Rending force in middle frame Yang style taiji
A brief description of rending, one of the eight forces of Taijiquan
Now that I’m getting into full swing here in China I thought I’d do a few short articles about Yang style middle frame Taiji. I’ve been studying this style since 2012, but hadn’t seen my teacher master Yin Qing since 2018, so recently when I was able to visit him for some revisions it was very illuminating.
The study schedule is set up for every two weeks and I anticipate being in China for around two years, so I should be able to book fifty sessions with him which is wonderful.
One of the things that especially stuck out to me about his middle frame from Tian Zhaolin is how frequently the energies of Lie and Cai occur. Li and Cai are translated as rending and plucking respectively and are two of the “Ba fa” or eight methods of Taijiquan.
In the Yang style 108 these movements are often contained within other movements, for instance Lie is frequently found in aspects of single whip, slanted flying, etc... often people think of Lie as a rending, snapping, or hard horizontal or upward pulling motion, but in Tian style the movement is expressed in a few very direct was as a hard strike with different sections of the hand.
Here are a few specifics:
zheng lie: zheng means vertical, so zhen lie is an upright rising rending action where the back hand holds a posture such as peng, and the attacking hand rises upward with the hand bent at the wrist. In this attack the back of the wrist is used to strike the crotch, body or under the chin while the defending hand keeps the opponent tied up,
heng lie: heng means horizontal and in this case the radial side of the hand or forearm performs a chopping inward motion somewhat similar to a haymaker or cross punch, or even similar mechanics to a jab, but without retracting the hand.
The direction and mechanics of these strikes is different, but the basic principle is that the defending hand either performs peng or a grasping technique to control the opponent’s arm, then the striking hand attacks the body, neck or head.
The interesting thing is that while many large frame variations hide the strikes in the form and require direct pointing out by a teacher, the middle frame contains the strikes prominently visible in the form, although they require guidance to really understand.
Master Yin says that the monicker of “old frame” to define the middle frame routine is not correct, since Yang style has always had large, middle and small frames, but that the large frame has historically been more popular since it is easier to learn. He claims that the small frame is the most difficult and requires expertise in another frame before learning it or else the practitioner is likely to be injured and that while the middle frame is more difficult than the large frame, it is still possible for beginners to learn under the guidance of a teacher.
Anyway, the plan is to make more of these posts going forward, so let me know if there are any yang style Taiji specific topics you are interested in and I’ll see what I can do!