the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

kick to the knee perhaps.

Ye ma fen zong (partiate wild horse mane) in Sun style is actually cloud hands while stepping forward. I like the offensive thinking in a lot of seemingly defensive moves in Sun taiji. When you defend, you should close in. I have a little hard for this walking sideways thing (although that is in Sun style as well). But most of all I hate walking backwards stuff. I had a yang style teacher who proposed different walking methods for the different repetitions of cloud hands. In the third part of the form, he would walk backwards. In sun style, "step back and repulse monkey" is about turning 180 degrees - you do not walk backwards.

but i make people walk backwards all the time, seems like knowing some retreating techniques would be useful

DeusTrismegistus wrote:but i make people walk backwards all the time, seems like knowing some retreating techniques would be useful

Your practice should not be useful for them.

You should only allow yourself to move back one leg to make some distance so you can gain a forward momentum for your close in. If you are forced to step back one more step than it is necessary, you should not be proud over yourself and how you fought, not even if you can win.

Bao wrote:

DeusTrismegistus wrote:but i make people walk backwards all the time, seems like knowing some retreating techniques would be useful

Your practice should not be useful for them.

You should only allow yourself to move back one leg to make some distance so you can gain a forward momentum for your close in. If you are forced to step back one more step than it is necessary, you should not be proud over yourself and how you fought, not even if you can win.

Thats one way you can look at it. If I am sparring some of the smaller people in my class and they tried to not take more than one step back, or tried to make me retreat, they would not like what the result would be. However those same people can make me hurt by not letting me get close and moving in and out of distance quickly and working on moving around me.

My teachers rule is no more than 2 steps back without taking a step to the side. This is so you can keep from getting backed into a wall or corner.

slight tangent... Lyoto Machida vs. Tito Ortiz showed some effective "retreating" to 1) maintain perimeter striking distance and 2) takedown defense.

slightly back on topic, takedown defense often looks like repulse monkey with turning footwork to me.

just to throw in another nugget Zhang Zhijun's Chen Xinjia the cloud hands has NO cross step.