traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

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traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby everything on Mon Jun 12, 2017 7:36 am

question for those of you with push hands and striking experience/expertise (or just opinions).

there is a lot of discussion of tai chi/mma, and tuishou/striking lately. personally, I learned some ph first and imho it's not difficult to learn things like rollback to pulldown. I learned some as a kid and taught some to my kids when they were little (we would play kind of "king of the hill" on a half-wall or something). then, it's not too difficult to transition to something like judo randori, since there is a lot of push/pull/listen type of work in both.

however, what is a typical starter drill to transition to or add striking? what would speed up this whole process? if you assume people did jacket wrestling with its weird grip fighting, does that help (you get used to attempts at fast grabs but these aren't attempts to hit you)? do you even see tuishou as having any help here? why/why not/how? thanks. serious Q. I don't really learn striking and am pretty interested lately.
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby cloudz on Mon Jun 12, 2017 8:32 am

Some ideas here, the first one also shows how you can get to tui shou (push hands) from da shou (striking hands) and vice versa I guess.. The second clip is adding striking components to a taiji grappling format. The third one I just like, the fourth is quite a common drill amongst taiji players; basically trying to get strikes in from (mostly) contact. You could do this stationary or moving around like these guys. A stationary version of that could be a good 'starter'/ transition drill that you allude to.







Last edited by cloudz on Tue Jun 13, 2017 5:23 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby Bao on Mon Jun 12, 2017 9:20 am

everything wrote:however, what is a typical starter drill to transition to or add striking?


I prefer to deal with strikes without a predefined pattern. Just start to punch and defend. The puncher doesn't need to punch particularly fast, but it should be heavy with intent to strike through. The defender tries to relax, sink and keep and make use of the zhongding/centerline. You can start stationary, and then add feints, footwork etc.

what would speed up this whole process?


What process? What do you mean?
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby robert on Mon Jun 12, 2017 12:02 pm

You can have strikes in PH, but they're probably not what you have in mind. In Chen style you would want to study pao chui (canon fist), since this is the form where you learn fajin, power generation, and some variations on stepping.



In PHs there are two divisions - civil and martial. In civil you follow a pattern and if your partner cannot maintain jin you take their balance and in martial if there is an opening you can attack. In the video below the second half shows martial push hands, but they are demonstrating so it is a little slow and Chen Qingzhou uses long power rather than short power. You can certainly use short power. At 1:20 there is a shoulder strike and at 1:52 there is an elbow strike. Another shoulder strike at 2:08. You can do hip and knee strikes as well. Of course you're free to set the rules if you're training with a partner.



If I wanted to improve strikes I'd get good with pao chui (laojia erlu) and start with what is in push hands and get good with those. Taiji practices applications like any other martial art so train punches with a partner as well as on a heavy bag and then go on to sparring.

If you think you can speed up the development and do it correctly - good luck! If you just want to learn techniques and you don't care about principles I'm sure you can shorten that time. In Dai family xinyi it looks like they spend five years training basics (standing & stepping) before they start the five element fists. Learning these arts correctly takes time.

http://www.chinafrominside.com/ma/xyxy/daitech1.html

If you want to learn to punch and you're in a hurry why not study boxing? Studying taiji to learn punching is like studing blues guitar to learn classical piano.
Last edited by robert on Mon Jun 12, 2017 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby everything on Mon Jun 12, 2017 12:17 pm

Bao wrote:
everything wrote:however, what is a typical starter drill to transition to or add striking?


I prefer to deal with strikes without a predefined pattern. Just start to punch and defend. The puncher doesn't need to punch particularly fast, but it should be heavy with intent to strike through. The defender tries to relax, sink and keep and make use of the zhongding/centerline. You can start stationary, and then add feints, footwork etc.

what would speed up this whole process?


What process? What do you mean?


ok yes. by speed up, I mean the process from some basic push hands with peng, lu, ji, an, cai in both cooperative and uncooperative patterns to some basic strikes with and without patterns. for example, understanding "rollback energy" for use with a push should be pretty quickly useful/understandable for use with a simple punching drill. for example this in this gif I posted about, we can say that Machida uses rollback:
Image

It's ok if you want to say "learn boxing" or "learn xingyiquan" but specifically do you see a bridge from basic ph patterns to basic punching patterns? if so, that should "speed up the process" since some movement patterns have some very good transfer (e.g., rollback is used in every MA, but taijiquan tuishou really builds up the understanding of it quickly). generally speaking this should follow an 80/20 rule like tim ferrriss likes to look for. what is the 20% of patterns that gives you 80% of tuishou, throwing basics, striking basics, if that exists? if so, beginners should work on that (for very basic proficiency).

think back to before you could handle strikes with no pattern. how would you systematically have people get to that level?
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby johnwang on Mon Jun 12, 2017 12:56 pm

everything wrote: what is a typical starter drill to transition to or add striking?

