You mentioned a set of exercises from the Zhao Bao Tai Ji Quan. Are the DVD exercises those? If not what makes the zhoa boa exercises different/difficult? Thanks in advance

There is no DVD on the specific exercises I teach.

You can get an idea of the type of exercises here, from Chen Chinghua, a student of Xiung Wei, my teacher's teacher:

http://chessman71.wordpress.com/2006/05/10/zhaobaohuleijia-taiji-and-taiji-daoyin/

http://chessman71.wordpress.com/2006/05/16/zhaobaohuleijia-taiji-and-daoyin-ex-p t-2-2/

I meant to ask if the power exercise from your sun tai ji DVDs were the ones you referenced a few years ago. ThAnks for the link.

Those exercises look more like stretches and they seem to put your knees into unhealthy alignment. Besides developing good hip flexibilty what purpose do they serve?

LOL!
Try them sometime... they are a bit more rigorous then "stretches."

JAB

I have done all of the Zhao Bao Tai Ji Quan exercises Tim teaches, they are WAY more than stretches! Going through them is one of the harder leg workouts I do. They are only hard on the knees if you don't have good hip flexibility. Good mobility in the hip socket is key.

I can see all that, Chris. They look hard as hell but what is there purpose? Are you doing them to develop hip flexibility to be better at what. BJJ? IMPO it isn't healthy to be too flexible beyond a place of strength in the joint. Imagine an olympIc sprinter who does all flexibility and no strength training. He wouldn't be too fast by the day of the race. Am I missing something? Do they develop power/strength as well?

Since the developers of the Zhao Bao style of Taijiquan had never heard of BJJ, it's safe to assume the basic conditioning exercises of the system weren't developed to enhance Jiu Jitsu techniques.

The ZB exercises help develop very strong and flexible hips, legs and core, they can enhance the performance of any martial art (and most athletic activities in general), but were developed specifically for Taijiquan.

"IMPO it isn't healthy to be too flexible beyond a place of strength in the joint."

The Chinese thought of that too. For this reason, static stretching without strength training isn't found in traditional exercise sets in any of the CIMA.

IMPO "IMPO" is RDCULS.

B2

does IMPO mean "in my professional opinion" .... because, would a professional really use IMPO instead to get out of typing 19 characters???

It seems IMLAO would be more on target.

All these IMPO and IMLAO sounds chinese to me.

IMPO im cool

My MOTHER-IMLAO thinks I'm not.