It needs a strong body, but even more so, a a strong intention, focus and sensitivity, to be able to develop martial abilities in Tai-Chi Chuan. It is a painful and strenuous, but at the same time rewarding and enjoyable process. Tai-Chi Chuan is a vehicle for health and spiritual cultivation, meaning, that the ability to fight is only one of the mediums within which the Art of Tai-Chi Chuan works. Ironically the ability to use Tai-Chi Chuan for fighting, runs parallel with the capacity to not fight, to not contract within a stressful situation. Fighting is rather a by product of Tai-Chi Chuan. Never the less, it is a very effective Martial Art, especially because of the training, to keep equanimity within diversity.
To be able, to use Tai-Chi Chuan and Internal Martial Arts for fighting or even in self defence situations, one needs a lot of training, more then in most martial arts and there also needs to be a specially focused training. After a year of boxing training, for example, one will be able to fight, after a year of Tai Chi Chuan training, one has laid the basics to begin to train effective techniques. In our school we do sparring sessions from light to hard. Sparring is not exactly self defence, but it allows to get used to stress. And we also do sessions, where we work with the physical and emotional (nervous system) mechanics of self defence situations. Sparring is not a must, for those, who have other aims, like health, raising life quality, spiritual development, but from a certain point in training, the martial aspects helps to develop the other areas.
There are three types of fighting. Play, dominance, war.
The first, the play category, includes everything from cooperative to competitive partner training. Usually people do never get badly hurt in this category of playful fighting. The playful category, for example within in sparring can switch into a dominance fight. If it is a fight for dominance, much more violent intention is involved. But the intention is still not, to kill the other one. An martial arts match can be in that category, or a street brawl. A fight for dominance is usually not deadly, but the injuries can be much worse, then in a sportive, playful fight, and there is even a certain chance to get killed. The war category of fighting is about killing each other. Its about survival, a you or me situation.
Self Defence is aimed at making the survival chance of someone in such a situation higher. The problem is, that one cannot ‚fake‘ that situation within training. It is what it is. What the body will be able, or not able to do in such a situation is hard to tell, and can be very surprising. People, who had to be repeatedly in such situations, found ways to prepare for that kind of violence. There exist different opinions on that theme. Even here, something may work for one person, but not so much for another.
Hard Training
Understanding the principles and techniques of a martial art and being able to apply them effectively within a safe and compliant setting is not enough, to be prepared for an actual situation of danger. It needs another element. Stress testing, and or sparring. An uncomfortable situation, that simulates danger to the body. Not for learning techniques, but for having the experience of strong violent pressure on the system, without switching into survival mode. One needs that intensity, to experience, if the learned techniques and the principles work at all under such circumstances. And more important, if the body is able to act in such a situation, instead of going into freeze. By going into that simulation of danger again and again and increasing the intensity of the stress, the body mind system learns to switch into a state, that is neither fight, flight or freeze, but concentrated presence and action. In a way the body goes into a fight mode, but not blindly. There is a very high intensity in that mode, the killer instinct is awake, but contained, which can be called a warrior state of being.
Soft Training.
The other exercise is slow partner training, training body mechanics, making it possible for the nervous system, to learn new ways, to deal with different situations. One may think, that one is optimally prepared, if one does exclusively hard sparring, maximum pressure training. That is not the experience of most people. One needs to get comfortable to the highest degree within hard pressure testing situations, yes. The problem is, that usually because of the speed and intensity, one will always, intuitively use, what works best in such a situation. To learn new techniques and solutions, and to implement freshly learned principles, one needs to train slowly. The slow flowing partner training allows awareness of tension, emotions and states of the body. One will experience all the fight-flight mechanics as in a hard sparring, just much softer, so that one needs to deliberately listen to them and to release. Like that one can access deeper levels. Especially, if one knows, how ones body reacts in a fast and intense situation, it is possible to realize, the subtle tensions in the body and mind within cooperative rather slow partner training. This is the best and fastest way, to change ones abilities.
The experience of controlled violence within sparring and the awareness and relaxed presence, that is a result of the slow flowing partner training, changes the awareness and presence of the person in everyday life. Many potentially dangerous situations can be avoided with these skills. Which is the best self defence. Not only dogs smell tension and fear, people do too.
In our school no one is forced, to do hard sparring. Many though find a liking to it, who would never have thought so before hand. A side effect of such harder training, is an increased ability to relax in everyday life and into the softer exercises, like sensing hands, pushing hands (tui shou). Even though I think hard sparring is very important, it is irresponsible to push students unpreparedly into it. Injuries and demotivation will be a likely outcome.
A personal account
In my early teens I experienced the effectiveness of different layers of training first hand. I trained Karate at that time. I was in intermediate level. In my school we did not do really do hard sparring until reaching an advanced level. One day a new martial arts school came to town and I went there to try out their training. They did a lot of hard sparring from the very beginning. I had to painfully and shamefully realize, that many techniques did not work, that had worked in the light kind of sparring I had experienced before. I suffered several concussions. If I put the sparring into a category, that I experienced at the new school, I would say it was dominance level intensity. Then, in the same time period, I had unfortunately a situation in which I was seriously attacked. Awareness switched into another mode, time slowed down, and the body seemed to act on itself, suddenly I applied very effectively, what I had learned in the slower softer partner training.