Tai Chi Fighting Application - Single Whip and The Secret of the Whip

So he's controlling my bicep, and this is useful because if you control people's bicep, you could tilt them, right? You could lift them up and begin to take their back. You could draw off balance and begin to attack them in different ways. So controlling your bicep is very, very advantageous in grappling. So we're going to talk about single whip, very, very classic Yang Tai Chi technique, right? Let's go one more time from this angle. So we're here like this. See, he's got this. I get on inside over here. See? Here, here, here. Like that. And when you look at it, it is like this. You have this circling, bring them up and out back here, controlling right here, going out, dropping, going out like that. All right, we're going to look at Tai Chi applications and the real anatomy of a Tai Chi application. What a Tai Chi application should be like, how it's put together, and how it works effectively. So we're going to talk about single whip, very, very classic Yang Tai Chi technique, right? So the offensive, you'll see him like this. You punch me. I'm going to block this, grab this, hit you, knock you over, that type of thing. Okay. And then some naysayers will say, well, you'll never grab a skilled boxer's punch with that, right? And they're right. You know, you give me any like great boxer in front of me and they're punching me in the face. I'm trying to do this. It's not going to succeed. This move is not really meant for that. Okay. So, so the naysayers are correct. And thanks to their, their, their idea in that regard, let's explore what is really supposed to happen. So first we're going to travel backwards in time to the 1800s when Yang Tsao Tai Chi came to the capital of China, to the, to the, to the palace imperial dynasty before the emperor and all of that. So let's, let's look at it through the lens of, of what happened in the nineties, in the martial arts world. In the nineties, what, it finally became popularized. We have this thing called the UFC. And what did the first UFC show the world? I don't know. Grappling maybe? Yeah. The grappling was really effective. That a, that a thinner, less muscular, less heavy guy performing really skilled Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was able to defeat much, much bigger men of various levels of skills and style. Right. And, and it was a long time before people understood how to deal with that. So that strikers had a chance again. Right. And that same thing was happening in, in China in the 1800s. We, they had such a thing as a imperial military examination. So you would test, you would demonstrate your martial skills. You would spar, you would fight, you would do horsemanship challenges and archery challenges and weapons. And if you did well, you got, you, you basically go to officer school and become a military officer and it's a, it's a lucrative life. Right. But people really fought. And what the, what the Manchurian dynasty found out was that wrestlers were really, really good. So, so there's this great story. What actually happened in the 1800s, maybe the late 1700s, but there was like a, there was a nobleman who was, who was suspected of being disloyal to the emperor. Okay. And it was hard to like capture him. Okay. So he, he assembled, he, from all the different military battalions, the Qing dynasty, the best wrestlers that they could find and, and they could find, and they were formed a battalion of about 120, I believe, called the and san means good at and pu means wrestling and ying means battalion. So they're basically the battalions of great wrestlers. Okay. And they went and captured this guy that beat him, defeated his guards and captured him. And the emperor was pleased. So he was like, hello, we're going to keep this group of some super soldiers that I got. Right. And over time, they recruited more great wrestler, expanded to be about 400 people or so at the And they guarded the imperial palace under the emperor's direct command, the most loyal and skilled fighters you can get his hand on. So, you know, he could, he could choose from anyone in China, but he chose wrestlers as one of his main battalions. So that tells you how highly regarded and how effective they were. When, when Yang Luchan, founder of Yang Xiao Tai Chi, came to the capital, then he showed a skill. He was, he was introduced, introduced to the prince named And he showed a skill and prince. So let's like, have you fight some people, maybe some people. And eventually he fought with the member of San Pui and defeated them and was assigned as their instructor. Okay. So, so he really made a showing in his ability to deal with wrestlers, Chinese wrestlers, and Manchurian wrestlers. And so, and so what did I, what did I tell you about Tai Chi is that it has ways that were effective of dealing with wrestling. And what I want to point out right now is that a lot of the applications in the form are actually dealing with people grabbing, throwing you and taking you down and not necessarily them punching you. Okay. There's techniques for that as well too. But as naysayers will point out a lot of good anti-striking is either like just parrying them and hitting them back, getting out of the way, hitting them back. Right. It's like that in Tai Chi too. That's actually like the best defense against a lot of striking is the most reliable defense, parry, check, and evade. But there's a lot of the other stuff that is actually anti-grappling. So do we all believe me that there's a lot of technique applications against grappling now and ready to learn one? Sure. Okay. So let's look at single whip, how, how that would be. So single whip, sometimes you people do it like this in, in old, in 06 world, there's a circle like this before you circle back. Okay. So there's this circle in Chen style. You have this circle before you go out, right? So Chen style and the older 06 roles show kind of like, um, more clearly what is happening. So there's this circle. You come here and you're going out