Sunday, September 20, 2015

Elbows

One of my favorite Tai Chi moves is an elbow to the body. It can be done very discretely with a minimum of telegraphing or announcing "hey everyone look at me I am beating on this guy" in a self defense situation. First let's look at basic elbow strike technique:

Now here is what that basic elbow strike technique looks like in a fight:

Elbows to the body can happen in MMA with ground and pound strategies:

But if standing-up elbows to the body specifically were effective, wouldn't they teach them in Muay Thai? Behold:

But that's Muay Thai, not Tai Chi, how similar could the two arts elbows be to each other? Very: