Many people including fellow practitioners and even teachers will quickly have their opinions ready about how and how much you should train before you will become proficient in Tai Chi Chuan or any other martial art. However, training martial arts is besides hard work also a personal journey, and it will therefore take you through different lengths and challenges that only you can overcome in your unique way and also at your own pace.
One advice I took to heart is “Regularity over intensity (and duration)”. The biggest takeaway from this is; no matter what anyone says, just remember that to be good at something means that you simply need to do it, regularly. In fact, Taoism has even made it all the way to our modern-day pop culture and some of you may be familiar with the catch phrase from Yoda:
Do or do not, there is no try.
The Tao Te Ching actually has a beautiful verse on this too:
A tree you can barely put your arms around, has grown from a puny little seed.
A tower of nine stories starts with a pile of sand.
The Tao Te Ching also says, do the difficult things when they are easy and do the big things when they are small. Regular training in smaller intervals is therefore a great way to train. And, remember:
- Be mindful during your practice
- Focus on one thing at a time to achieve flow