and then you go out in the 06 role. We have the circle here or we have this circle here before, before everything else happens. Okay. So let's say what is going on there. One of the positions that will end up as we wrestle is we go from outer contact to where we hand fight and we're trying to get a head positioning. We get a little closer. We might go fight for like a, like a bicep control or tricep control. So we're fighting this in this situation. It is here that we'll see the single whip used. So let's trade sides so we can see clearly. So I'm going to do a classic left-handed one. So we're here like this, take a right foot force stance. So we'll do a, I won't do a mirror version. So he's controlling my bicep. And this is useful because if you control people's bicep, you could tilt them, right? You could, you could, you could lift them up and begin to take their back. You could draw off balance and begin to attack them in different ways. So controlling a bicep is very, very advantageous in grappling. So we're here. He's here. My hand is going to be here, here, like this, here, around and like that. So let's go one more time from this angle. So we're here like this. See, he's got this. I get inside over here, here, here, here, like that. What's the experience of that like? Well, it's definitely, I mean, at first, even just the, you know, taking of my forward energy is very off putting. Yeah. And you know that something bad is coming. Yeah. But then the roll around is very like, I'm done for. You're done for. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's a lot of things that happened in this. You saw the physical movement, but he's pushing me here. If he's pushing me off balance, then I won't be able to do this effectively. So in the very beginning, the setup is here and I've got to free myself. I'm in control. So I have my Song. Come and push. I have my Song and I can have my Yang. So I'm floating like this. So now I'm comfortable. See like this. Then it's easy for me to begin this and he's off, lost his balance. So it's my Yang Qi, the pung feeling that keeps me in balance. And once we're here, he's going to recover his balance. He may resist me, right? He's not letting me pull him around like this, right? So it is my fascia control here and my fascia control here that overcomes his resistance. His resistance, he tries to, it actually gets borrowed by the fascia. So that caused him to whip even more. So fascia, fascia is very crucial. It is, I like to say it is the, the Tabasco sauce or the spicy sauce, hot sauce to Tai Chi. If I don't have fascia, right? He's here. I get this free like this. And yeah, I just kind of bounce them away. If you, you, you pull them in, you bounce them away. You pull them, bounce them away. That's kind of what you see Tai Chi do sometimes, but it's when you add the fascia, then that's where you get twisted up and you feel like you're done for, as you say, right? It gives you the satisfaction, the hot sauce. So, and then, um, he's not actually done for, he feels like he's done for, right? He's just being prudent, but really we get to here. Let's just go through this real quick. Yeah. So we get to here, he's not done for, he's just going down. But if he was, if he was a Emperor's assassin or assassin to the Emperor, right? And you said, okay, Emperor, he's done for. Emperor said, no, he's not done for, right? So, so from here, right? You, to finish him, you might break their ankle to, to, to end, to make sure they're fully captured. You might, you might complete something on this end. You might come here, here and complete something on this end. Um, we're not going to do any of those things to Nick. Thank you. But there's, but after destabilizing them or taking them down to completely disable the assailant in a, in a, in a manner that, that would allow you to be hired by the Emperor or the Royal family means that you had to really disable him. So, so there's a setup, which is how are we encounter? And usually it's anti-wrestling and type in a grappling situation like this. How do we maintain a balance? How I use, how do I use my yang and my pung to keep my balance for, I'm not being crushed in. So pushing like here, I'm not going to be able to do anything here. I'm back in business. I get my position. See, we're, we're going in. And then how do we borrow his resistance? He doesn't want to go down yet. Right? He resists. Even if I don't get his face here, I could borrow that resistance. And even, and then from here, the final nation going down each, each stage is taking away more and more, your ability to resist and recover yourself until you totally control them. Or, and if the Emperor needs you to ultimately disable them, that's like all the elements of the application set up, maintaining yourself, setting up, transitioning to where you have control, borrowing the resistance, taking away all their defenses and then finishing the fight. Does that make sense? It does. I'd never thought of single whip like that. Yeah. Yeah. You never thought to go with like that. You never, yeah. For the most part, people don't realize how ferocious of a wrestling environment. It was that the young Tai Chi arrived to and how to deal with and what it must have meant to be, or be appointed as the, the trainer for these kind of some highly specialized soldiers. Right. And, and they kept that position longer than any other martial artist. There was other martial arts. Eagle claw was very highly regarded. Bagua was, was employed by the Imperial family and, and other martial arts too, but the young family held the post for the longest. So that means they continue to deliver results is my guess. So that's, that shows you how much more there is to just single whip. And when you look at it, it is like that. You have this circling, bring them up and out back here, controlling right here, going out, dropping, going out like that. Okay. Wow. Any questions? It's okay. All right. Thank you for helping me illustrate this. All right. Thanks for watching. Enjoy your practice.