Greetings,

I'm interested in Mr Docherty's Tai Chi Chuan and wonders if Sifu Tim's and/or other people's opinion about this style.

Best regards,

Neftan

I have never met Mr. Docherty but from what I have read and been told about him he teaches the Wu Jian Quan style of Tai Ji Quan that he learned while working as a policeman in Hong Kong. I believe he also won a full-contact tournament somewhere in Asia after practicing Tai Ji Quan. From what I understand, his art is taught with a decidedly martial slant.

There is a martial slant to his stuff but it is geared to the competition area, fair enough if that is your thing.
Also if you like to be fed info slowly this style is the place for you. You first learn a short form 'square', then you learn the 'round' version. You then progress to the 'square' long form and then the 'round' long form.

Why i am not sure, maybe it is to do with cash. The major problem with all styles of martial arts and people who "teach" them.

Unfortunately, we forget that being adept at a skill, eg, martial arts, does not mean that we have the right qualities and skills to imaprt that knowlegde to interseted parties.

Bitter? Me? Never!

He is a decent enough guy and so are his instructors. I would say that the push hands they is more like a very basic and unrefined wrestling method. Put these so called pushing hands champions in with a half decent greco-roman/amateur/freestyle wrestler, game over.

Thank you for your responses!.
From what I've read and heard, Mr Docherty's Taijiquan does consist of freestyle/competition pushing hands, but also a great deal of applications, pushing hands drills, Neikung and conditioning. I will certainly take a few classes and build my own opinion.

Mr Paul, I'm curious, why the bitter tone? I don't want to critize, I'm only curious. Have you been practising WTCC under Mr Docherty?

Best regards

Neftan

Still no answer on that question, er? Hmm...

I've seen Mr. Docherty in a few situations and a number of his students and I'd have to say that Paul is pretty much accurate. The stuff they call Tai Chi is just another western version of muscular stuff that is passed off as Tai Chi. The main justification for it seems to be 'but we can fight with it'. And I suspect some of his people can 'fight' just fine. What they can't do is Tai Chi that resembles that of any real experts I've ever seen. And it's not really worth a big discussion.

When surfing different martial arts forums on the net, one thing keeps occuring to me. There are so many experts around, and everyone seems to be great martial arts players with really deep knowledge and lots of experience. Geez, how lucky we are that they are all gathered around on the net so we can ask them for their expertise! It's funny though that there are so few people telling good things about others.

I've not only seen mr Docherty, I've also bothered to talk to him and ask him to push hands with me. After that, I took a few lessons. I think he is real expert. Anyway, I learned a lot of good stuff from him and of some of his students. And yes, to me, it's Tai Chi Chuan indeed. A lot of his students do compete, but then again, there are yet more that doesn't. It's up to you.

By the way, I saw a nice car at the local car sell today. It looked like a good car. But I don't know for sure if I'm going to buy it until I've made a test drive.

Hi Jackolow:

You use the phrase "to me, it's Tai Chi Chuan indeed". That's an interesting benchmark. Could you tell us how you arrived at that conclusion?

I see where you're going. But no, that wasn't a "benchmark" or any other authentication of whether it is "real" Tai Chi or not. It was just a personal opinion based on the facts that I've actually bothered to talk to and learn stuff from someone before discarding him/her. It is also a personal opinion based on my own experience, limited or not, of Tai Chi and research on the classics. But of course, my understanding of the classics maybe very unlike that of others.

Point is, people do stuff differently. That's why there are different styles of Tai Chi.

Personally, I prefer learning from people instead of talking bs behind their backs on the internet.

Neftan, I suggest you to go and take a few classes and find out for yourself what it is like. Preferably from mr Docherty himself, or any other of his more advanced students.

Nuff said.

Well the different styles all have a commonality when done traditionally and correctly. So just because you are doing something that is 'different' doesn't mean it is also 'valid'. And the classics refer to that commonality so if you have an understanding 'unlike that of others', maybe it's worth further research. And people can teach Tai Ch'i right or wrong and you can know it or see it without having to spend years studying with them to verify it. Why not go see some of the top Yang stylists when they visit, or the top Wu stylists, or the top Chen guys? The top ones do very similar things, which surprised me at first. None of the ones I've seen of the experts do things the way Docherty does, so maybe the experts are wrong. Again, it's a matter of what you can see and what your experience is. Not to mention that teacher loyalty distorts most beliefs.

