Tai Chi as a Martial Art (2024)

Tai chi was developed as a martial art. It’s full title is tai chi chuan (or taijiquan) and the final word literally means fist and signifies that it is a fighting art. Does your class teach the martial aspects of tai chi? Most don’t these days but that is a shame as you could be missing out on so much.

Training the martial side of tai chi (tai chi chuan) has so many benefits.

• You learn to remain calm under pressure
• When under attack you train to relax, to keep your weight dropped down and to move from your legs
• You train the ability to use a full breath and to keep a clear mind
• Your postures are constantly pressure tested to ensure you are holding the minimum tension yet do not collapse anywhere
• You learn to constantly adapt your movements to suit the environment and the person in front of you

These skills are vital to survive the constant stresses of modern life. Tai chi as a purely health art does teach them but they are heightened when you learn tai chi as a martial art.

Through combat training you learn to become decisive and assertive in your movement skills. Assertiveness means you are neither aggressive nor passive. When you are under pressure do you fold and do what you are told or do you push back, get angry and lose control? Either way will leave you out of control. Learn to root your body and maintain control.

The martial skills of tai chi give you great confidence in your self and your abilities.

Through regular practice you know who you are and what you can do and this comes across to others. You cannot be easily browbeaten and you remain calm and in control. This gives you great personal power.

As I tell my students perhaps the most important thing that you can learn through good martial training is the ability to adapt to ever-changing circ*mstances. Life is constantly changing at an ever-increasing tempo. Those who are unable to change with it suffer while those who can trim their sails to a changing wind thrive.

In combat you have no idea how your opponent is going to react to whatever you do so you must constantly adapt to his or her movements. If you don’t adapt fast enough you get hurt. You quickly learn how to read his or her movements and what to do to keep yourself protected while you look for an opening. Adaptability and I would say unpredictability are the keys to success.

Tai chi was originally developed by men who had spent many generations accumulating and developing effective martial skills. They kept those skills but thorugh the principles of tai chi they developed different methods for generating power. The overall aim was always to gain maximum power with absolute minimum of effort.

Conservation of effort or energy is very important in real combat. If your family or village was under attack it is unlikely you would be facing just one attacker but a multitude of them. To waste all your strength and energy on the first attacker would leave you vulnerable to those that followed.

Abilities and principles that enabled you to defeat one attacker easily and effortlessly so that you could move on quickly to the next would be highly sought after. This is largely where tai chi’s endless quest for conservation of energy comes from.

Although the majority of classes no longer teach the martial aspects of tai chi that doesn’t mean they aren’t still there, hidden within the forms just waiting to be released.

What sets tai chi and the other internal martial arts apart from other combat arts around the world is the way that they use power. Most people when they think of physical power think of large muscles.

It is often believed, quite wrongly that the person with the biggest muscles will win the fight.

This is why so many guys head to the gym and pump iron. Even if they can’t fight at least they look and feel strong and this gives them confidence. But big muscles do not necessarily confer fighting skill. Fighting skill comes from learning the tactics and movements of fighting.

The real power of tai chi and other good kung fu styles comes from a relaxed but connected frame. You do not learn to hit a golf ball further by going to the gym and working out. Yet the vast majority of people believe that working out in a gym will give you an edge in combat. It may well help against another untrained person but not against someone with genuine fighting skill.

Having said that many tai chi practitioners are of the opinion that they shouldn’t do any physical exercise to strengthen their muscles as this will lead to tension which will get in the way of the flow of energy. However, they are forgetting a crucial point.

Tai chi, like all other martial arts was developed during a time when everybody was active all day long. People worked in the fields or created artisan products by hand. There were precious few labour saving devices so people were on their feet, squatting down or bending over all day long. In our modern era most people spend at least 90% of their day sitting on chairs. This is disastrous for our musculoskeletal system. It leads to severe weakness in the legs and back and chronic tightness in the hips, front of the torso, neck and shoulders. In other words we are severely out of balance.

It is important for everyone and particularly martial artists to understand how their body has become out of balance and to take regular steps to return it to a state of relaxed equilibrium. The tai chi forms are very good for strengthening the legs and dropping tension out of the upper body but they don’t do enough to tense and stretch many of the muscles we need. I recommend some additional body-weight exercises to train the body as well.

There is another reason why I recommend some physical training at least to start with. As anyone who has done any proper sparring will know that in combat there are two types of force but tai chi only trains one of them. The one we train is definitely the best kind but it is not always easily applicable. The two kinds are connected (weighted) power such as we use and disconnected (muscular) power such as is used by boxers and most other martial artists. These could also be called internal vs external power.

Connected (internal) power is by far the best kind in combat as long as you are able to stay relaxed.

With connected power you are able to absorb or redirect your assailant’s attacks and stay balanced and calm of mind. However, there is a problem with using connected power if you were under attack for real and that is why I recommend you also develop some unconnected power.

The problem is that using connected power means that you must relax, slow down and remain relaxed down and that you are able to move your entire body as one unit. This is very difficult to do quickly without many years of practice. It is even more difficult to do when you are under the extreme stress of facing a serious attack.

In tai chi you learn to bend your knees, feel the ground beneath your feet and sink your weight downwards. You learn to breathe into the abdomen which connects your upper and lower bodies, so you stay relaxed and have enough energy to move easily. If you can do this while under duress you will be able to remain calm and think clearly. Your body is controlled and relaxed so that you can move decisively in any direction. Any attack coming at you can be met by a strong, yet relaxed structure and easily deflected away. But, as I said this takes a long time to develop to the point where you can remain relaxed down and connected while under attack.

It is very difficult to remain connected when moving quickly.

This is the main reason why tai chi is performed so slowly. As soon as you try to speed your movements up you may notice that some parts of your body rush ahead of others. This may not be easy to feel but your teacher will be able to spot it and if you were practicing your movements against a partner they would feel that you no longer had any real, connected power.

Clearly in combat you have to be able to move quickly which will mean that you must disconnect your body to do so. If you lack any real muscle tone then you won’t have much to fight with and your tai chi skills will be of little use to you. With some tone in your muscles you can move quickly enough to block the first attack and lead your opponent into a position he wasn’t expecting. Then you can slow down, relax and reconnect your body. You will have time to do this as you will have disturbed his rhythm and he will need processing time to figure out what to do next. Stay connected with yourself and with your opponent and keep him moving. There is a real art to sparring like this and push hands will take you part of the way to it.

So if you are seeking a more well rounded art try to find a tai chi school that fully understands the principles of efficient movement and who can demonstrably use them in combat. There are not many around but if you can find a teacher who can offer you that he or she is worth their weight in gold.