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!!

Fun With Push Hands

Last night we were goofing around and started with a basic push hands pattern. Our goal here is not to just do patterns over and over, but to explore where we can go with the concept. The idea is to have a little give-and-take, Yin and Yang, and try to stay in contact and keep the flow going. This is one thing makes Chinese Internal Arts different than Kumite or point fighting in Karate. There are times when we could go for a takedown or power strike, but in this drill it is more important to keep the flow going.
Here's the beauty of video; it really allows you to do some self-analysis of form and technique. In this case, my training partner (in black; a former Nationally-ranked fighter on the Karate circut) has a superior root to my somewhat more narrow stance. He consistantly moves into my center, forcing me to fight from a defensive position. We move from the pattern, to some basic joint locking techniques, and then to a little free-style scrapping- In the end we trade a few low kicks.
Push hands practice is not self-defense fighting, or even sparring. It is conceptual in nature, about learning to alternate rooting and yielding, transfering power and proper structure and distance. Adding some hitting and kicking lends a little reality to what might otherwise be a dry pattern...