I, was taught that push hands teaches you to become a wrestler. San shou to become a striker. In free fighting you do both. As for the Chen, he only does what he knows. J.
AGHHHHH!!! This can't posssibly be happening. Agreeing wholeheartedly with Fire-quan AGAIN!!!!! Pass the medication. I agree that this clip does CXW no favours. It looks to me like like he has been challenged and neither wants to lose face. Also agree that push hands is a training exercise with no real relevance to fighting situations. very best wishes
I think push hands certainly can go some way towards helping with stand up grappling application, if it's trained that way.
I too, agree with Fire-Quan whole heartedly. It is so annoying seeing people turning PH into something it is not. While PH is a great training tool, it is just exactly that. It is designed to help the practitioner develop certain attributes in TCC. That is it's purpose. When the focus is on scoring points, it becomes something completely pointless. If the purpose is to take PH as a sport, training in Sumo will be more fit for the purpose. Cheers, John
What i find annoying is hearing the same tired boring misinformation from the peanut gallery. to each is own.
I do think in tai chi there is a major issue over 'push hands' /tui shou.. particularly this point over what it becomes when it is made competitive. For me that is an important and valuable way to train - as well as other methods. I mostly think it might come down to labeling issues and as well prejudice in the eyes of many taiji people. Push hands is such an umbrella term now. Rulesets make competitive styles (combat sport). Sumo is no different - as well as being frickin awesome!
Chen village taiji is very wrestling based - there's a few videos of that kind of push hands. If you start seriously wrestling about with your partner, you will obviously start to develop better stand up grappling skills - assuming we have the capacity to adapt and evolve our level and knowledge. And I also think some push hands focussed on quick responses to grabs and pushes etc. is very useful. A combination of the two is a good training aid, and if the best points of other martial arts push hands, grappling, stand up wrestling, chin na etc are added in, all the better. As for the Chen Xiao Wang clip, yeah, it's not great, is it? The most important thing for me is honesty - an honest approach to training, because otherwise, what's the point? We're just holding our progress back. But honesty has also got to be clear, like, if I saw two UFC fighters have a bit of a grab at each other after a meal in a restaurant, I have to assess what's actually happening, and I don't think I'd be comfortable assessing their level as actual fighters on that. Push hands is a training aid - to truly assess fight level, you have to see fight. But then the other side of that coin is that you don't ever see Chen Xiao Wang actually fight either, so there's nothing else to judge it on. However, the edge of the coin is that CXW and his brother have had a lot of challenge matches - or so I'm told - so, I don't by any means dismiss the possibility that they really are capable of serious wushu... just, as ever, I keep an open mind, waiting for the moment of seeing is believing.
There's an old saying, don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see. Push hands is not a training tool (unless you are a beginner) push hands teach you to wrestle. San Shu to strike. let's take the fantasy out of the fight game.
Um, hello, it teaches you to wrestle but it is not a training tool?!? And, uh, you can't train striking from push hands... Am I missing something here? Well I suppose a flight simulator that teaches a pilot to fly is not really a training tool either then.
It's getting a bit 'how many angels dance on a pinhead' for me there. In terms of 'san shou'teaches you how to strike, I find that kind of meaningless - like saying boxing teaches you how to box... well, yeah, it does, but that doesn't mean anything concrete without more detail. Orthodox Yiquan push hands combines push hands elements from other styles, and was heavily influenced by White Crane chi sau, and incorporates a lot of striking from push hands positioning. As for beginners, I dare to consider myself intermediate level these days. My push hands incorporates a lot of wrestling stuff now- but there again, it can also incorporate trapping and striking. I don't really believe that push hands trains wrestling as such, because I also wrestle, and it's a very different game. Push hands certainly seems to allow some 'ins' and some 'outs',some useful skills - but only one aspect of wrestling is covered - unless you conisder all aspects of wrestling to be 'push hands' - in which case, again, it's like saying 'wrestling trains grappling'. I dunno - I think we're getting a bit arcane now - it'd be more helpful if you showed some practical examples. On the stories, I keep an open mind on them. Seeing is believing.
Sometimes I use the word wrestle to imply the use of strength... such as "don't get into a wrestling match with the opponent" meaning do not get in a position where you are locked up, strength on strength, and you end up losing your mobility. But what you are talking about is learning to wrestle using good technique rather than raw strength. In other words, efficient use of strength equals good wrestling. I can see this to be true. ------------------------- Whether or not you end up with better wrestling skills as a result of push hands practice... the act of push hands is to develop timing and reflexes (muscle memory combined with sensitivity of your own body and the movements of the opponent). After a while, rather than thinking about what you will do next... you will move instinctively (without need of thought) to seize the moment and apply a joint lock or strike through an opening. You will also learn to apply broken timing rather than get caught in the timing of the opponent. It is definitely a training tool at all levels... the same as sparring is a training tool. We don't have to agree on this, but push hands to me is the same as all the pattern work in FMA done with open hand, stick, and knife.
