Internal Discipline is a necessary condition for Compact Form

Internal Discipline is Necessary

D.F.'s opinion: "It's the same for all martial arts; Jujutsu, karate, aikido... Start with big moves and gradually make them smaller."

J.R. replied: Thanks for the opinion, please note 1:40  of the link "Internal Discipline is Necessary" and similar reference to the abdomen, back, core in the video.  Master Stephen Hwa is referring to the presence or absence of "internal discipline in Classical Tai Chi as a necessary and sufficient condition for "compact frame". Big moves of the arms and legs can indeed and sometimes of necessity be made smaller in Karate, Aikido, Jiu-Jitsu.   BTW Master Stephen Hwa taught Classical Tai Chi for years at a Karate studio, Faust's USA Karate, in Rochester, NY and one of my students owns an Aikido, Jiu-Jitsu Dojo and learned the Wu's Style Large Frame from me. I taught the Wu's Style Large Frame (learned from Wu Kwong Yu, Eddie) to the owner of a local Karate Studio, Universal Martial Arts who first saw me doing the Wu's Style Sword Form. Eddie Wu never once mentioned "make them smaller" to me about the movements and I was a disciple. The Karate teacher was featured in Black Belt Magazine for the sheer number of martial arts that he practiced, but I don't recall him mentioning "gradually making his martial art movements smaller". Master Hwa's own teacher's daughter has a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu and teaches the Classical Tai Chi at the Jiu-Jitsu Dojo in Chito, California. To continue, however, the bigness of limb movement being made into the smallness of limb movement even of necessity is not a sufficient condition when it comes to the presence of "internal discipline" where movement originates in the core In one of the Tai Chi classical writings it says: "First seek to stretch and extend (large frame); later seek to be compact (small frame). Then it will be refined and impenetrable". So extend (large) form is first, then compact (small form) is advanced.

Master Hwa said: There is saying in China 内传小架,外传大架, “small Frame reserved For family insider; large frame for everyone else” Small Frame does not mean just have smaller movements. There is a fundamental difference between the small and large frame. It is the internal discipline in movements (all movements are carried out from the torso, not from the limbs) resulted in a small frame.