The moment that your left hand is on your opponent's elbow joint, your right hand is free for striking.

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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby Niall Keane on Mon Jun 12, 2017 4:39 pm

There are specific TCC sanshou drills:

rolling thunder
stroke the lute
flying flower palm
gyrating arms
five element fist


and as for tuishou incorporating strikes:

Jow Lu:
like four directions except with fists maintained, all the usual locks and throws, but with strikes... so instead of two hands controlling and diverting a push which in this drill is now a punch, one of the arms punches in tandem with the diverting hand so the body is coordinated in the diversion and simultaneous strike... also targeting is honed and also defenses like shoulders and elbows to guard .. i other words it becomes a lot more sophisticated... incorporating what the clowns 'round here often attribute to boxing / kick-boxing skill sets.

Its amazing isn't it that a complete martial art actually has a complete set of drills for training a complete system?
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby everything on Mon Jun 12, 2017 5:49 pm

Niall Keane wrote:There are specific TCC sanshou drills:

rolling thunder
stroke the lute
flying flower palm
gyrating arms
five element fist


and as for tuishou incorporating strikes:

Jow Lu:
like four directions except with fists maintained, all the usual locks and throws, but with strikes... so instead of two hands controlling and diverting a push which in this drill is now a punch, one of the arms punches in tandem with the diverting hand so the body is coordinated in the diversion and simultaneous strike... also targeting is honed and also defenses like shoulders and elbows to guard .. i other words it becomes a lot more sophisticated... incorporating what the clowns 'round here often attribute to boxing / kick-boxing skill sets.

Its amazing isn't it that a complete martial art actually has a complete set of drills for training a complete system?


very cool. I've not been lucky enough to be exposed to these drills, unfortunately. Exactly what I was wondering about, thanks!
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby Wuyizidi on Tue Jun 20, 2017 9:37 am

Most established push hand drills train control (vs striking) skills. Dealing with more free form of control/grappling skills from opponents is a fairly natural transition. The more difficult transition is dealing with more free form striking. In striking distance and timing really come into play. Essentially the difficulty is how to make that first contact. Once we make the contact we can apply our control skills. For that in Taijiquan there is a set of skills called Jie Shou (接手) - greeting/bridge hand.

I can't find any videos of that on youtube at the moment, you may have to search Chinese sites. But basically it's have your opponent punch or try to touch you with one designated hand, you practice trying to touch his elbow using either your left or right hand. This is common approach in all styles - it's too difficult trying to follow fast movements of opponent's hands. Instead, follow his elbow, its movements are a lot smaller, slower. This is where mental adjustment comes in - instinctively we fear the hand and want to focus on that, but actually if we concentrate on the elbow, and manage to make contact with it, and able to manipulate it, the hand will no longer be a danger to us.

So practice the basic touches first to a designated location:
Opponent reach to you with right hand:
1. you touch outside of his elbow with your left hand
2. you touch inside of his elbow with your left hand
3. you touch outside of his elbow with your right hand
4. you touch inside of his elbow with your right hand
Opponent reach to you with left hand ...

Next you practice applying force to the elbow
Next you practice naturally gliding your hand along his forearm to his wrist
Next you practice applying force to the wrist
Next you practice advanced techniques like grabbing that wrist, and in one smooth motion throw it sideways to be captured by your other hand (common skill in bagua)

Next let your opponent decide which hand to reach out, and in each case use the hand you decide ahead of time, touch the side you decided ahead of time (no matter what he throws, I touch the inside of elbow with my left hand).
Next let your opponent decide which hand to reach out, and each case use the appropriate hand to make contact - whichever is the easiest, more comfortable to you.

Next let your opponent touch whatever location he wants (high, low, middle), repeat sequence above...

So it's the same sequence of progression as push hand:
1. static, pre-designed on both sides
2. static, pre-designed on one side
3. static, random on both sides
4. dynamic, pre-designed on both sides
5. dynamic, pre-designed on one side
6. completely dynamic and random

And within each escalations in intensity and duration.

