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.

Real Kung Fu vs Fake Garbage

Since I and a few others started Self Defense Evolution a few years ago, people from all over the world have been joining. The creator of "It's about gōng fū (功夫)" joined recently, an advanced Kung Fu practitioner from India:

One style he has been mastering is the "Cigar Shop" or "White Crane" style that is the foremost ancestor of Karate. Looking at his form, we can deduce that he does indeed have a very advanced "jing" or proper energy & breathing you would expect to seen in an advanced practitioner of Kung Fu:

Where as Kung Fu in the USA was influenced by various trends such as Kumite Point Fighting and kickboxing, what we see in India is a more traditional practice. He has offered valuable insight into traditional Kung Fu free sparring: it is full contact, and while what techniques and targets are used might vary, it is much closer to a fight than the light contact sparring we see in modern Muay Thai, MMA. and my own unarmed sparring practice:

This above video with very light or no contact to the head but blasting away spastic hard to other targets on the body gives us a better idea of where Knock Down Karate rules (originating in Goju Ryu before Kyokushin) came from. It also gives us insight into western bare knuckle boxing having a higher emphasis on strikes to the body, as well as "traditional" sparring practices in Choy Li Fut with nearly identical rules. Without boxing gloves and other safety equipment, this is the type of sparring practice that allows you to not die from having an infection caused by a human tooth laceration on your hand, before western medicine figured out how to cure such infections within the last 100 years.

But as bad as Martial Arts has fallen in the past in the USA, he argues that martial arts in India is in a far worst state than anything in the USA's past. He has made a very interesting point about categorizing the types of fake masters out there:

"...there are three types of fake masters as I categorize them...

1. First are those who are doing it for money... just a money making scheme. But if they are doing it to feed their family, I cannot judge that... but these fake masters are the easiest to expose... that's why I say they are the least harmful ones.
2. The second category of fake masters... wants the RESPECT that people give to a teacher. Once he teaches one or two people he always wants more. These people are difficult to point out... they are the most dangerous I would say...
3. The third type are the most harmful to the martial arts world... he who used to be a student of a fake master. HE WAS a legit student... it was his bad luck or lack of intelligence that he did not research much on his teacher... 30 years ago they did not have the internet to help them do their research... so they have been practicing a set of fake skills for 20 to 30 years... and you can not tell them that their life long effort was wasted... they will create more fake pupils who believe that fake skill is real. They are not dangerous, they are not lying, but they are the most harmful species of fake masters." Feb 19, 2023, 10:24 PM (Seattle time.)

Looking at this problem through his lens, it explains some of the aberrant behavior we have seen in my area with our most notorious martial art instructor.

OGL = TSR Lawfare Threat

As an indy RPG developer myself, I can tell you chances are I will not break even for how much labor and time I spend making a quality RPG product. When doing a cost-benefit analysis on weather or not to produce an RPG product, one consideration is ALWAYS: will this get me sued? Because if I have to get a lawyer to publish, that's a lot of money I have to raise that has nothing to do with making or distributing the product, before making any money from the product, and I already know odds are against me breaking even on what product is going to cost me in time.

Once upon a time there was a Game Company called TSR, who were really mad that anyone but them published table top RPGs, because they owned the original table top RPG, Dungeons and Dragons (D&D.) TSR decided to sue Palladium, who in turn decided to sue so many other new RPG system developers that in the 1980's and 1990's people were scared out of trying to get into the table top RPG market.

We (the team known as the Game Arts Guild, previously known as Galbraith Games,) were one of these groups in exile. Before 2000 our plan was to make a computer game version of our RPG first (the precursor to Squawk RPG and The Dark Woods,) and then make a computer game hand book that could coincidentally double as an RPG book, to try to avoid all that threat-of-lawfare we could not afford.

Then in 2000 the OGL came out. It ended the two decades old threat-of-lawfare preventing indy RPG development, and we entered the golden era of indy RPG publishing that we are in today, which has grown rapidly because of print-on-demand technologies and services. We at the Game Arts Guild never did embrace the OGL however, and instead relied on traditional open source licenses such as the LGPL and later Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike. As Quake 1 Total-Conversion developers we had started one of the world's first open game projects called "The Free Models Project" (the inheritor of which is Open Game Art who we endorse,) and as a result of that experience we realized at the time the OGL was suspect.

That's right, THE OGL WAS NO-DAMNED-GOOD ANYWAYS. The ONLY thing it did was end an age of lawfare-threat preventing indy RPG development. The problem then and now is the OGL grants Wizards of the Coast the ability to revoke your right to use the OGL at any time:

Hasbro (the now owners of Wizards of the Coast) has a parallel process going on with their most popular product, the board game Monopoly; they really think like that game, hate competition, lock down intellectual properties in ethically questionable ways, etc. What all of this "new proposed OGL 1.1" drama described in the above video has really signaled, is their intention to reengage in TSR style THREAT OF LAWFARE by way of OGL-license-revoking (remember it is only the THREAT that prevents indy game development as per my first paragraph of this post,) to shut down indy RPG development. The current OGL everyone seems to want to preserve will NOT prevent them from doing just that!