As far as the local experts, have anyone ever noticed that the unspoken credo is often 'I can smack you around so that means what I do is good Tai Ch'i"? Yet you don't see these guys in some of today's UFC matches. And yes, I know Docherty entered a tournament once and won (there are literally thousands of tournaments) and I saw the video of him. It was simple kick-punch and he had studied for what, 9 months, and yet he called what he did Tai Ch'i. Surely we can keep the level of conversation above the surreal. Like maybe you can give more facts-oriented support for your opinions and let's discuss it as objectively as we can.

1. Who are to decide what's "real", "valid" and "right"? You? Man, you must be Zhang Sanfeng reincarnated.

2. There are actually students of Docherty, and students of his students, that participate in various NHB-themed competitions like Vale Tudo. Oh yes, a number of them have actually won too.

3. Docherty won the SE Asian championships in 1982 with a single punch knock out, and he had been practicing for Tai Chi for two years by then, not 9 months. Funny that you've "seen" that video footage and "saw" a kick-punch. I actually have it on tape right here.

Conclusion: Don't judge people of what you've merely "seen" and "heard", and for f*ck's sake keep the facts straight.

Sorry, I can't match your mouth boxing skills (and I'm not interested in doing so either) so I'll just go back and actually practise my Tai Chi instead of debating on who's right and who's wrong. Cheers.

Oh my. I think he's getting excited. He put me down. :^)

Hi Jackolow,
Since you are a student of Mr. Docherty, I have a question for you. I have heard he teaches a set of Nei Gong exercises, divided into Yin and Yang sets, and that these are for developing power. Could you tell me a little about them? Are they originally part of the Wu style or did he learn them separately? Thanks,


Tim

Dan gives his lineage and the sources of his training in his 1996 book "Complete Tai Chi Chuan." I don't have that right here, but as I recall, he says these neigong exercises are no longer extant or taught in the Wu Jianquan lineage (either through the late Ma Yuehliang's group in Shanghai or the Wu family in Hong Kong and Canada). Cheng Ting-hung is Docherty's taijiquan teacher. Cheng's uncle studied with Wu Jianquan for a time . . . but didn't learn the 24 neigong exercises. The "northern Wu" lineage through Wang Maozhai doesn't teach this neigong system either.

Which makes me wonder if it came from the refugee Buddhist monk (Qi) who, according to Docherty, had studied with Yang Luchan's student Wang Lanting. It could be that these exercises were added after Yang Luchan's time (by Qi, for example)--although one of the well-known anecdotes about Yang Luchan relates how he curled up and absorbed the blows of multiple attackers without injury to himself, although the attackers later suffered. That at least hints that Yang followed a similar neigong practice.

Zheng Manqing apparently taught his Malaysian students (and William C. C. Chen in NYC as well)a neigong practice as part of training to take blows. This is not something that Zheng learned from his teacher Yang Cheng-fu (supposedly it comes from his training with Zhang Qinlin in the Daoist neigong of Zuo Lai-feng). Nigel Sutton, a countrymate of Docherty's, writes about this in some detail. No American student of Zheng Manqing's ever reported learning that kind of neigong.

In addition to what Tom wrote; there is a teacher in Malaysia (Long) who teaches Wu style Tai Chi Chuan. A friend of mine has been there and they did exercises very similar to those that Docherty teaches, but with a much less demanding physical nature.

I asked Dan about the Neigong last summer, he said that the Neigong exercises he teaches are mainly from Wu Jianquan and Qi Minxuan. I believe that the Neigong was systemized into a Yin and a Yang set with 12 exercises each by Cheng Tinhung. He learned from both master mentioned before, as well as his uncle Cheng Winghung. Winghung learned some stuff from Wu Jianquan, but later when he realised that Tinghung learned much more, Winghung tried to make his nephew show him the "good stuff". Tinghung, however, refused to do so.

The Yin set is mainly for developing health and physique, while the Yang set is designed to increase power and physical strength. There are a number of martial applications/techniques of some of the Neigong exercises as well. The students are taugh the Yin set first. The exercises are both of plyometric as well as isometric nature. The Yin set takes approximately 45min to complete at the basic level.

I hope that answered your question, Tim.

