This from an interview with Luke Shepherd, a tai chi teacher, on the Tai Chi Union For Great Britain website:

http://www.taichiunion.com/meet/lukeshepard.php

What are your views on competition?






"Did you say contemplation or competition? Theoretically, competition could be valuable to test one’s level, if seeking to ascertain if internal practice is truly taking place. Unfortunately, all competitions are judged by external methods i.e. the first to step outside the lines. This may be achieved with either exquisite internal skill or with brute force with no differentiation being made in the points scored. When I see a school has won competitions, I am rarely impressed, as I have no way of knowing if subtle jins are being trained and refined or if the competitors are relying on well co-ordinated contraction and timing to off balance their partner.


I hear of people winning medals after 5-7 years training. Unless they are exceptionally gifted it must be obvious that with this limited training they are using external strength and contracting forces to overpower their opponents. Is this what the classics ask us to train?


To develop stretched elastic forces takes many years of internal mind and body training. To be able to co-ordinate these internal changes (without reverting back to external contracting ie muscular habits) with the timing of one’s partner takes many more years. To empty one’s mind of any idea of pushing and to allow the partner’s force to passively stretch the body takes further training and faith in the deepening process. Will we gain deeper understanding through encouraging the winning of medals – whatever force is used to obtain them?"



First of all, let me make it clear that Mr Shepherd has some twenty years experience over me, and that I have no wish to question his skill, or his commitment to good tai chi chuan.

But I have to take strong exception to many of the points raised above.

 To suggest that “physical” accomplishment can somehow be trumped by something vague and insubstantial is wrong. These words "internal" and "external" make real problems, because they create the illusion that there are somehow two "worlds" in which we practise. The first is the seemingly distasteful, crude and amateurish "physical" world of "well co-ordinated contraction and timing", basically muscles, bones, sinews, leverage, range, timing and intent. Then there's the other world of subtlety, refinement, exquisite skill, and...what exactly? This thinking demonstrates a real Cartesian duality which ill reflects reality. This kind of thinking leads people to tai chi thinking that there is some kind of “power” or “energy” that they should be training. The truth is much simpler: use the body. Use your common sense. Try things out. Lose a lot.

To train skill is to use the muscles, and to use force. Certainly, one can learn to refine the way the force is applied, but if you aren't strong enough to withstand a bit of heave-ho, then you haven't even covered the basics. I will be frank here. To say that you are working “internally”, but are unable to display or enact that work is a good way of doing nothing but pretending that you are. Winning is winning, whether by force or by guile. As martial artists, we are looking to survive conflict by whatever means are pragmatic, and this applies to competitions as well.

I understand. Saying that you have learnt good leverage and balance does not sound very romantic, or glamorous. Understanding range, timing and movement doesn't appear very grand; in all likelihood, it won't attract many new acolytes. But that is what tai chi chuan consists of. Make no mistake. I'm not reducing tai chi chuan to "just" or “merely” the physical: what I'm saying is that the wonderful quality of tai chi is trained through our physicality, not through our concepts. "I am more refined: I should win" is a concept often clung to by tai chi practitioners, even as they are being flung about like ragdolls by uncouth barbarians.

The training and refining of subtle jin is the same as the training of well-coordinated contraction and timing; if there is no ability to attack and defend, whether the opponent uses "external strength" or not, then there is no tai chi ability. Full stop.

Thanks to Mr Shepherd for his comments, and if he should read this, I hope no offense has been caused.