Chen demonstrates the steel
Tai Chi Ball routine. Snapshot
taken from the Chen video
posted below.

I took up Tai Chi Chuan in the mid-80's after getting so busted up by western style hard training that I couldn't do much. I thought I'd learn an old form of Yang Style Tai Chi Chuan while I got well, even though I didn't have any respect for "soft exercise." The specific routine I chose to study is an old one from the last days of Imperial China and was favored by a Captain of the Imperial Guard. He wasn't practicing only for health reasons, as most people do today. The Captain used the Yang style at work, and the stories told about him said that when he fought he drew blood with every step.

If you go far enough back in the history of Tai Chi Chuan you find that there was a different brand of it back then, popular with people who fought professionally, which was devoted half to hard techniques and half to soft, although to say that's all there was to it isn't accurate.

It's been quite a long time since I practiced that form seriously. I stopped because it made me sad. I often get unexplained emotions from doing the old things and it has been said that the intuitions you get from practice will lead you in the right direction, if only you pay attention. I'd felt many unusual things in the training and even entered the lower areas of energy ability. By some of the old standards, the striking tests for example, my ability had reached combat level. But at a certain level of ability I stopped progressing. No matter what I did, I could not pass that next barrier. Simply doing the form wasn't yielding the results I sought, and the other practices which support the form didn't, either. I felt that something was missing.

One Form of the Tai Chi Ball Training

Follow up:

Hard training is usually discouraged in Tai Chi practice, but I feel I have as much right to interpret the old texts as anyone and I don't see them as banning it. In fact, they do seem to discuss it. Watch the video above and you'll get the impression it's hard. I'm sure it is. I've done static postures with weights, for example, and seen some interesting and seemingly permanent changes in certain types of strengths as a result of that. But that seems to be only a part of the old Tai Chi Chuan.

When I first heard about Tai Chi Ball and Tai Chi Ruler, it was described to me as most people now do it. With a light ball, about basketball sized, students practice movements usually simulated by empty hands. That aids balance and refines the postures but doesn't develop strength. Tai Chi Ruler, which replaces the ball with a dumbbell shaped rod or simply a short bang or stick, does much the same thing. It's an exercise of coordination and balance. Modern Tai Chi players don't often get past the teachings about softness, into the other part.

I've seen few people do things differently but I'm sure there a good number who practice the renegade style in private; Chen Qingzhou approached his own Tai Chi practice with notions similar to mine. I've posted links here to his writings on Tai Chi Sphere and to a video of Chen demonstrating his routine. The Tai Chi Ball he uses is a steel sphere which weighs just over thirty pounds. Chen took up the training on his own, without instruction, and credits some of his unusual martial accomplishments to the practice.

I'd considered filling a basketball with sand -- something Chen did before he found his steel sphere -- but wasn't really happy with that, knowing I'd probably be getting sand all over the house and wind up with a shoddy training tool. Heavy balls sold as exercise equipment aren't quite what I'm looking for -- the sphere should be unyielding. A few weeks ago I began doing simple movements with a cast iron dumbbell as a Tai Chi Ruler. That does seem practical, and reasonably priced. I have no actual routine to follow, but many of the fundamental movements in Tai Chi are well suited to it. Moving through the stances slowly makes the internal structure of the body obvious and puts muscle sets into use in new ways.

I did a Tai Chi Ruler workout a few days with a 25 pound dumbbell, which doesn't seem like much. I didn't find the exercise hard to do, but for two days afterwards I was wrecked. It felt like all the small muscles which hold things in place -- not the major ones that do the obvious work -- had turned to rubber. I'm getting over that now but things like that make a person treat the old system with much more respect and caution.

I'm encouraged by this, it seems that I might eventually stumble on the right thing, and punch through that barrier I found.

Links:

Chen's Story

Chen's Demonstration