Recently, I entered a Push Hands Tournament in New York. It was the KTOC Push hands event on the 11/18. I won thank God and I wanted dedicate that win in honor of my KF brother Vinnie E. Vincent who recently passed away. . I know in life he was a fighter and so I really wanted to fight for his memory.
It certainly wasn't pretty and I didn't feel prepared for it properly. The tournament coordinator "Stacy Han", didn't hand me the rule sheet until I stepped out onto the mat!!!!! I thought it was going to be " fixed step rules" but they changed one minute before I started my match to "Restricted step" in a 9'x ~4' rectangle. Also, they said scoring would ultimately be up to the judges discretion????? I said "WHAT"??? Lastly the biggest guy Stephen Watson had at least 50lbs on me. He had in the past went to Taiwan and won himself a heavyweight push hands championship. He's tough! By the end...I was running on fumes and couldn't think ...it was just instinct near the end.
The hard part is....we all train the basics and traditional patterns. I would love for competition to look exactly like form but obviously that's not realistic. But if you watch allot more of these competitions, you'll see that they all look surprisingly similar.