Interview with Ng Kwongyu--5th Generation Wu Style

[BBTrip]

Greetings Bob,

Hope you find this Wu Style find a little more interesting than the last.

http://youtu.be/xnwNU4MoR6k?t=12m27s

The link should start at 12:27.

[Bob Ashmore]

BB,
Believe it or not I just saw this post. I have no idea how I missed it all this time as I've visited here fairly regularly.
I have seen this video before, however the one I saw had before no sub-titles so I had no idea what was being said.
Thanks for the link to the subtitled video, I am glad to know what he was saying now.

Seeing Si Kung teach again is like going home for me.
I hear his voice and it immediately takes me back to the late 80's and all the way through the 90's, when I trained at his Academy.
This is how we trained there, hands on.
I remember one of Si Kung's most often stated expressions, "If all you want is to talk theory, anyone can do that and everyone's an expert. Don't tell me that you know TCC, put your money where your mouth is and show me."
As you can see from this video, he hasn't changed his mind about that.

Bob

[T]

That is a great video, thanks for posting it.

I am really starting to like Southern Wu style, wish there was a teacher closer to me.

Something I have not seen as part of a taiji curriculum that is part of the curriculum of the Wu family School in Toronto is break fall training

[Bob Ashmore]

T,
Knowing how to fall and making that work for you is a pretty big deal.
I am very glad Si Kung made sure we knew how to fall, tumble and recover.
Now I know that the ground is my friend.

Beyond that we also learned "ground fighting" techniques at Wu's Academy.
Where I very quickly learned that Tai Chi Chuan is an extremely versatile martial art that does not require you to be standing on your feet to work.
I once asked a teacher (this was after I left the Wu school and was searching for another place to train) that was teaching a "Tai Chi Chuan sparring" seminar that I attended but who did not once mention ground fighting techniques what we should do if we are thrown to the ground during a fight.
His answer was, and I still cannot believe I heard this reply, "In TCC we learn not to get thrown to the ground, so there are no ground fighting techniques."
I clearly remember the distinct feeling coming over me at that moment that I was in the wrong place.
I thanked him for his time, then left.
Trust me on this as I speak from experience, if you are ever in a real life combat situation there is a distinct probability that you will be thrown to the ground.
If you don't know how to roll with that, recover from it and even use it to your advantage, or if you can't fight effectively while lying on the ground, then you're going to be in big trouble.

But I digress...
Then again, I usually do.

[T]

Agreed, my MA background prior to coming to Taijiquan was old school Japanese Jiujitsu