As a byproduct of working on Squawk 2nd Edition for the last 10 years we have produced a role playing game system we call "Resilience" (www.ResilienceRPG.com) licensed under the Creative Commons Share-Alike license (which is set in the modern day but has been designed to adapt to other settings,) which I hope disgruntled indy developers will consider as they exodus D&D.

Apology for Gas Lighting Alcoholics

Earlier this month I posted my views on alcohol consumption. I have heard my views may have hurt your feelings. This is my response.

I know that it annoys drinkers that the stereotype is they are all alcoholics. However the most basic fundamental question of ANY addiction, especially with substances, is "did they continue using even after they knew it was harming them?" This is why the lies about alcohol being "good for heart health" are particularly nefarious. 

Once the general public faces the reality that "alcohol is a level 1 carcinogen, right alongside tobacco and asbestos", anyone drinking past that point will technically be an alcoholic. The main reason why most drinkers aren't classified as alcoholics now is because alcohol's causing of poor memory recall is blinding alcohol consumers to the problematic experiences they are having when they drink. 

I know people don't like to be gas lighted, being told they are crazy when they are normal. However the DSM is the DSM, and Substance Use Disorder is clearly defined therein. If you don't want to be called crazy, don't roll around in piles asbestos, don't play in burning tobacco fields and don't drink, ever.

Grow up and take your life seriously; we aren't laughing with you, we are laughing at you.

Alcohol Kills YOU

There are NO health benefits to drinking alcohol, AND alcohol is deadly for you to consume on a regular basis. Virtually every health study that says alcohol is good for you divides people into three categories:

1. Those Who Don't Drink.
2. Those Who Drink Lightly But Regularly.
3. Those Who Obviously Have a Drinking Problem.

When studies show this, what happens is Those Who Obviously Have a Drinking Problem have the most health problems, but Those Who Drink Lightly But Regularly have the least health problems. 

The problem is that they have put two TOTALLY DIFFERENT groups of people into category 1. The two groups are Those Who Never Drink on a Regular Basis, and Those Who Were Forced to Stop Drinking Because of Alcohol Related Health Problems. If we separate these groups from each other, we then have the following groups, listed here in order of most healthy to least healthy:

1. Those Who Never Drink on a Regular Basis are by far the most healthy statistically.
2. Those Who Drink Lightly But Regularly are starting to have some health problems likely related to their alcohol consumption.
3. Those Who Obviously Have a Drinking Problem almost always have alcohol related health problems that could be potentially fatal.
4. Those Who Were Forced to Stop Drinking Because of Health Problems have already had their health wrecked by alcohol.

The fact is Alcohol is a deadly poison, and the more you drink, the more it harms you. That's what the science actually says. Back in the 80's in public schools we were shown videos of what alcohol does to the human brain: turn into swiss cheese, literally putting liquid filled cavities where there used to be gray matter in the brain.  Science never has refuted that drinking reduces brain volume:

Nothing is more YOU than your BRAIN. Alcohol attacks THAT, Alcohol attacks YOU. Those who are selling you alcohol are directly undermining your existence. You voluntarily drinking is literally self-destruction!

Alcohol is one of the few drugs used for recreational use that can penetrate through all of the cell walls in your body's tissues. Some of the Ethanol when digested is converted into Acetaldehyde which can damage (if not destroy) all types of human cells before the human body can purge it. Alcohol wrecks some parts of your body (brain, lungs, liver) more than other parts (bones, muscle,) but it's bad for ALL of your body parts:

Consider the typical alcohol-related health problems that you normally hear about such as: 

"High blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, and digestive problems. Cancer of the breast, mouth, throat, esophagus, voice box, liver, colon, and rectum. Weakening of the immune system, increasing the chances of getting sick. Learning and memory problems, including dementia and poor school performance." 

When alcohol is brought up, people almost always forget to mention that it is a "Level 1 Carcinogen" on the level of "tobacco and asbestos" known to be a risk for every type of cancer. There isn't any "moderate" amount of Level 1 Carcinogen that you should be intentionally exposing yourself to:

What if I told you I had a combat strategy that could shrink my enemy's brain volume, put them at much higher risk of cancer, and attack every cell in their body? That's what drinking alcohol actually does to any enemy of mine without me doing ANYTHING. Opposite of self defense, drinking reduces:

• your ability to think strategically, both long term and short term.
• your ability to reflect and learn.
• your brain's over all health.
• your body's over all health and performance.
• your ability to stay out of prison.
• your ability to avoid dying in a violent crime.
• your ability to avoid dying in an accident.
• your ability to live a longer and more enjoyable life.

