Are You Making This Tai Chi Mistake: Swimming Knees

Ken Gullette demonstrates a mistake that is common in Tai Chi Chuan -- "swimming knees." When shifting weight in your Tai Chi (also spelled Taiji) movements, don't let your knees move and wobble side-to-side. From the waist down, your body is like the trunk of a tree. You lose your root when your knees "swim." Another common mistake is collapsing the knees, but that is another video. Ken has studied the internal arts for 35 years. Get access to 1,000 video lessons and live online classes with personal instruction -- try Ken's website for two weeks free at www.internalfightingarts.com.

[@studiolivkba]

Amazing to just see in just a tiny bit of movement that you done these movements for decades Ken. Thanks for the advice for this beginners mind.

[@KenGullette]

Thanks, Tobias.

[@joenowak]

Thank you for the good advice.

[@henxinggan]

I love your intro.

[@olivermueller5361]

Thanks a lot, Ken. Very insightful and useful as always!

[@simonseymour3099]

I like this thank you

[@blockmasterscott]

It took me a solid year to break that swimming knee habit.

[@DennisMace]

Excellent point, we see this error in many Bagua Zhang practitioners and teachers as well, not just Taiji Quan. Thank you Ken. 🙏🏻

[@goblinsdammit]

This information might have prevented my tai chi knee injury.

[@gossedejong9248]

top lesson! thank you

[@jamiemilliken6032]

Great demonstration. I have been working on this for a while (years!). I've made plenty of progress and can keep a pretty stable root when moving at "learning speeds." But I find that when I try to go full speed, it tends to break down. But I guess that is true gongfu - putting in the hours so that the root remains no matter the speed. Thanks for the inspiration!

[@KenGullette]

Thanks, Jamie.

[@yinyangtom]

Thank you for sharing this important information! I have a question and I hope it´s not rude! How do you incooperate silk reeling method when the knees dont move? I mean from the ankles up to the knees, up to the hip etc.? Thomas

[@KenGullette]

It's a good question, Thomas. Spiraling uses the knees the same way it does the shoulders and the elbows when you spiral through the arms. This concept of swimming knees doesn't mean the knees don't move at all. If you put your hand around my knee while I'm going through a movement, you are going to feel something happening, but major spiraling is in the tissues, muscles, fascia and other parts of the calf and thigh in the leg. Likewise, if you clamp your hand tightly on my shoulder when I'm doing arm movements, you'll feel the joint relaxing and opening during parts of the movement. Think of the elbow as you do a movement such as the final part of "Lazy About Tying the Coat," or even "Single Whip." The elbow acts almost like a pivot point, but the elbow itself shouldn't be swinging wildly and without control. Otherwise, your opponent could easily control it. Likewise, the knee is a pivot point for the leg, and it will bend and unbend, but it shouldn't swing side to side when you are going through a movement.

[@yinyangtom]

@@KenGullette ahhh, that was very helpful, now I understand. The example with Single whip elbow made it clear. Thank you very much for your time and effort in explaining that! Greetings from Austria Thomas

[@joelorenz2679]

very interesting actually

[@sdbrown67]

Very odd, I was always told and shown to silk reel with the knees. This came down to me through Liming Yue from Chen Zheng Lei. I attended the 2023 seminar and could see Chen Zheng Lei demonstrate knee rotation using the knee to press down on the opponents knee. I always minimise the extention of the knee and try not to protrude it too far but the move you do in this video just makes you look rigid.

[@KenGullette]

Silk-reeling in the knees is not the same as swimming knees. It's cool how much spiraling and closing you can feel in the legs when you are appearing solid. But different teachers have different body methods. If your teacher teaches swimming knees, maybe nobody ever yelled at him to cut it out, or he developed that habit later, or perhaps that's just the way he was taught. Another problem is swimming hips -- hips that move in space when you're shifting weight rather than using the kua. But this is a conundrum in Taijiquan. There are principles you should follow to show skill, but there is no "one" standard of principles that everyone can agree on.

[@sdbrown67]

@KenGullette My take on my instructor from my observation is to turn left while shifting the centre over the right leg the rotate right over the right leg and sit back to the left. A bit like a figure of eight movement but actually more flattened like a B. Knees rotate but don't go past the knees. Maybe describing it is not the best way to communicate it.

[@KenGullette]

@@sdbrown67 what I’m showing here isn’t focusing on the figure eight movement. But that movement can go too far and result in swimming knees, although swimming knees happen in all styles unless the practitioners are aware of it and work to prevent it. I would say you should do it the way your teacher does it, but sometimes you can get good information from other teachers that make your Taiji stronger. I personally think swimming knees can hurt your ability to root, but it’s okay if you disagree. 😎