Tai Chi Vlog 3 - Not Finished? — Myriad Misadventures

I just seem to get more confused every class. I thought we had finished the Yang Style 28 form but in class we continued with some more form. I’m not sure if it’s a new form though or if we actually didn’t finish the Yang Style 28 form the previous week. Since my Chinese isn’t too great (it’s bad) I have to sort of prepare my questions beforehand. I can’t ask them on the fly without sounding incredibly stupid.

Something I noticed with the new part that we did in this class was that the hands started backwards from the starting position we had done before. Before the right hand started on top and with this piece (form?) the left hand started on top. I had sort of assumed that all they all started the same way. This is probably because in tang soo do most if not all of the early forms you learn start going to the left. Eventually they start to change a little but a lot of early forms go left to start. I was probably projecting that onto the starting hand position for tai chi forms. But since I’m still not entirely sure what we did in this class I could certainly be wrong. Or right.

The form or piece of form that we did in this class also had some close kicks which we did a bunch of times while practicing. And it turns out I am very bad at slow kicks. In tang soo do the kicks are always fast and I don’t usually have too much trouble. I’m not flexible enough to throw a great looking, high roundhouse or side kick but I’ve got no trouble with front kicks. But they’re much harder to throw slowly. I have a newfound respect for those tai chi athletes you see in competition videos that throw slow front kick straight up. The strength and flexibility needed to do that is way past anything I have. Realistically past anything I every will have. But hopefully I’ll get at least a little better.

I’m still enjoying tai chi but find with every class I get a little more confused. Next class I’ve got to figure out what this new bit of form actually is and figure out more concretely when we’ve finished or not finished things.

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