The Seizing Art of Tai Chi Chuan by Yang Jwing-Ming.
November 7, 2016
This book is organized into three sections: Martial applications of the Yang-style form, Push-hands training, and demonstration and explanation of the two-person Taiji fighting set.
The Yang-style application portion breaks down each Taiji technique from the form into the end game of downing the opponent (tripping, throwing, or knocking off balance), using Qin Na (grips or locks on bone or muscle), or attacking with a cavity strike (punches, kicks, or strikes to sensitive areas). This section is the one I think would be most helpful for beginners. It enables you to picture the fighting application of each part of the form as you learn it. This makes it easier to understand the reasoning behind your practice.
Taiji pushing hands training features a brief introduction to wooden ball training to develop your touch or “listening” to an opponent, an essential skill as you train in the two-person sticking, coiling, neutralizing, and leading drills. This section ends with a look at silk-reeling, Bagua circle walking, and martial applications of pushing hands similar to those in the previous portion of the book.
The Taiji Fighting Set is a traditional two-person give and take choreographed form that teaches you how to modify your attacks and defense in reaction to those of your opponent. When you plan on a certain move, how do you change it up when your opponent doesn’t “co-operate?” There is enough material in this section alone that will provide years of learning.
The final chapter of the book on Taijiquan fighting strategy might be my favorite. There is some “real world” practical advice here and those of you familiar with Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do theory may find some common ground.
Tai Chi Chuan Martial Applications is a practical training guide for both beginners and advanced students.
I was given a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
The Yang-style application portion breaks down each Taiji technique from the form into the end game of downing the opponent (tripping, throwing, or knocking off balance), using Qin Na (grips or locks on bone or muscle), or attacking with a cavity strike (punches, kicks, or strikes to sensitive areas). This section is the one I think would be most helpful for beginners. It enables you to picture the fighting application of each part of the form as you learn it. This makes it easier to understand the reasoning behind your practice.
Taiji pushing hands training features a brief introduction to wooden ball training to develop your touch or “listening” to an opponent, an essential skill as you train in the two-person sticking, coiling, neutralizing, and leading drills. This section ends with a look at silk-reeling, Bagua circle walking, and martial applications of pushing hands similar to those in the previous portion of the book.
The Taiji Fighting Set is a traditional two-person give and take choreographed form that teaches you how to modify your attacks and defense in reaction to those of your opponent. When you plan on a certain move, how do you change it up when your opponent doesn’t “co-operate?” There is enough material in this section alone that will provide years of learning.
The final chapter of the book on Taijiquan fighting strategy might be my favorite. There is some “real world” practical advice here and those of you familiar with Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do theory may find some common ground.
Tai Chi Chuan Martial Applications is a practical training guide for both beginners and advanced students.
I was given a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
November 13, 2016
As Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming says, "Martial applications found within tai chi chuan are a direct link to y0ur tai chi as a form of self-defense." The book covers many applications that will improve the martial side of tai chi. I like the way he covers tai chi pushing hands and explains how and why this form portrays the martial side of tai chi. But there are many other forms to help you no matter what style of tai chi you have learned. This book is a keeper. I look forward to other books and DVDs by Dr. Yang.
October 29, 2016
Each posture is broken down and multiple martial applications are outlined including striking, qin na and downing an opponent. Easy to follow descriptions and photos allow for better understanding of the techniques. Also details pushing hands and provides a great introduction into taiji ball training. This is the definitive work on the topic.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews