Friday, July 6, 2007
The Physics Of Push Hands
Here's a nice example of some push-hands techniques that I think transfer well into self defense application. This instructor appears to be able to develop some real throwing power. It appears effortless not because of power, but his keen sense of the physics involved. You can call it Yin-Yang action, or push-pull, but his best tosses involve letting one side go, or yield, go yin while the other side goes yang and pushes or shoves out. Sometimes it looks like he is holding the steering wheel of a large truck and making a sharp turn. Of course, he convienently has his leg posted as a fulcrum to rotate his opponent around.
The other thing I see is that one way he captures the opponents center is by locking a limb (arm) straight and connecting right to the center-- the other is to collapse the arm, fold it up to provide the links of a chain that can be wound into a chin-na joint lock. I'd love to train with this guy. His website is www.wudanginternal.com
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5 comments:
Great post!!!
One of my pet peeves is that so many people think internal arts training is sorcery. I get it a lot from A) Certain New Agers who can't be bothered with science and B) Certain Christians who think anything they don't understand is "the Devil's Work."
T'ui shou and chi sao can seem incredible when done by someone who really knows what he's doing (someone besides me). But it's nothing but good physics and kinesthetics - not magick.
By the way, I commented last week on Sam Masech's terminology. The main technique this teacher is using is Zhou (Elbow). As you can plainly see it is a technique that uses connecting the opponent's center to an oblique spiral from your qua.
Sarah:
Do you mean using the elbow as a chin-na locking technique? I don't remember a strike with the elbow, but I will review it.
Sorry sometimes my computer signs me in as Sarah, my g-friend's name.
Lock or no lock the taijiquan technique used here for a throw to the side is called Zhou (elbow). A forward moving attack, even if it it is the elbow that strikes first, is called Kao (Shoulder).
It's a translation problem.
I remember Zhang Xuexin thinking it was really funny that we say "move back" when we mean take a step away or to the rear, it sounds like we mean: wiggle your spine!
Great post!
What I found to be very interresting was the fact that most of the joint locks and takedowns/tosses we have in Cerio's Kenpo self-defense techniques were demonstrated in that video.
I think that practicing them in a push-hands routine must be perfect to feel and learn correct push-pull motion instead of a self-defense type of exercise (like a one step attack).
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