Make Yang style Tai Chi Great Again

On one hand Yang style Tai Chi is the style that popularized Tai Chi throughout the world. On the other hand Yang style paid a very significant price in doing so, and now is sometimes no longer considered a martial art but a form of Chinese yoga descended from martial arts. This price was paid intentionally by the Master who was guilty of the worst selling-out in all of martial arts history, Yang Chen Fu.

According to Doc Fai Wong's book "Tai Chi Chuan's Internal Secrets" (pages 8 -10) Yang Chen Fu had two totally different types of students. One type of student was serious about fighting and was usually training to become a Tai Chi instructor themselves, what you could call an insider student. Everyone else was learning a watered down form of Tai Chi that was based on forms and didn't get seriously into the other aspects of Tai Chi training, who we could call outsider students. (Doc Fai Wong's master was Hu Yuen Chow, who's master was Yang Chen Fu AS AN INSIDER.)

Insider students AND previous generations of Yang style practitioners training happened in two phases, each about 4 years long:

1. The first phase was mostly static postures. If you know much about Tai Chi then you are of course familiar with standing meditation, but this was only one part. Basically every move in Tai Chi forms has a static version. Imagine holding each posture for 30 minutes at a time, just as if each move were a standing meditation posture in it's own right. MY sifu (Vern Miller, who's master was Doc Fai Wong) actually did a version of this making us hold each posture for only 5 to 10 minutes, and it was so intense that it was the 2nd time in my life I have sweated out of my ears (the first time was cross training in a variation of Kyokushin.)
2. ONLY after having done that kind of training for the first four years, would they start doing ANY forms at ALL. In addition to forms, free sparring, push hands, and training with weapons was all highly emphasized. No insider's training was complete until they had mastered all 8 years of training.

Outsider students only did forms, without the 4 year foundation training of static postures and without the free sparring in years 5 through 8. From this I personally deduce that Yang Chen Fu wouldn't have much cared how good the "form" of his outsider students was, which would explain why there are so many bad versions of Yang style out there that lack decent structure for functionality or application.

IF you are trying to practice Yang style Tai Chi as a martial art, here are some things you must include in your training:

1. You must be serious about standing mediation, otherwise you can't be said to be doing serious Yang style.
2. You must be doing two partner exercises with a high level of resistance called "push hands," or else you can't be said to be practicing Tai Chi with physical martial arts skill.
3. You must be doing free sparring, otherwise you can't be said to be doing any serious form of martial art.
4. You must include some type of weapon training, as Tai Chi applies to weapons as much as it does to empty hands.

I have heard many credible Yang stylists criticize photographs of Yang Chen Fu's technique, saying that those photos do not represent the structure he taught to his insider students. To really practice serious Yang Style it is wise for us to consider the technique of his insider students, and the technique of Yang stylists from outside of the Yang Chen Fu lineage.

This is not to discourage you from trying to study Yang style. Remember some of the greatest styles of Tai Chi are break offs of Yang Style, such as Wu style and Sun style, both of those having a better reputation than Yang style.  Beyond this Tai Chi has been around longer than Yang style. Even older styles such as Chen style and Wudang Dan Pai are evolutions of earlier systems of Tai Chi going back before the 1300's.

All Martial Arts Change from one generation to the next, either for the better or for the worse. The next generation of Tai Chi will be better than what we learned, or it will be worse than what we learned, based on how we practice it and what we pass on. Just like Yang Chen Fu damaged the efficacy of Tai Chi in order to popularize Tai Chi, we can improve on outdated practices and make Tai Chi better than it ever was before.