oragami_itto wrote:Both of my feet pivot to follow the action. From yesterday:
I watched this again.
Try the following "subtle" modification to what you are doing.
Instead of pushing down with your left hand on your partner's right shoulder/upper arm, place your left palm flat on top of his right elbow joint. You thumb on the inside of his arm - but not grabbing or wrapped around his arm - your palm flat on top of his elbow joint. You aren't grabbing his arm, just putting your hand on top of his elbow joint. Keeping contact particularly on the outside of your left palm (along the ring finger/palm edge) rotate your palm counterclockwise against the outside of his elbow joint while pushing down, drawing inwards (towards you) and a little towards the centre. Done correctly, this action twists his entire arm, pulls on his right shoulder and bends his spine to his right. Simultaneously, with your right hand, lift upwards, away from you and about 45 degrees to your left under his left upper arm. Doing so, you have two opposing actions/forces, "a couple". One hand twists (spirals) downwards, towards you and to your right while the other hand twists (spirals) upwards, away from you and to your left. Your waist will turn towards your left, though your hips do not need to turn. No weight shift is necessary or repositioning of the feet. It is an example of "separating/distinguishing yin and yang" with different parts of the body doing different things and moving in different directions, though the motions are coordinated, just not all in the same direction.
The above action won't look that much different from what you are doing in the GIF, but will have a very different result on the partner and, once you get the actions right, takes relatively little force. Try it, see what happens.
The above actions are examples of "drawing", "pulling" or "reeling" silk - or one can just call it "twisting". That twisting is the key to getting many of these sorts of applications to work. In Chen style, in the example above, the actions are described as the left hand performing "shun chan si", the right hand "ni chan si". Nearly every action in Chen style is "circular" with half of the circle "shun" twisting, the other half "ni" twisting. Open and close simultaneously moves the hands/arms inwards and outwards to create the helical ("spiral") action. The contrary helical actions feel to an opponent like they are caught inbetween two meshing gears.