John’s Tai-Blog @ Camp Tai ChiTai Chi and anything I can relate to Tai Chi … like life

Why People Who Aren’t Competitive Should Compete

Whenever there’s an opportunity to attend a nearby competition, my teacher and the owner of Mei Zhong always works hard to get students to join.  When I first started taking tai chi I wasn’t a very serious and I think I’d only been studying for about 6 months and I really wasn’t interested.  Miriam still managed to talk me into it.

I practiced the one short form I could comfortably finish and headed off to North Carolina with the School.  When my time came to get out on the floor I was pretty nervous.  So nervous in fact that I used the wrong opening move and then, I felt, barely managed to get through the rest of the form. I didn’t do very well but I still had a good time.  One of the judges told me I was too good to be using such a simple form, so that helped me feel a lot better about my performance.

I’m not extremely competitive although it is fun to win.  What I really got out of that experience, and what other students get out of competing, is a considerable improvement in our abilities.  Knowing you’re going to be competing gets you looking at things very differently.  You start noticing things you want to change.  Things your teacher has been telling you for a while, for some reason suddenly make sense and you find you’re doing better than you were just a short time ago. It heightens your senses and now before I compete I focus almost exclusively on one or two form sets and work them over and over.

The weekend before last our school attended the US Open International Martial Arts Championship in Atlanta, GA. The 48 form saber set takes up more than 30′ of space so I modified it somewhat to fit within 15 to 20 feet.  The changes were simply stepping back at times rather than stepping forward and the look of the form didn’t change much at all. This year it paid off and I won a gold metal with that form.

I didn’t do quite as well with my open hand form. There I took second place to another Yang Style Player, John Lutz from New Orleans.  He did a great job, I enjoyed meeting him, and I’m looking forward to visiting his school in the future.  The rest of my school made a very good showing.

Mei Zhong had 7 competitors there that day and we left with 13 metals.  Everyone managed to leave with a metal in their respective categories.  We had people in beginner, intermediate and advanced levels as well as executive (senior) and adult categories and we all had fun.

The thing I noticed most about the Mei Zhong Students was they each had a marked jump in skill from only a month or two ago.  It really is amazing how much competitions make us better and better tai chi players. So my advice is to look for a competition somewhere nearby and enter an event.  Win or loose, it will change the way you approach your practice and that’s makes winners.

Bye for now,

John

P.S. Thanks to Martha’s husband Doug for taking these photos. The group shot from left to right Carl Hierholzer, Jan Peterson, Alan Mason, Michael Holland (our support), John Crewdson, Martha Morrison, and Lyman Hurd.