If you spend enough time studying the Chinese internal arts and have the opportunities to study with a variety of experts it will soon become obvious that most of those teaching are not teaching realistic self-defense skills. It is also true enough that there are many other good reasons to study Yang-style taiji or baguazhang or any other internal discipline besides being able to defend yourself. Most of us are fortunate enough (or mature enough) to never need to develop such skills.
However, it is also a shame to learn martial skills that you think might be useful but would actually be counter-productive if you ever had to protect yourself or your loved ones from a serious attack.
What do you need to bring to your training? Some physical strength and health is essential to safely train in any martial method that might work in a worse-case-scenario. Unfortunately, such training is not suitable for everyone, especially those with serious health problems or those unused to regular physical activity of any kind, much less that which involves physical contact.
Patience is a useful attribute as internal style martial skills are not learned quickly, especially if you don’t train in them regularly for three to five years. Most modern students don't want to learn so much as they want to feel that they already have all the answers -- preferably yesterday -- although the more patient will settle for tomorrow.
The willingness to “invest in loss” and learn from your mistakes rather than get mad at yourself or your training partner. This is easy to say and harder to put into practice when you are constantly being humilitated by a more experienced student. It becomes essential for students to see the martial learning process as one in which they help each other to identify each other weaknesses in the spirit of helping each other grow as practitioners. Of course, this is easier said than done when egos come into play!
What should you look for in your training? An understanding of balance and body mechanics that relies less on muscle mass and strength and more on leverage, timing, sensitivity and efficient body mechanics (ie, “whole body” usage). For self-defense, it is essential to learn and practice a few methods that suit your body-type and physical attributes so that they become reflexive rather than superficially learning many techniques and solo forms.
Experience at hitting actual targets with some power as opposed to simply “punching the air”. Unfortunately, it’s easy to be smug with the speed of your strikes while doing a fast form or practising solo and a far different thing to learn how to hit without hurting your limbs as well as how to absorb and/or transmit the impact without bouncing off what you hit.
Experience with close-quarters physical contact with your training partners. This is the hardest to cultivate in an internal manner; but even the crudest skill at taking a blow or being thrown will soon teach you many valuable lessons about what relaxation and balance really are all about in relation to self-defense. The lack of experience with any kind of body contact is the main reason that most modern students of these arts would have a rough time trying to apply their skills against a real street fighter or against someone who is really intent on hitting them as opposed to “playing”. You have to have control in your martial contact; but you also have to have contact in order to hope to eventually learn how to avoid it!
What to avoid in your training? An over-emphasis on “sticking and yielding”. These essential skills are often taught counter-productively in terms of self-defense skills to make them easier to understand and practise safely in a large group. In the old days, the average taiji beginner was already a skillful martial artist who needed to refine and "sensitize" his approach and already knew the fundamentals of combat. The average modern beginner, in particular, has no relevant skills to refine and must learn them first.
Complex methods that rely on the compliance of an overly-stiff partner to have any success of application must be avoided. I have met many practitioners over the years who are advocating methods that have no hope of working in “the real world” even though they can seem to work in a classroom setting. It is sad but true that real skill comes from seemingly endless drilling of the basics and then learning how to transcend/forget most of what you have so patiently learned.
In other words, learning structure is essential to learning to react to a complete lack of structure (ie. a real fight); but if you focus on structure for too long it becomes counter-productive to "being without structure" in martial terms. One of the many annoying paradoxes in the internal arts.
Any instructor who tells you that you can learn an effective martial art without any physical effort or risk of physical injury. In the long-run, a competent internal art relies less-and-less on crude strength and technique and it is possible to continue to train with benefit when one is past his or her physical prime. However, an internal art that has some claim to being a true combative art will never be as effortless as it looks to the casual observer.
In particular in taiji, common-sense seems to go out the window if you judge by the number of schools whose teachers make their students fall-over, twitch and throw themselves by a flick of “master’s fingers”. While qi exists and can be manipulated for good and for bad, such exponents are rare and those who make the most noise about controlling qi for martial purposes are usually the least able to demonstrate such skills against anyone except their own students.
Final Words on this Subject I remember reading a translation of an old text on push-hands written in the 1950s in which the old master being quoted as being fond of muttering "True skill is found in small things." I'm beginning to see what he may have meant in relation to the details that are often beyond the comprehension of many beginners.
Speaking of old expressions that are useful in the long-run "Not to hit, is to cheat the student" and "You must eat bitter to be full" are two that hint that martial training may not be as easy as a lot of modern students would like to believe.
Of course, all these sayings are best viewed as starting points for long-term study by those who are serious in the training and have considerable experience. They are of much less value for beginners and even intermediate level practitioners.
Martial taiji in a classroom or demonstration setting resembles the postures and training methods if the practitioner has a lot of skill and experience. Taiji for fighting against a violent and/or skillful opponent would look sloppy and without structure by comparison. Watch a real fight or those sport "matches" that come close to real fighting for some appreciation of how important it is for each practitioner to understand the dynamics of "structure" and "lack of structure". Both must be understood in your body -- not just your head.
Most taiji players only understand structure, not its apparent opposite, even though "lack of structure" is crucial to self-defense skills that might actually prove useful. For example. if a taiji student has never made a fist in their adult lives then they need to learn to do that before they can be taught how to throw a punch, much less defend against one. If you introduce stylistic variations as well (the thumb must be tucked in just-so or one knuckle extends a little further than the others, etc) then even more time and effort is needed on the part of everyone involved. This is structure.
At some point down the road, in self-defense terms, the student must have understood martial structure enough to understand how to adapt instantly to the attacks of someone who can't punch properly "in stylistic terms" but who is able to hit them repeatedly with a large, stupid-looking swing of their arm because that person is 40 lbs heavier and has turned fighting into a hobby they enjoy every drunken weekend.
In other words, to properly understand structure in martial terms, you also have to understand how to adapt to a lack of the same structure (or any structure for that matter) on the part of an attacker. That's what I meant by how a real fight looks fast and sloppy compared to the clean lines of a staged demonstration or working with a partner where each person is trying to help each other learn -- not survive.
As with all training, it is important to practice with a variety of partners: tall people can learn to use the reach of their long arms even more effectively; short people can learn to use a low centre of gravity to "get inside" a taller person's reach; heavy people can learn to use their mass even more effectively; slim people can learn to use their flexibility to even greater effect; etc.
Fortunately, few of us will ever have to use our martial skills for anything more demanding than friendly practice. In addition, NO martial training can guarantee that you will be able to successfully defend yourself against any aggressor. However, such training should give you a "fighting chance" and, properly taught and practised, internal arts training is an insurance policy that also pays the dividends of physical and emotional good health.