In a YouTube video that I watched recently, a respected tai chi teacher is asked by an interviewer whether power comes from structure. The teacher replies that, in his view, power does not come from structure. He attempts to demonstrate this on the interviewer by assuming what appear to be compromised, poorly structured postures. He then allows the interviewer to trap, for example, his arms, after which he releases his power (supposedly without using structure) and pushes the interviewer back. During this demonstration, he reiterates that his power does not come from his structure. He says that it comes from sung and/or chi.
I find his demonstration of power impressive, but I think his explanation that it comes from sung and/or chi is misleading and may hold others back from developing their own power. If you know what to look for, you’ll see that when he is in those compromised postures, only part of his structure is really compromised while the structure in the other areas of his body (e.g., the areas the interviewer is not directly pressing up against) is excellent, enabling him to maintain his root and, ultimately, to push the interviewer back.
If he truly had no structure at all, he wouldn’t be able to even stand upright. In fact, he could completely forget about issuing power—he would fall over from just the slightest touch (or resistance) from the interviewer. Instead, it’s obvious throughout the demonstration that he has very cleverly maintained his root (even if it’s just on one leg/one side of his body), keeping the structure there while letting go of the structure in other places, for example, his arm.
By maintaining his structure somewhere else, he is not only able to stand upright and resist force (e.g., gravity, the wind, or the interviewer) but also able to transfer his own force to the interviewer. In order to resist force, you must have structure. And in order to issue force, you must have structure. This is why the first thing I teach is proper structure. In the beginning, we test our structure by using it to resist force. But later, when our structure is proper and able to resist force, we then focus on using it to issue force. (Because in the end, as my own teacher said, “Kung fu is not about taking force, it’s about issuing force.”)
Like many things in life, structure has different levels. Sometimes the structure is obvious—you can see and/or feel the large bones in the body properly aligning and forming the correct angles. Other times, the structure is not as obvious—you may not be able to see it, but a lot of smaller units in the body can align in such a way that they provide a structure that can resist and, ultimately, issue force. Think about how different ballistic glass and Kevlar fabric look and feel, yet both can resist a bullet.
Whether you develop your macro structure or your micro structure (ideally you’d do both), you must always keep one of them in order to resist and issue force. Without structure, there is no power.