Real life fighting is the ultimate in complexity, randomness, and intensity, so we need to get there one step at a time. We need to take things slow because we need to make sure each step of the way we are using the skill we're trying to develop, not reverting to our natural instincts. This is true in external martial art too right: increase the speed and intensity enough, students would lose their form, and start flailing around like they haven't been trained at all. This is why many people do well in basic push hands, but can't apply in fighting. Either they don't know the steps, or they try to bypass some intermediate steps. This is why it's so common to hear people in such stages being referred to as "yeah, he's not bad, he can't really fight, but he can do some things."

So if we ever find ourselves using direct inside to outside blocking, we're not using Taiji skills (zhan nian lian sui) anymore. We need to back off on speed. This is where the slapping variation of the drill helps. One person tries to slap the other person in the side of the face, the other person has to suppress the natural instinct for blocking, and tries to make contact with that slapping arm from the outside. He follows that line of force until it passes his midline, then he shift forward to slap the opponent with his free hand, and now the opponent has to do the same.

By the way this sequence of contact drills is same as in spear against spear fighting (in taiji known as sticking staff), perhaps the most complex, difficult fighting scenario in traditional martial art. Spear is the fastest, most powerful weapon, and requiring most skill. If someone tries to block a thrust with a direct linear sideways block instead of using more nuanced controlling skills (eg. bouncing circle), he would lose immediately against a true master.
Last edited by Wuyizidi on Tue Jun 20, 2017 10:32 am, edited 13 times in total.
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby everything on Tue Jun 20, 2017 10:17 am

Thanks a lot, that makes perfect sense.
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby BruceP on Tue Jun 20, 2017 10:29 am

Wuyizidi wrote:
Real life fighting is the ultimate in complexity, randomness, and intensity, so we need to get there one step at a time. We need to take things slow because we need to make sure each step of the way we are using the skill we're trying to develop, not reverting to our natural instincts. This is true in external martial art too right: increase the speed and intensity enough, students would lose their form, and start flailing around like they haven't been trained at all. This is why many people do well in basic push hands, but can't apply in fighting. Either they don't know the steps, or they try to bypass some intermediate steps. This is why it's so common to hear people in such stages being referred to as "yeah, he's not bad, he can't really fight, but he can do some things."


LOL - that just aint true at all
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby Bao on Tue Jun 20, 2017 12:54 pm

everything wrote:but specifically do you see a bridge from basic ph patterns to basic punching patterns? if so, that should "speed up the process" since some movement patterns have some very good transfer (e.g., rollback is used in every MA, but taijiquan tuishou really builds up the understanding of it quickly). generally speaking this should follow an 80/20 rule like tim ferrriss likes to look for. what is the 20% of patterns that gives you 80% of tuishou, throwing basics, striking basics, if that exists? if so, beginners should work on that (for very basic proficiency).

think back to before you could handle strikes with no pattern. how would you systematically have people get to that level?


I think I was to stressed out and busy a couple of days ago to really read what you wrote and understand what you were asking for.

For a few years ago, I believed in such a transition, from PH into striking. Like one of my teachers would never "push" in push hands, he would sneak in his hands and use sharp palm strikes, quite sharp so you learned to not let people lay their hands on you. Another one, a senior student to a teacher I practiced briefly with, who I used to practice free style PH with with would add head buts, elbows, and just about everythingyou could do with the seven stars. What these folks did was not PH as most people would practice, but something more like in between PH and sparring. That's a sort of transition if you would like to call it that. But I am not really into this kind of practice anymore. I believe that even free PH should focus mostly on very basic skills, like song, keeping zhongding, balance and alignment. And of course tingjing, following, mirroring, filling in. If you don't use your PH time and applications practice to the most basi aspects of shenfa, you will never have a chance to build a very strong foundation of a Tai Chi shenfa/body method. The drills or combat practice I mentioned is somethig else, it's not something that needs to be developed from PH and not with any kind of transition. It's more a kind of a stand alone applications practice where one person acts like a neutral martial artist, and the defender tries to use all of his knowledge in Tai Chi.
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby everything on Tue Jun 20, 2017 2:33 pm

interesting, ok thanks. so a completely different philosophy and approach.
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Re: traditional (or not) drills to go from ph to strikes

Postby wayne hansen on Tue Jun 20, 2017 2:36 pm

My teacher had a simple rule
If you use inappropriate strength
you get struck
If you don't remove a hand that is in a dangerous place
You get struck
If you break contact
You get struck
There were no specific drills it just came in normal pushing
He liked to quote Hung I Hsiang
To attain ability in fighting the student must be stung often and hurt occasionally
Don't put power into the form let it naturally arise from the form
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