Yang Family Tai Chi Discussion Board

Hi there.

This will probably go down as silly question number 2, but i'll throw it out there and see how it's received.

I practise every day, maybe for 1 hour 10 mins to 1h 20. I do maybe 35 mins Qi gong, then core exercises, then forms.
Unfortunately, i work shift work and i have a young family. So, on Tai chi class night i don't have time to practise on my own before hand. The class is obviously set at a pace for all students, so the Qi Gong is much shorter than i would do myself, and there is a relaxed attitude to practise for the most part (there is a core group of us across the various classes that train every day and meet for extra instruction, but regular class tends to be people of mixed levels of interest).

(stupid question time)

I get that there is a level of mental and physical conditioning gained by daily practise, and i'm OCD about making sure i get my practise. Will dropping personal practise on class day negatively effect my progress? Also, what are the thoughts on Daily practise? I enjoy it, but there are different opinions amongst my friends. Some think a day off each week is good, i (like i said) am pretty much every day. My Chinese wife thinks i'm mad as a hatter, but she's slowly got used to allowing time for practise when planing family things.

Thanks in Advance...Sean.

I try and practice every day but with everything I have learned over the years it would take a long time to do it all and I have other responsibilities so there are days it does not happen

I try to do some things in the morning before work and other things at night after the kids are asleep. But there are those days when there simply is not time to do anything as far as forms go. I seem to find time to do seated Qigong on those days, but not always.

As to training on the same day of class; This is just me and everyone is different but I discovered a long time ago that my training any taijiquan on the day I was going to see my sifu had an adverse effect on class or time spent with my sifu so I do no training the day of class or if I am meeting with my sifu.

And if it helps, my Chinese wife tells me, and her entire family, I'm martial arts crazy

Strange double post issue, this happens on my new PC sometimes. The above post was the same so I deleted this one

Thanks for the response T.

I guess what i am getting at is...is less the same as none when there is a level of conditioning being achieved daily?

I'm still at the stage when my legs are sometimes jelly by the time i get to the long form, and i wake up with tired legs (?) some days. Is dropping from 35 mins Qi Gong to the 15 say that you do in class equal to missing a session in terms of achieving a level? (am i making any sense?)

If training prior to class has an adverse effects on your training in class with your Shifu then don’t train before class.

Much of what we do is training by ourselves and if you are in fact training 7 days a week and one of those days is with your shifu then take the class as your training that day.

Sometimes our bodies need a rest and it can be better to take a day off in order to give the muscles time to rebuild and you can get stronger taking one of 3 days off than you would training all 3 days

I kind of wondered if that continuous training was part of what sets Tai Chi apart, and if it's integral to the process of improvement. There is a lot of Mystery around Tai Chi, even a lot of my Chinese friends are taken in by the "you have to do it early in the morning" thing, and for me part of learning is discerning the real from the mystical.
Though a lot of it is easy, practicing every day seems like one of those that makes sense to me. We don't tear the muscles, so we condition them in a different way. We still get the lactic acid build up, but not so much the muscle tear.

If memory serves Yang Cheng Fu said to practise every day, and not to forget sun up and sun down. I remember hearing a story of how Yang Sau Chung was thrown out into the courtyard in the freezing cold and told he could not come back in until he had practised. I just want to do this right, you know. By traditional standards we're just messing around with this stuff, i just wondered if i was doing my art an injustice. (But i get that by western standards, i'm probably a little unhinged lol)

My sifu tries to training about 2 hours a day and he has been doing this for close to 60 years. But then if he has nothing to do (which is rare actually) he does Taiji just to keep busy but he does not consider that training.

He does feel that 2 hours a day is what I should be doing as well but he also realizes that it is not always possible for me get in tow hours a day so he says 1 hour is fine