Teacher chi: the path to the "dark side"
In my recent article on zhan zhuang I referred to martial arts teachers who start "believing their own hype" and the tendency this has to make the teacher's students more prone to becoming complicit (usually unconsciously) in the process. This is something today's marital artists commonly call "teacher chi" (a term first coined, I believe, by respected uechi ryu karate instructor Dana Sheets ). In my experience, you often (though by no means always) see "teacher chi" in schools that test "pushing" . Now I want to be clear that in general I think tests of "pushing" are fine: solid structure can give you a good foundation for developing a strong push. If such tests are presented appropriately, I have no issue with them at all. An example of an unobjectionable "pushing test" is the yiquan one below. Nonetheless, I think that the data gained from such a "test of pushing" is of limited value. Wh...