by Dan Dochety
This is about geniuses and judges, two categories which in the martial arts at least are not mutually exclusive.
A genius according to my dictionary is someone endowed with transcendent mental superiority, inventiveness and ability. A genius can also be someone who influences another for good or bad. The ancient Romans believed that two attendant spirits, one good and one evil, accompany us from the cradle to the grave.
Certainly there have been and are geniuses - of all kinds, in the field of martial arts in general and in that of Tai Chi Chuan in particular
The first true martial genius I met was Yoshinao Nanbu, who like a true genius, through his individual flair and perception analysed and synthesised theories and methods of practice. He revolutionised competition karate with his footsweeps and spinning kicks. He practiced and taught with a freedom and elan that I had never seen before and have seldom seen since. He even answered questions intelligently. Right from the start he taught us body evasion and footwork (Tai Sabaki). This influence is still present when I teach Tai Chi Chuan as the first thing I show beginners is Seven Star Step Pushing Hands, so that right from the start students are learning timing, distance, cordination, footwork and evasion.
There is also the genius of simplicity. In one of the early South East Asian Chinese Full Contact Championships, the competitors had to wear baseball like masks with a cage effect in front to protect the face, no gloves were allowed. These rules favoured styles such as Choi Lee Fut which liked to employ heavy swinging attacks. With their straight line theory, the Wing Chun fighters all damaged their fists on the face guards, except for the canny Hong Kong police inspector, Pang Kam-fat, who was disqualified for repeatedly kicking his opponent in the groin. In Tai Chi Chuan Running Thunder Hand is usually employed with the fist and the strike is something between a hook and a straight punch. My master got my elder brothers to use Running Thunder palm strikes and swinging Wu Gang Chopping Laurels instead with considerable success.
In a sense my master was also an evil genius, teaching us to dominate an opponent in ways that had little in common with the rules drawn up by the Marquis of Queensbury. Another thing that I learned from him was how to teach people according to what they are actually capable of doing, rather than showing them more effective techniques which were too difficult for them.
Then there is another type of genius who is convinced that he knows, or at least never admits that he does not know. Genius teachers and genius students. When I first practiced karate round about 1971, I asked a 4th dan why the non-striking fist was drawn back to the hip when executing a punch or a block with the fist clenched. He said it was to hide the hand from the opponent so that he wouldn't know what we were going to do with it. The truth, which he could not admit, was that he didn't know; in those days you did what you were told and got on with it. Questions were not encouraged, as a result many unwise or even unsafe training methods were adopted.
Then there is the genius student. Instructors who have such students are very fortunate. They don't need to explain anything as genius student knows the answer. The reason that they are doing the technique that way is that is how you showed it to genius student last time and that genius student has total and accurate recall while obviously you, the instructor, have changed the technique.
You show a self defence application in the class, and instead of practicing what you have shown, genius student teaches his improved version to his training partner and unless you do something about it, the new improved version spreads like a cancer in your school, until it becomes the true one. But I don't like geniuses and the last time I saw one do a new improved version of my technique in a class I told him I'd hit him if he did it again.
In the Good Book or at least in a good book, it is written, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Some believe that you can only become a judge if you attend a course and then only continue to be one if you continue to attend courses at your personal expense and inconvenience. But in the words of that Latin tag much beloved by Combat readers, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?" So there should be courses to learn to be a judge; courses on teaching people to be judges; courses on teaching people to teach people to be judges....
My student and muse, Pascale Deguen, told me that when she won the ladies' fixed and moving step pushing hands events at the 1st French Tai Chi Chuan Championships this year, one of the referees said to her that she should use more "listening" and less pushing, though he was unable to explain how to do this against opponents who outweighed her by more than 14 kilos. We look forward to seeing him demonstrate his point by competing next time. Indeed many non-competitors are fond of standing on the sidelines criticising pushing hands and Chinese full contact competitors for being too hard or not soft enough or not using enough technique, yet these same non-competitive geniuses are unwilling or perhaps unable to demonstrate how to use said softness themselves when up against someone who is other than a cooperative student.
Forms competition is still more contentious. For example some people say that they practice the Old Yang Form so this must be the true Tai Chi Chuan, but Old Yang died in 1872 at an age younger than my father who never practiced Tai Chi Chuan and who lived most of his life on a diet of whisky and cigars. Another problem that Sifu Gary Wragg of Wu's Tai Chi Chuan Academy and other experienced instructors have raised is the tendency of some judges to base their marking largely on the aesthetic quality and external appearance of the form demonstrated.
This can give an unfair advantage to competitors practicing Wu Shu Tai Chi and "modern" forms which can be more dynamic than the traditional ones. This is because of excessive sinking and overextension, not only can this result in injury to the joints and back, but it also contradicts concepts in the Tai Chi Chuan classics such as, "No excess, no deficiency." Furthermore the martial content in many of these forms is deficient and they more nearly resemble dance or in the case of weapon forms, gymnastic dance combined with juggling.
Over the years people started to wear Chinese kung fu suits for forms competition, then more recently we have seen more silk pyjamas. Pyjamas don't just look good they also hide tension and bad technique. Many years ago via a bookshop in Hamburg's red-light area, I acquired 'T'ai Chi Nude' by F.L. Yu, in which one male and two females in full frontal nudity and in glorious colour demonstrate poses from Yang style. As Mr. Yu (obviously a genius) says, "In these pictures, the exact disposition of the spine, its true relation to the pelvis, and the actual configuration of the legs are all completely visible." I am intending as an experiment to introduce Mr. Yu's idea for female competitors in my next competition as I feel that silk pyjamas are too much of a distraction.