Q: How fast should I be practicing the forms?

A: Good question! First off, if you are practicing within a group environment, proper Taiji etiquette is to slow your pace down to the slowest member of the group. When practicing solo the simple answer is that you should be practicing the forms at the speed that best suits your purpose. There are three basic speeds that I teach students to use.

Thinking speed

Feeling speed

Reaction speed

Thinking Speed

When you are learning the forms and all the intricacies that are hidden within them, you need to be thinking about what you are physically doing. You’ll need to be thinking about the coiling and sealing and the kicking and the striking. You’ll need to be thinking about applying a “sense of enemy” intent within your forms. Also you’ll to be thinking about weight shifts, proper footwork, proper breathing and what form comes next. There’s a lot to think about! The best pace to follow when performing at thinking speed is to correlate your movement to your breath. Each inhale and exhale should be as long as you can make them and you should match each part of the form to either the inhale or the exhale. All yin movements are matched to the inhale and all yang movements are matched to the exhale. Remember to breathe as deeply as you can during each and every form.

Feeling Speed

Feeling speed is the gold mine of training speeds. At this level of training ones awareness is heightened and you’ll be truly practicing an internal art. The goal here is to use your Yi (mind) to lead the chi. While training at this speed one should be totally immersed into ones self, becoming intimately aware of energy flowing through your body. This feeling can be very subtle and sometimes can be dismissed by the thinking mind as if “I didn’t really feel that” but one needs to be aware of this trap and ignore it. Use your mind to slow the movements down to crawl. Forget about your breath. Concentrate on each and every nuance. Feel everything. Perform each form to absolute completion, expressing the jin at exactly the right time and flow all the forms together.

Reaction Speed

After you get the form sequence mastered and the forms flow naturally and you understand the intent of each and every form, only then can you move on to reaction speed. In this mode you can apply the techniques as you do the forms. One should be Jin training at this point and can apply the trained energy within their practice. A technique is useless unless you can perform it skillfully and in real time against a live opponent. This training is the first step towards sparring practice and even if you do not intend to do any sparring one should still commit at least some of your training time to this modality of training.