Update: What is Tai Chi?

I have updated the "What Is Tai Chi" page on this blog to include a new 4th section called "Combat Sports Participation", after the Plumb Blossom Federation removed an article where Doc Fai Wong praised BJJ, and after I argued with people on Bullshido.net about "How to Fix Aikido." (Turns out the best full contact sparring rules for Aikido, for both historical and functional reasons, might be Sumo sparring rules.) In that time I realized I never met a good Tai Chi instructor who didn't also at least encourage his Tai Chi students to participate in some form of Combat Sport. So in my view Tai Chi includes four main elements of training: standing mediation, stationary push hands drills, moving step push hands sparring, and combat sports participation. Here is the new section on Combat Sports Participation if you are already familiar with my "What Is Tai Chi?" page:

Combat Sports Participation

Every solid Tai Chi instructor I have encountered also coached some form of full contact fighting beyond moving step push hands. In my case my first Tai Chi instructor Vern Miller (Doc Fai Wong's first student officially endorsed to start his own school) was also a boxing and kickboxing coach who trained various successful fighters, the most famous of which was Margaret Macgregor. It is very common for Tai Chi instructors to also train their students in Chinese Kickboxing. I have also heard of Tai Chi masters encouraged their students to cross train in Judo, Knock Down Karate, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai and many different styles of full-contact Kung Fu (Choy Li Fut, Hung Gar, Pa Kua, Hsing-I, etc.)

There were various old-fashioned types of Tai Chi with lots of deep stances and hard core Chinese Wrestling and Fencing techniques. The most common was Chen style Tai Chi. As Chen style became very popular, one branch became more popular than the others, which is Yang style - now the world's most common style of Tai Chi, known for their slow moving forms. Yang has also had a few break off variations, the most common of which is Wu style Tai Chi.  Chen (older than Yang) and Wu (newer than Yang) are still often taught as full contact martial arts. This idea that "Tai Chi is just exercise" has NO historical basis, and comes from the lazy practices of many substandard Yang style Tai Chi instructors (though not all Yang style instructors are substandard.)

Tai Chi is usually taught with other martial arts. This is common of many good martial arts, because good martial arts tend to focus on a particular range of self defense techniques. In MMA the four most common Martial Arts offer deeper understanding of Tai Chi:

1. One of my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructors was Wu style Tai Chi master Dmitriy Gak. He agreed with me that the one martial art that does what Tai Chi aspires to more than any other in MMA is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Yang style Grand Master Doc Fai Wong has also made similar claims. When it comes to absorbing a larger, stronger opponent's attack and defeating them with their own energy, BJJ is where it is at.
2. Vern Miller once pointed out to me the alarming similarities between Muay Thai and Tai Chi. If you are familiar with both arts than you know what I am talking about, with the aggressive use of cat stances when fighting, the hand positioning in fighting stances, Golden Rooster, etc. However since I more recently got exposure to striking for MMA specifically, I found even more similarities, especially when it comes to weight shifting. Muay Thai is more like Tai Chi than any Chinese martial art I know of. One of the 8 Gates is "elbow," and there isn't anything more "elbow" than Muay Thai. Even the take downs in Muay Thai are similar to Tai Chi take downs.
3.  Boxing, more than any other martial art, will teach you what those five steps are all about. That ideal of being able to take on multiple opponents, the idea of being able to put an opponent at a disadvantage simply by getting out of his way, that stuff is all extremely manifested in boxing training.
4. Compared to the other internal martial arts, Tai Chi is a wrestling style. Of the 8 Gates wrestling covers splitting and plucking like no other, but wrestling also teaches some of the other 13 principles as well.

The reason why Tai Chi is so often cross trained with other martial arts is not only because other martial arts help us understand Tai Chi better, but also because training in multiple martial arts has always been a best practice for fighters and martial artists.