nice little lecture

[Sprint]

My perception of push hands is that it is ultimately all about getting a clean shot at your opponent and preventing him from doing the same to you. Off balancing is really just a means to an end. Keeping contact is good insurance against an unimpeded strike.

[eastpaw]

I like the video and the explanation of substantial and insubstantial, best I have seen online so far.

Glad you like it, Deus!

Although this brings up an interesting thought to me. You see in places the students being led around like at 6:40. I have always wondered how that happens as I have never had it done to me where I couldn't stop it. It occured to me that part of the rules of puch hands of maintaining contact might be what allows that to happen. When the teacher started to exert the force on the arm the arm can be moved away, I would break contact completely, but with needing to maintain contact in push hands it could make that harder to do because you want to yield without giving up the contact which in that case would be done releasing the wrist and making a small snaking circle counterclockwise with the right hand while maintaining contact with the forearm. Which would be difficult to do if you can't start the movement before your center is disrupted, whereas simply releasing the wrist and moving the arm out is much easier.

Interesting comment. It could be that you're too good for most people to manipulate you like that. I'm not that good though, and when I touched hands with Guo Shifu, I got thrown some five metres to the side without being able to sense or resist the incoming force. On a different occasion, my brother could not even set his feet properly the moment he touched hands with GSL, and started doing a silly little hoppity dance.

Last night, I met up with an old friend of mine who's been doing Wing Chun for about 4 years now. We did friendly circling hands (free feet, slow and light strikes allowed, disengaging allowed) and I found it really quite difficult to penetrate his centre because of his tight centreline defence. However, he too found it difficult to attack me. I noticed that he did not often try to disengage and hit me, and that most such attempts got jammed anyway. Afterwards, I asked him about this, and he said that my power and stickiness (I'm primarily Xingyi-trained) made it very difficult for him to disengage safely.

I do wonder though if his Wing Chun speed would have given him an edge if we had been going all out.

My perception of push hands is that it is ultimately all about getting a clean shot at your opponent and preventing him from doing the same to you. Off balancing is really just a means to an end. Keeping contact is good insurance against an unimpeded strike.

Sounds sensible to me.

[DeusTrismegistus]

I like the video and the explanation of substantial and insubstantial, best I have seen online so far.

Glad you like it, Deus!

Although this brings up an interesting thought to me. You see in places the students being led around like at 6:40. I have always wondered how that happens as I have never had it done to me where I couldn't stop it. It occured to me that part of the rules of puch hands of maintaining contact might be what allows that to happen. When the teacher started to exert the force on the arm the arm can be moved away, I would break contact completely, but with needing to maintain contact in push hands it could make that harder to do because you want to yield without giving up the contact which in that case would be done releasing the wrist and making a small snaking circle counterclockwise with the right hand while maintaining contact with the forearm. Which would be difficult to do if you can't start the movement before your center is disrupted, whereas simply releasing the wrist and moving the arm out is much easier.

Interesting comment. It could be that you're too good for most people to manipulate you like that. I'm not that good though, and when I touched hands with Guo Shifu, I got thrown some five metres to the side without being able to sense or resist the incoming force. On a different occasion, my brother could not even set his feet properly the moment he touched hands with GSL, and started doing a silly little hoppity dance.

Last night, I met up with an old friend of mine who's been doing Wing Chun for about 4 years now. We did friendly circling hands (free feet, slow and light strikes allowed, disengaging allowed) and I found it really quite difficult to penetrate his centre because of his tight centreline defence. However, he too found it difficult to attack me. I noticed that he did not often try to disengage and hit me, and that most such attempts got jammed anyway. Afterwards, I asked him about this, and he said that my power and stickiness (I'm primarily Xingyi-trained) made it very difficult for him to disengage safely.

I do wonder though if his Wing Chun speed would have given him an edge if we had been going all out.

My perception of push hands is that it is ultimately all about getting a clean shot at your opponent and preventing him from doing the same to you. Off balancing is really just a means to an end. Keeping contact is good insurance against an unimpeded strike.

Sounds sensible to me.

I am really not very good. I don't really do push hands often and have never done so with my teacher. We do a lot of free sparring and we work on the sensitivity and yielding and following etc within that context. Which is why I am not sure I like the contact that has to be maintained during push hands. We train to find the empty space so the strike can reach the torso or head unimpeded, so contact is used to off balance or break structure but the strike comes from no contact. Often you will make contact then break it and take advantage of the opening you created, if you can feel your opponent then they can feel you. Mind you we don't train exclusively taiji either but shaolin and shuai jiao as well.