Classes
Download our classes leaflet in PDF format.
Firstly, we should point out that we can not accept absolutely everyone as a student. The material we cover is of a very martial nature and this requires a fairly mature attitude to deal with. You will also need to be quite keen to learn martial techniques to participate in our classes - if you were just hoping to get fit, or cure some nagging health problem, you may well not enjoy what we do. Frankly, you shouldn't even do it for the "feelgood factor" - if you ever want to be any good, martial training is both difficult and painful.
See our article aimed at new Tai Chi students to gain some insights into the less fun aspects of martial training: 3 Things You Are Going To Hate About Tai Chi
Learning a martial art is like learning a new language: you will constantly need to build on what you have learned in previous lessons, so it is essential that you practice between classes. We also ask virtually all of our new students to start at the beginning of our syllabus, regardless of any previous experience, because every school understands and teaches the fundamental principles a little differently and you will need to understand our foundation material before you can move on to other things.
The techiques you'll learn at the beginning, while being fairly powerful and versatile, are probably not the world's most devastating fighting techniques. To start with, we teach you the techniques that best illustrate the movement principles you need to learn. Neither will those techniques be able to deal with all possible forms of attack, which is why we need to teach you a complete martial system: no single technique is right for all occasions. We endeavour to make our students into effective fighters as quickly as possible, but the techniques require plenty of practice and repetition, so patience and concentration are necessary.
If you think you'd like to come along, please continue to our class details page >>
If you're not yet sure whether our classes are for you, you might want to take our "Kung Fu Test" below.
Kung Fu Test:
Question your commitment.
Ask yourself the following 5 questions:
1) Are you prepared to work hard and practice regularly between classes in order to develop good fighting skills?
If your answer is "well I'm not that bothered" or "look - I was just looking for something to do of an evening and I thought this might be fun, but I could just as easily do something else" or "well I'm not that bothered about being particularly good at it," then martial arts classes are probably not the right choice for you.
If just reading these words makes you indignant - if you think "well that's ridiculous - I couldn't possibly make every week" or "I don't have time to practice between classes!" then again - martial arts are not for you. We understand that people might have to miss the occasional week due to ill health, or because they have a holiday booked, but students should always come to classes if they are well and able to do so. That doesn't mean that you have to be young, strong and healthy to participate, but you must not have an aversion to becoming as strong and fit as possible. If, for example, you are a woman and you think that developing muscles is an undesirable or unfeminine thing, then our classes are not for you. Or if you are obese but you don't actually want to lose any weight, again - our classes are not for you.
2) Are you prepared to be taught by women and children?
Trust us - we know what we are doing and we know how to teach it. That said, our two main instructors are both women. We have students who are fairly young in years, but who may be senior to you in terms of their knowledge of the combat arts we teach and the way that we teach them. We might sometimes ask them to help you out when you get things wrong. There can be no room for false pride here - if you are prepared to take instruction from us, we can teach you, if you are not, then we can't.
3) Are you prepared to be tested?
As with many martial styles, to learn with us, you need to be prepared to take grading exams. We need to know that you have fully grasped certain skills before you can progress to the next level.
4) Are you prepared to endure pain and hardship?
If you ever want to be good at fighting, you will have to endure the pain of physical and mental development - building strong leg muscles for one thing. You will also have to learn how to hurt people and how to put up with being hurt. In training you should try hard not to cause or sustain any kind of lasting injury, but you will need to emotionally and physically condition yourself to be able to withstand and deliver pain. A well-rounded fighter needs to be able to take knocks, kicks and punches; the pain of joint locks; and the pain of being thrown around on hard surfaces.
You will also need to develop the self discipline to practice when you don't want to and to work dilligently on things you find difficult, boring or unpleasant.
5) Will you recognise your responsibilities?
Martial artists are taking on a big responsibility. As your skills develop, you will learn in ever greater detail how to hurt other people. With this knowledge comes the responsibility to never use your skills without very genuine justification. You will also learn how not to injure people with ever greater degrees of accuracy. You should generally err on the side of caution and only use reasonable or appropriate levels of force. The severity of your response should be proportional to the threat.
Lives could depend on your fighting skills - yours, that of an attacker, or maybe those of other people under your protection. This isn't a responsibiltity to undertake lightly. If you had the attitiude of "well, I'm not bothered about being a good driver, I just want the bare minimum required to get me through my driving test," you'd be a menace on the road.
