That's one of the issues with traditional combat applications from most martial arts forms, they need quite a bit of working before they become useful self defence tools. Thanks for your feedback.
what's your opinion on teachers/masters who changed the forms to suit their personality, body type, application etc? i watched chen style taiji demonstration and its variations that differ greatly from the standard forms, some look like xinyi liuhe and some that look as soft and slow as wu style taiji. pretty interesting
Firstly, teaching and training are separate. I would never teach people an altered form or implement changes at the learning level as form work is used to teach our bodies things that we can't already do. It's impossible to know how to improve until someone has thoroughly practiced and understood the basic form structure. When movements from the form are then trained for self defence or partner drills, that's when adjustments can be made as the responses need to be natural and subconscious. The only time you need to change a form at basic level is when the student is physically incapable of performing a particular posture. Hope that makes sense? Thanks for your question.
If both are trained in the correct way, I think it's down to personal preference. Also depends who you learn these arts from and how much training is spent on the fighting principles.