Well, thanks for going personal after a conversation lasting four posts between us in total. You're attempting to bait me in to making some claim for the video I posted, beyond it being a demonstration of a high quality Chen taiji form - but I have no claims to make, so baiting me is pointless - it simply shows a Chen taiji form, one of the fractions of Chen taiji methodology. In my view it shows how to perform Chen taiji forms properly, and is a good example of the Chinese concept of connected whole body movement. That's it - that's what it shows. So, baiting me was kind of like a weak attempt at push hands - you tried to make me give you energy, I didn't, and now you're being personally rude. How daft.
"Conversation"? Bah. What conversation? I think it was quite clear that those terse statements of the obvious on your part weren't of any use to anyone. And now you're telling me it's daft to ask a taiji'er the purpose of a taiji form? Wow, I wonder what this forum is for... I was asking what that particular demonstrated "fraction of Chen taiji methodology" was supposed to teach its practitioner. Maybe I'm daft, but I'm assuming that practitioners of that style (Chen taijiquanfa) do that in order to practice specific things. I'm an iaido guy mainly, and I wouldn't consider it "baiting" if someone in the Weapons forum asked me what say, [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnVbh9kPnn8"]ganmen-ate[/ame] was supposed to teach or involve. (Not that I'd be in a position to give the best or most qualified of answers, though.) Apologies to Polar Bear for having contaminated this thread with something other than taijiquan; I called you out on that earlier in the thread, and now I've engaged in some hypocrisy.
Bronze statue, To his credit, FQ did talk about 'mo jin' or 'whole body connected power' earlier on as being one of the main points of learning movement arts such as tai chi or yiquan. He's right, that's the essence and the essential point. I thought that was adequate myself. But you don't seem to be satisfied, so I'll attempt to give you a little more information.. Bear in mind I'm not a Chen stylist.. Being Chen taiji a big factor in the style is chansi jin - or silk reeling. This is basically a coiling style of movement - circles, spirals, that sort of thing. Being taiji, we must talk about the '13 postures' being shown(these aren't literal postures btw). Peng, An, Ji, Lu, Lie, Kao, zhou, cai - the '8 gates' and the 5 elements - zhong ding, qian jin, hou tui, zuo gu, you pan. These are a combination of trained forces (jin), methods/techniques and stepping. You will be able to find in depth descriptions by searching. Chen style is also comprised of a series of 32 different postures. In taiji commonly postures are often linked with transitions. leading ('leading force') from one movement into another seamlessly is another trained element. Ultimately the whole form becomes one continuation, one movement. First in the mind then in the body. Low posture builds strength and flexibility - low posture is what you often see in Chen style. Developing structure is also important - in the martial sense without structure you can't absorb ir issue force. Developing structure requires most basically learning to move with external allignments (harmonies) of the body . Then you have more specifically opening and closing (kai-he), allignments - the internal and external harmonies, fajin, moving from dan tian, dan tian rotation. Stillness in motion, motion in stillness and body awareness.. edit. also the small matter of generating power into the legs, directing it with the waist and issuing through the hands..
Depends on how and what you practice. As I said elswhere it's really quite the umbrella term. If you practice fixed step competitive drills. Where the point is to off balance, neutralise, fajin, use the 8 methods as much as possible.. then moving step where the point is as a bove & similar to sumo.. get the person out of an area (control space & opponent) or take them down in various ways - how depending on rulesets - this is pretty much freestyle wrestling. then yea, your wrestling will improve obviously. That is known generally as free pushing. Something else entirely from push hands patterns. Patterns are there to teach you certain skills and techniques as well as practicing the 13 postures co operatively with a partner. Comparing free pushing and patterns is a like comparing sparring vs. applications I don't disagree with any of that really, but it's more than that too.. From the more traditional perspective of taichi chuan.. The essential and primary skills developed through push hands are sticking, adhering, joining and following. From Yang Family Manuscripts
Well maybe I got the wrong end of the stick but it does seem like you were being deliberately obtuse. A form is a form - you know what a form is. Maybe iaido is easy to pin point specific applications to the katas, but a Chen taiji form is primarily about movement quality, specifically training mo jin resistance and whole body connectedness. But I already told you that, so I don't really know what further information you expected.
Back from a long time away from MAP. Anyway I want to say I couldn't agree more, too much emphasis on form and not enough on practical use...makes for a dull MA. Much of the stuff coming out of the PRC is just form and no substance. Don't get me wrong I love my forms and practice regularly with my chigung and all that. I just love doing the fighting set and it allows me to see how far I can push each move from the form. In my classes we often take a specific move or set of movements from the form and analyse them from a defence or attack perspective. Without this analysis the form is essentially meaningless. I've even gone to another style of MA where they give me the latitude to explore crossovers...
