the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Hi guys, newish here. Thought you'd enjoy a video of one my teachers demolishing me at moving step push hands hahaha. Any thoughts on it are appreciated, but I'd personally like to point out how good he is at disrupting my structure with his knee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgo4-jkKvXo

Grappling taller people is never easy, but i think you need to work on your posture a little - stop looking up so much, it's destroying your spinal alignment. (your coach keeps his head alignment well)

Also, you have no rooting to the ground - this would help you enormously. See this vid for tips: https://vimeo.com/273955189

Thanks for the tips! I definitely forgot about the head hahaha. And yeah, you're not the first person to tell me that I need to work on my root, I'll def check out that video out

Since you practice somewhat differently than I would (e.g., almost immediately collapsing the arms to come into torso contact rather than trying to maintain contact/control primarily at the forearm distance and working techniques from there), I’ll just compare you to your coach, and I’ll assume that he is closer to the ideal that you are striving towards.

What I see that makes you vulnerable to his knee disruptions, is that you are just using your legs for bracing (or pushing back), rather than for receiving. Notice how you almost always are pushing your hips away from the ground vs. how your coach usually retains a degree of “springiness” - able to lower his hips by receiving your force into his legs and into the ground. He can change heights, while you appear to mostly just push yourself higher (unless you take a long step back).

This is difficult to fix since we do this from the first time that we push something as a toddler and throughout our lifetime, unless we train to do it differently. Most TJQ practitioners still brace, resist, lean into, and meet force by pushing against the ground... This long established habit is difficult to change!

Because you do this, it is fairly easy for your coach to disrupt your “brace” by using his knee against your leg. He can do this with his own knee because he does not need to rely on that leg as much for bracing. Rather than his leg needing to devote all of its oppositional force to counter your force by using his leg to push directly into your mass (committing the leg to a linear, force against force, component), he is able to use some of his force sideways against your leg instead.

Don’t wait for opportunities, go in, adjust, try to attach to the “holes” in his movements. When he goes back, follow and fill in.

Here are a few important points to practice. If you understand these five points and always stick to them you will easily dominate most people in push hands:

https://taichithoughts.wordpress.com/20 ... -strategy/

Your coach is using a very common balance-taking strategy taught in many no-gi grappling styles -- lifting the opponents elbows and shoulders. Since he's your instructor, you might as well as him how to defend against it.

What I'd also recommend is to work on fixed-step PH more before you start doing free-step. Free-step is more fun and exciting, but for improving structure and balance, fixed-step is better suited.

When your feet are not allowed to move, it forces you to learn how to neutralize and absorb the opponent's incoming force by using the body, as opposed to compensate by moving the feet to avoid the resistance.

He is dominating the underhooks. Don't let him.

Looks like good practice, seems like you are both trying to use principles rather than 'win' by force. Could you give a bit more detail about your coach's MA background?

All in all keep going and having fun. Looks like a nice environment and a kind teacher.

Some points from me.

1) Prioritise defending the underhooks and your elbows.
2) Also think about holding your alignments, spine, shoulder and hip alignments etc. When he contorts your structure he has you. Watch him in the video vs you on this aspect and you will note he is contorting far less.
3) keep the body soft and heavy. This will help your root.

All the best.

Chris

It might help to understand what it means to have a clearly defined axis and how to maintain this dynamically.

Your coach seems to like to lean in a lot. Turns his head away from what he's doing. All ingrained habits from push hands practice. Something to think about.