Push Hands

[joesteph]

The best thing to do is stay relaxed and feel the sensitivity of your opponent if somebody is stiff then you know what to do I love doing this sort of technique on beginners you tell them to relax but it makes your job easier as they get more frustrated all the time and they get stiff

I studied Taiji for a while in the past, but a friend of mine studied it at a different school, with much more of his time invested into it. He not only attended classes, he went to workshops. I was never really into push hands; I have a tendency to be tightened up, and I'm still reminded by my Soo Bahk Do instructor that even in karate there must be relaxation. Well, my friend weighed an in-shape 185 lbs, and was very strong due to his weight-training and job in construction. In doing push hands with a woman, both using the proper form, he found--not all at once but bit by bit--himself yielding more to her movement than his, her deflection of his push edging him out, her forward push gaining the advantage, and he wound up going backwards. He thought it was the funniest thing, that he was so strong, and there was this woman who he likely outweighed by fifty or sixty pounds making use of his tension to knock him over.

Incidentally, what I enjoyed with him was learning a two-man Taiji form from Dr. Yang, Jwing Ming which, when properly "orchestrated," was quite an achievement for two guys doing this on their own in the living rooms of one another's homes. Ah, the good old days when life was less compicated . . .

[giridas]

My instructor usually has us do slow, easy reeling hands for a while before we do push hands. Then if he finds that our push hands is getting to be too much of a strength contest, we go back to gentle reeling hands to reinforce the need to be soft and sensitive.