I saw this same stuff discussed a couple (or more?) years ago on another list and some of the contributors were Chinese from Hong Kong, etc. A lot of "secret nei gongs" are suspected of being simple Shaolin add-ons by a teacher who doesn't really do good Tai Chi. For instance, it was pointed out that the acknowledged Chinese long-term students of Cheng Man Ching from Taiwan all say there is not a secret qigong. Add this to the fact that Cheng Man Ching apparently only stayed a few months at most in Malaysia and you begin to smell something rotten all the way from Denmark.

If I remember the conversation correctly, Cheng Ting Heng was reputed by some of the Docherty crowd to have never studied Shaolin, but some of the Hong Kong Chinese types chirped up to say "oh yes he did and it was Hungar" (I may have got the Hungar wrong, but it was one of the notorious hard styles like Hungar regardless). There was something else really wrong about the Cheng Ting Heng curriculum vitae but I wasn't paying a lot of attention.

And none of the above is to single out or slight the Cheng Man Ching crowd or the Docherty crowd. I have now gotten resigned to the fact that about 80% of the stories fed to westerners have a bit of schmooze in them, including some of the ones I've been told over the years.

If you were to go visit a doctor, how to choose the right one? Mainly you would go round asking a name from people who you know. After getting this name, how checking his 'validity'? First you would like to be sure this person had studied in regular university (i.e under a reputed teacher), finishing the requested curriculum (getting a degree or certification from the teacher). Finally, you would ask to see this doctor and only AFTER this meeting you'd put your health in his hands (follow his intruction). Big help for you to decide to follow his advices or not(learn from him) it would be getting to know if this doctor succeded most of the times in the past (won fights) and his students too.
Very often,even if all this conditions happen to be in existence, people do not like the doctor they have found. Funny, no?

I'd say most of the criticisms of Cheng Ting-hung were from people who'd had their asses whipped by Cheng or his students. Certainly I've never seen or heard valid criticisms from people who actually studied the Wu style taijiquan or the neigong system in any depth.

As for the neigong being a "Shaolin add-on" . . . that's a rather ambiguous criticism. Whatever creation myth you want to go by, taijiquan has strong historical connections with the mostly-mythical and overbroad term "Shaolin". If you subscribe to the Zhang San Feng story, well he did time in the Shaolin temple and likely learned his martial arts basics and techniques there before he saw the crane and snake fight (in a dream). Chen Wanting took the strongly Shaolin form Taizuquan and adapted it, along with the overwhelmingly "Shaolin" techniques of General Qi's combat manual, to form the original 7 routines of Chenshi taijiquan. Shaolin styles had their own kinds of equally-valid "internal" training at their higher levels. Even if Cheng Ting-hung or his teachers "added on" the neigong exercises, it doesn't mean the neigong exercises aren't "taijiquan" if they don't conflict with taijiquan "principles". Clearly they add to the fighting effectiveness of Docherty's taijiquan. Of course, those who can't take the training or those who've had their asses whupped in matches with Docherty or his students decry his training methods as "mere" Shaolin or "karate," turning their bleeding noses up in the air at it.

Zheng Manqing did not teach all of his students equally, discriminating even among his Taiwanese students. William C. C. Chen was a bai rumen disciple of Zheng, living with him for three years and receiving and helping Zheng teach the neigong set that was also taught during Zheng's 6 months in Malaysia. 6 months would have been more than enough time to learn the basics of Zheng's Zuo Lai Feng-influenced neigong system.

Other Taiwanese students did not--or did not learn well enough to teach it. This includes Tao Ping Tsiang, who has other methods to deal with vigorous attacks. No American students of Zheng's learned the Zuo Lai Feng neigong system. I don't know if Wang Yen-nien teaches it to his students; Wang and Zheng learned the Zuo Lai Feng system before the 1949 Revolution from the same Daoist teacher, Zhang Qinlin (who was a taijiquan student of Yang Jianhou).

Most of the students in the Zheng Manqing lineage who actively train for and engage in fighting come from either the Malaysian group or William C. C. Chen's school. Those are the senior students of Zheng's who learned that particular neigong system.

Jackolow and Tom,
Thanks for the information!

Hi,

Interesting discussion, but regardless of where they come from, what abilities do these exercises give the practitioner? Has anybody seen Sifu Docherty or his seniors demonstrate what can be done with their Nei Kung?

Just out of interest.

best,
Graham