Thomas Campbell

I met Michael Calandra 12 years ago and he was already showing good taiji skills. He's been training with Chen Zhonghua all that time and more, and his progress in understanding really shows in his teaching. The key point is that in this style of Chen taiji, the key is in the solo form sequence practice--"the form is everything," as Calandra says at the end. The solo form is the place where they work on solo body conditioning and coordination, through repetition of the form (20 to 30 times, sometimes more, every day, for the serious practitioners). Beginning exercises like the positive and negative circle are more for explication.

Yes "it's all from China," as Calandra says, but the consistency and logic of the teaching is fairly modern. Chen Zhonghua's teacher, Hong Junsheng, did not learn this way from Chen Fake. HJS really examined the movement logic of the Chen Yilu form in close detail and developed practice principles that I think improved the chances of his students "getting it." Chen Zhonghua with his background in teaching and his excellent translation skills has improved on the teaching of HJS, in my view.

That said--CZH's explanations and skills are not quite the same as his senior, Liu Chengde. I think their movement and understanding differ in some key ways. Dan may have some thoughts about the differences, since he's played with Liu and studied CZH's movement on video clips in some detail. I think Liu focuses on pulling through the kua and the connections with dantien and lower back (yao) more than on biomechanical alignment and turning of the hip joints.