5snake

There are so many similarities here with where we have taken our tai chi chuan...check him out

This Silat Master Is Impossible To KILL Maul Mornie from Silat Suffian Bela Diri reveals self-defense secrets against knife. Filmed by William Ustav. Thanks to Dr. Kacem Zoughari and Seb R...

The inimitable Rory Miller with close up skills that are dear to our 5 Snake hearts...

Structuring Defense Rory Miller Structuring Defense Rory MillerWhat is Structuring Defense?How do you do it?Rory Miller is a renowned author and self defense teacher based on his years work...

Come and join us for close quarter push hands training.
Unlock your tai chi potential and find the joy of martial resilience, adaptability and softness

5Snake close quarter training Be resilient. Be adaptable. Keep playing: this is how we roll...

As mature martial artists, we can learn to play with complexity and intensity, without causing damage.

What could you do with this level of control in your life?

The gang, working on becoming gods of tai chi...

No one really knows what the tai chi chuan of the Founders looked like, or how it operated. So we have to do our own bit of reconstructive archaeology, and produce a "best fit" from the evidence that has been passed down. We might say the same about many Chinese martial arts.

Some useful enquiries:
-How do your pushing hands drills or other martial concepts in your style integrate with the applications from your handform?
-Given the applications that have been passed to you, what kind of martial art is your style: is it a striking, wrestling, infighting or groundfighting art?
-What makes it unique from other arts?
-What does it share with other arts?

I'd love to hear your reflections on these questions.

Let's make kung fu great again!

Check out Rory Miller showing elbow control, something we love to use in our practice

Rory Miller at IMA 2019 Rory plays Elbow Chi Sau with my friend Robert Darger.

From time to time, we will post unedited footage of our training: as our own record, but also (hopefully) as a resource for people to steal/borrow from.

Our intention has always been for folks to try out what we are doing, and then come back to us with questions/criticisms/comments.

So please give it a watch, give it a try, and drop us a line!

Greysteel Tai Chi (session archive no 1) light tai chi sparring no frills, just unedited footage of our specialty: light tai chi sparring

A meaningful approach for a martial artist is to become someone who can train intensely, with all kinds of different people with different skills and abilities, without hurting them.

What do you think?🤔

Check out our takedowns...

TAI CHI TAKE-DOWNS Working in a free and live way, we show some of the take-downs tai chi has to offer

Enjoy our new video...!

tai chi: the worst martial art Why is tai chi so bad? What can be done about it?

New video up: using tai chi against punches, take a look! 👊☯️

USING TAI CHI AGAINST PUNCHES Training to use tai chi to enter against a puncher, with commentary

https://youtu.be/mhBN-VUY750

Using knees in martial tai chi knees can be used with great effect in tai chi: here we drill this in a light and free way

Here's 8 easy steps to make your tai chi martial:

1) Drop the idea of chi, fajin, sung or any other single word, Chinese or otherwise, as being an explanation for the whole art.
2) Take off the gloves. Don't worry, we're still going to be striking (keep your mouth guard in..)
3) Get close. Go on! Closer still: get within a few inches of your partner. This is the range tai chi works at.
4) Watch your long stance: leaning into the clinch is okay for pure wrestlers, but against an opponent who can uppercut and knee, caution must be exercised. Stay fairly upright, but be ready to level change.
5) Try to make your partner fall over, using a combination of takedowns and strikes, including body punches, slaps, locks, sweeps, knee, elbow, and forearm strikes.
6) Make sure you take the head: probably best to leave out punches to head (elbows and slaps work well: at this range jabs are fairly meaningless, hooks might get a look in, but most of your punches now will go to the ribs/solar plexus).
7) Keep in contact, keep the motion continuous, stay relaxed ie don't stiffen. Not because it's more spiritual, but because at this range, stiff people fail (see "Jiujitsu"...)
8) Have fun (this is the hardest one: surely tai chi is all about arguing on facebook?)

Yes yes yes and yes...tai chi is wrestling with strikes!

Kung Fu is 90% Wrestling 5 martial arts YouTubers. 7 self-defense challenges. 1 winner. The Ultimate Self-Defense Championship is officially happening! Learn more about it here: http...

Reeling silk is the jab of tai chi.

In boxing, the jab is the foundation of offence and defence.
In tai chi it is reeling silk, not as some abstract idea, but as a definite movement: the hands circle, one clockwise, one anti-clockwise.

This acts as what I would call a shifting guard, and is the basis for all other techniques.

Some folks have asked why we don't use gloves. The young fellow in this video makes some good points in answer to this question..https://youtu.be/fxO_58iZKbU

Why Your Punches Suck (Bare-Knuckle Fighting) Addressing comments from my last video and telling you why you're probably hurting yourself from throwing bare-knuckle punches, and how to fix it.Bare-Knuckl...