Combat tai chi’s unique grab defences
Counters to common grabs and restraining holds are often the bread and butter of many martial arts’ self-defence syllabuses. While these type of attacks may rank a distant second in street fights, behind a wild punch and a flying boot, they are nevertheless dangerous and likely to be applied in some form in the worst kinds of assault, such as attempted rape or kidnapping. While many systems advocate a complex series of steps to extricate oneself from an attacker’s grip, tai chi simply teaches you to use your bodyweight to quickly destroy the opponent’s balance, as Master Xiaotong Huang demonstrates.
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If someone grabs your arms, how do you respond? Most people — even many of those with training — would simply react naturally by pulling their arms back quickly, while yelling at the attacker and possibly kicking randomly. This, of course, is fighting force with force and will do little against the bigger, stronger opponent that you’re likely to be facing in such an attack.
Combat tai chi practitioners, on the other hand, apply the principle of ‘giving up and following’ — meaning rather than fighting the attacker’s force with your own opposing force, you instead go with his force and then attack his balance at an angle appropriate to exploit the weak point in his stance. The response in this scenario, therefore, is to ‘give up’ your arms, follow the attacker’s pulling and then strike him. This may seem very dangerous, as you’re initially moving closer to the opponent instead of escaping from him, but by ‘borrowing force’ from the opponent’s pulling, a tai chi fighter can easily enter and counter-attack strongly while the attacker is unprepared.
This combat tai chi principle is excellent for defence against all kinds of grabs and holds when it is applied correctly. That means giving up that part of the body the attacker is seeking to control, following the opponent’s movement and moving as close to him as possible in order to strike him. This requires courage and confidence on the part of the tai chi fighter, along with ‘hearing’ skills — that is, the ability to feel the opponent’s intention, primarily via his level and direction of force.
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If Huang’s waist is bear-hugged, he uses both his upper and lower limbs, and trunk, to release himself. Here he stops a front bear-hug.
Huang uses the ‘give-up-and-follow’ principle in a similar way against a rear bear-hug, destroying his attacker’s base.
Here, Huang defends the rear bear-hug in a different way by stepping behind his attacker as he drops his bodyweight.
If one of Huang’s thighs is controlled, he utilises his upper limbs and waist to defend it.
In order to be able to apply this principle in various fighting situations, first of all, we need to know two three-sections (san jie jin) in our body, from where internal powers can be generated.
In the 18th century, Wang Zongyue, one of the great tai chi masters, said in his book The Treatise on Tai Chi Quan: “Fundamentally, it is giving up yourself to follow others” as “the opponent doesn’t know me, I alone know him”.
The tai chi way is to never struggle to escape an opponent; you should calm down, give up the part of your body controlled, follow him, and then borrow his force to use against him. This is she ji cong ren.
About the author: Master Xiaotong Huang is head of the Unlimited Tai Chi Group (UTCG) in Sydney and has been teaching combative Chen-style tai chi for self-defence since 2002. He is a member of the Tai Chi Australia Association and has won gold medals in its competitions. He began his training in 1988 under Master Zhang Bing Dou and has also studied in China under Master Ma Hong.
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