Tai Chi San Shou is the names given to the self defence aspects of t’ai chi training. It can roughly be translated to ‘freefighting’.
In essence it is the training process required for practitioners to be able to apply the body structures, movements and conceptual ideas trained in the hand forms and Neigong exercises.
The core concepts are stillness in motion and softness overcoming hardness.
Stillness in motion refers to a higher level state of achievement where the practitioner can remain completely calm and composed in the midst of chaos and violence, applying the ideal movements and techniques and the perfect moment.
Softness overcoming hardness means skill must be refined to the points that we can neutralise attacks and off balance much larger opponents using high level skilful evasion, diversions and leverage rather than brute force.
Tai Chi sanshou can be trained many ways but generally we practice a single application of a form movement against a partner hundreds of times per session to build the necessary reflexes action and familiarity with distance, timing, body structure and power generation for each technique. This drilling is done regularly and a session can be seen below.
As well as technical drilling practitioners can build experience with sparring, wrestling snd so on to gain an understanding of how to integrate different techniques and use different t’ai chi strategies against an uncooperative opponent.
This system of t’ai chi, with its extremely well rounded repertoire of techniques and conditioning methods produced many international full contact fighting champions across Asia.
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