Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Push Hands With Michael Gilman


Online Videos by Veoh.com
Thanks to Gordon for the video system tip;

Well, I went to Port Townsend Saturday, to see our Tai Chi Chuan instructor, Michael Gilman.
I got caught in a huge windstorm, The passenger ferry was shut down because the jetty had torn loose and they thought the dock would get ripped out. So there I was. Stuck overnight in a Victorian hotel. In Port Townsend. With the "Town Tavern" right downstairs.
Ah; "Rats!"
We had a great seminar with our instructor, mostly in "four hands" or "the Chen pattern". The above video is of some of the drills we worked on. Later, we did some freestyle push hands competition. Mind you, this was not a streetfight, it's a cool chess game. I'm not ashamed to say that I got my ass handed to me. My instructor Michael Gilman has had 30+ years of international experiance, and my training partner (black sleeves in the video) is a Nationaly ranked Karate fighter. Despite all my training, I still don't have a deep enough root to compete with the really skilled guys. I have a lot to take home and work with, some of the instruction was that people tend to "float" on top of their hips, and not really sink into the "Kwa", or hip joint.
In the mean time, The locally brewed Port Townsend Beer was excellent!!

2 comments:

Gerry Leb said...

Thank you for posting. This is a great video for illustrating what push hands is all about. It is the equal of any on YouTube showing lineage masters practicing the art. I suppose that is because sifu Gilman (and his partner) are master level players.

Gerry Leb said...
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