Jiaziquan!

Courtesy of Mr. Wang Weitao.






You can see the guy's getting tired at the end. The newer compulsory forms don't even begin to compare to the endurance needed for this.

I'll be damned... finally a video of Jiazuquan. Man, that makes me tired just watching it. Great job finding that Blake.

Geez! This guy is awesome. Look how good he is! He stuck every single stance and transitioned between as fluidly as water. He made it look kind of easy. Im intimidated by this form. LOL. No, seriously..i am.

Hehe, he makes it look easy until about 2/3 through, then you see him start to lose steam. I'd like to see modern wushu athletes try to stick it through this form. No amount of fancy jump kick training can compare to the grueling up-and-down motions in this. Can you imagine if they taught this to NFL football players; football would be much more intense for sure. Though, players careers wouldn't last nearly as long due to joint injury.

I was confused as to whether the performer was named Weitao Wang, and thought "well, I guess it's just a coincidence, he has the same name as the Weitao we know." Now I see his name is Zhao Changjun, lol. Thanks a bunch for providing this clip Weitao, been looking for a clip of Jiazu for quite some time.

Yeah, Weitao sent me a random email with a link to this. I gave him a link to this forum so I hope he visits.

Of course I always have something contrary to say. I actually like seeing the flaws in this performance. You can tell he's young, athletic, nervous and adrenalized. He reminds me a bit of you back in the day Eryn (perhaps a bit more precise). Many of the movements are rushed where the arms are ahead of the body and the motion is not clear. I just don't get the sense of control that is there from the best performers. On his first tornado kick, he doesn't stick the landing (which Eryn is notorious for because of over rotating with his high acrobatic kicks). Towards the end you can see it starts to look like he has that feeling of moving through sand that I (and others) know all too well from this form. For some reason whenever I did this form all out, my teeth would actually hurt afterwards! That being said, he does a great job in making all his stances, his dragonfly/armflower motion is awesome, and his energy throughout is actually quite awesome. Hen hao! Also, if you check out other links to this guy more recently, he has some very excellent performances that outshine this one, although they are easier forms from what I've seen. It's great to finally see this in its entirety done by someone outside of 3 emperors.

For example, here is the same guy with a top notch modern wushu performance.

Nice, you can see how his skill matured over the years. Even though his form might look better, I bet he'd still be winded and somewhat sluggish after 2/3 the way through Jiaziquan.

Way to depress the hell out of me, guys. I will never be even 1/276th as good as that guy. I might as well just give up now. Chris does drills in the advanced class from jiazi and we look like total crap compared to that guy.

Just another reason I should stick to internal. I'm much better at knocking people down than being an acrobat. Or maybe I should just find the right courthouse and get my concealed carry permit.