People who come to T'ai Chi / Taiji, and the other so-called "internal" martial styles, often have (at best) a very half-hearted attitude towards developing fighting ability. This is because the arts have been so heavily promoted in recent years for their health-cultivating, aesthetic or some would even claim spiritual properties. If you were hoping that Taiji training would be less martial than the training of other martial arts, you are going to be very disappointed by our classes. To our knowledge, we actually practice quite a lot more contact work in our classes than people in many other martial styles. If you like careful and precise, hands-on martial training, you'll probably like what we do. If you prefer Forms / Katas / Jurus - you'll probably hate it, because we emphasise developing hands-on fighting ability first.
As a student we expect you to:
1) Attend classes and practice regularly between classes.
2) Be courteous and respectful to each other and to us. You must stay in touch with us and let us know when you can't make a class.
3) Always try your best to learn the skills we teach - don't just think "oh we'll probably go over that again next week." Try to leave each class with a good grasp of the techniques and skills we've covered, so that you will be able to practice them before your next class (this doesn't have to be with a training partner - you can gain a lot from practicing on your own, providing you imagine that you are performing the techniques with a real opponent.)
4) Commit yourself to the style we are teaching you, rather than just coming to Martial Tai Chi for a month or two in order to improve your abilities in other martial styles. You might be paying us for our time, but we do expect you to respect the arts we teach enough not to simply plunder them for a few snippets of useful information.
We ask students not to study other martial arts at the same time as learning with us, because every style has its own ways of moving and learning more than one movement vocabulary will confuse your body, reducing your abilities in both styles. We aim to train you to use Martial Tai Chi body mechanics as much as possible in your everyday life and any time spent moving or training to move in a different way will impede your progress. Without exception, this has proved to be the case in the past with every student we have taught who has tried to study other arts at the same time.
How did you score?
If you agree with the spirit of what we have said so far, we just need you to look through our School Code:
Our School Code
1) People take up martial arts for all kinds of reasons, but there is only one correct reason - and that is to develop fighting skills.
2) People develop fighting skills for all kinds of reasons, but there is only one correct reason - and that is to learn how to protect others and yourself from harm.
3) Train hard. The path to effortlessness is arduous - there are no quick or easy ways to success* If you train hard and push yourself beyond what you thought yourself capable of, you will discover that you are capable of far more than you imagined.
4) Study hard. Recognise that martial arts require commitment. Make great efforts to learn and practice everything that you are taught. Keeping a training journal is always a good idea. Endeavour to practice every day and try to abandon bad or conflicting postural habits or movements. If you can make the physical principles we teach you part of your everyday life, you will not only be able to practice constantly, but your body will always be operating at its most efficient.
5) Cultivate a positive frame of mind and avoid negativity. Focus on building on your successes rather than being demoralised by your failures but always strive to do things better - there is no such thing as "good enough."
6) Avoid competitiveness. Seek only to be all that you can be. Don't compare yourself to others, nor they to you - avoid notions of superiority or inferiority.
7) Emphasise practicality, renounce embellishment and shun superstition. Martial arts were created and developed by soldiers and bodyguards, not by monks, hermits or "immortals". Gongfu / Kung Fu styles contain multiple cultural influences and utilise any ideas that are useful. Divisions around religious lines (such as Buddhist arts and Daoist arts) are essentially untrue. Additionally the modern division into external arts and internal arts or into purely hard or soft styles is fictitious and such notions are completely untraditional.
8) Martial contact practice is more useful than solo "Form" training. Contact work is far more efficient for training fighting ability and movement accuracy and is better for developmental / health & fitness training. Students should practice solo work as well, but should prioritise contact training as often as possible**
9) With greater powers and freedoms comes greater responsibilities. Never use your martial skills unjustifiably or inappropriately - any use of your martial skills should be proportionate to the threat. Furthermore, try to become a more useful and helpful person, ready to lend a hand to others for a worthwhile cause. Remember the School motto: "Safeguard Yourself, Protect Others." As your skill develops, you should grow increasingly prepared to protect the weak and vulnerable.
10) Work hard to adhere to a benevolent moral code. Cultivate benevolence, bravery and honesty in your thoughts, words and deeds. Selflessness is better than selfishness.
*Many martial arts promise their practitioners super-human powers. All are lying. Martial arts are a physical pursuit - not a path to enlightenment or a way of harnessing paranormal forces. Aim for such things and you will stray widely from the goal. Aim for fighting ability and you will accomplish many other things besides. The fighting arts are just that, but practiced diligently for their own sake, they award a great many other benefits.
**Some osteopaths recommend impact training / sports such as martial arts that involve being thrown on hard surfaces as this can help to improve the density and strength of your bones.
If you can abide by this code, you are welcome to come and meet us and watch a lesson or two before committing yourself to joining our school and having to pay your membership fee.