Abstinence from alcohol should be a training strategy of any serious self defense system or martial art. "What about drunken Kung Fu?" Those kung fu practitioners are intentionally pretending to be drunk to throw off opponents, to get their opponents to underestimate the Drunken Kung Fu Practioner. Actual drunk people per say are known to be clumsy, awkward, make poor decisions and otherwise be bad at defending themselves.

On a deeper level I must say my religious views have been even more reinforced by study of addiction: If there is any Higher Power out there that is benevolent towards you, wouldn't that benevolent Higher Power discourage you from drinking?

Rock Paper Scissors

 It's nice to have competitions so we can evaluate how effective training methods are. However in competition as it is commonly practiced today, we have overconfidence in the reliability of our results. Instead of assuming that the champion is the best in the world, we should assume that he was adequately trained to defeat his last opponent: in a tournament you do not know where one fighter stands against all the other fighters unless he fights them all, and you don't know what training methods were most effective if one fighter is excluded from losing only two matches. Double elimination means the best over all fighter could easily lose because he just happened to be beat by two individuals who could take him, while most of the rest of the individuals in his division could not take him.

Sounds crazy, right? This is me fighting Zack, everything he knows about knife fighting he learned from me, and when I fight him you can see the disparity between my superior knife skill level and his:

Since I started participating in the North West Warrior Tipon Tipon in 2017, the fighter who has given me the most grief goes by the name of "Scott." There are no official winners or losers at a Gathering like this, but the tale of the tape speaks for itself. Mine and Scott's first match was something like a draw, maybe slightly in his favor, which was strange for me because he was spastic and new a the time. A year or two later at our second confrontation, it was very one sided over all in his favor as he caught me with a snake-arm disarm, landing many knife thrusts to my mid section in less than 30 seconds, and otherwise seemed to outpace me with his footwork. But most problematically a year or two after that, even after I had specifically trained to fight him and integrated more of my Tai Chi push hands into my knife dueling, and even as I hit him with an epic push hands projection counter throw, he still clearly dominated me in over all deadliness, and the commentary behind the camera says it all:

Going by tournament logic, if Ben can take Zack, and Scott can take Ben, then Scott can take Zack, right? Wrong:

 

And I have numerous other examples, but this is the one most obviously involving my own personal practice of the martial arts that has video evidence. Going forward keep in mind that being able to beat one person does not guarantee that you could have beat anyone that one person has beaten. Competition is a great metric for us to have for evaluating training methods, but we often have more confidence in that data than we should.

Overkill

Submission holds have extremely limited application to civilian self defense scenarios. Submission holds can be faked out of. Submission holds can have severe asymmetrical consequences. Submission holds are complex movements prone to failure. Submission hold alternatives take less time to learn and are more valuable to civilian martial arts consumers.

In the South East Asian martial arts we sometimes see the "Principle of Overkill," were they refuse to stop attacking after the opponent goes down. These arts aren't training for casual bar brawls to defend the honor of open minded girlfriends, these arts are training for life and death combat between rival feuding parties. One sneaky strategy is to fall down early in a brawl, act incapacitated, wait until an opponent is not paying attention to you, then pull your knife and attack them from behind. Because of that these arts specifically train to overkill a downed opponent, to make sure that opponent isn't being sneaky.

The application to this for submission holds is obvious: in a serious self defense situation, what do you do when your opponent taps or says "uncle" or "ok, I give up, sorry!" How do you know they have sincerely repented and aren't going to attack again? How do you know if they just realized how outmatched they are and are about to pull a weapon?

The obvious alternative is to turn the hold into a full damage attack, dislocating a shoulder, breaking a leg, or choking them unconscious. This cure can be worse than the disease; the consequences from going that far can be worse than whatever the attacker was trying to do to you in the first place. Prison time itself can be life threatening. Any allies they have who are prone to drastic violence aren't going to soon forget that you maimed their friend. What happens if you hold a choke too long because you were worried they were "just faking it"?

That's assuming the submission hold works in the first place: all submissions are more complex movements than most strikes. Beyond that your mobility is compromised while you are executing a submission hold. Even if you somehow manage a submission hold while up on your feet, you are still giving up options to run or otherwise maneuver as long as you are applying the hold.

"But why not use a submission hold to control someone until authorities arrive and arrest the attacker?" Let's put aside the problem with the attackers friends showing up before law enforcement, and instead ask if a submission hold is actually the best way to control someone. Many grappling styles have various pins and other control positions that are far less complex and thus more likely to work than trying to use a submission hold. "Position before submission" is a best practice for grappling arts anyhow, and position is more key to controlling the attacker, not so much joint locks applied thereafter. 

Training for superior position both on the ground and on your feet is much more valuable to the average civilian martial arts consumer than learning submission holds. If a well thought out self defense paradigm is used, grappling instruction can improve a civilian's mobility in a real confrontation instead of compromising mobility: