this is the best gung fu skill I've ever seen

[SavvySavage]

How in the heckin is this considered to be good or skillful? I have never understood why people revere people that can do this. You would practice tai ji for decades just so you could make someone move back a step? It also looks a little fake to me. It does not make sense to me



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_gmMqzf2I8

[lkfmdc]

It also looks a little fake to me.



you are a genius, yes indeed

[David Jamieson]

How in the heckin is this considered to be good or skillful? I have never understood why people revere people that can do this. You would practice tai ji for decades just so you could make someone move back a step? It also looks a little fake to me. It does not make sense to me



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_gmMqzf2I8

People will do as they will and believe as they choose.
You don't have to.
I certainly don't. :)

[Lokhopkuen]

I observed certain skillful subtleties as well as more than a few gross over reactions.

As for the why? One man's religion is another man's belly laugh:rolleyes:

[Lee Chiang Po]

When I lived in New Orleans in the 60's, I was aquainted with a gentleman that would do this stuff in a large city park. It looks like a skill that is not worth the effort, but it is actually a very passive defense style of fighting. He could prevent one from striking him and make him stand on his head or fly into hard objects. He could also shove your chest into your spine.
The funniest thing I guess I had ever seen, the first time I seen it, was a couple of young men doing some sort of mantis form. Then a white crane. I looked at it and imagined that it was more like some sort of ballet rather than shadow boxing. A tremendous amount of wasted energy and motion.

[bawang]

why r people so obsessed about push hands
????
its really ga y

[Violent Designs]

why r people so obsessed about push hands
????
its really ga y

LOL YEAH,

I tell people, you spent years learning useless stuff. Then of course, they will deny the fact they spent years learning useless stuff.

If they admit it, they admit they wasted many years of their life.

[SPJ]

I can only hope that I can move with agilities at that age.

If I may live to 93 year old that is.

:cool:

[ittokaos]

LOL YEAH,

I tell people, you spent years learning useless stuff. Then of course, they will deny the fact they spent years learning useless stuff.

If they admit it, they admit they wasted many years of their life.

It's true that bad push hands is useless. However push hands is a very valuable drill especially if your style uses any type of sticking(the majority of styles do. at least they did). I believe that it is foolish to think that this is fighting or sparring. Or to believe that this is all that one needs is just as foolish.

It just like chi sao. A drill to help you understand and move with and/or move your opponent and when used for that purpose it has value. If you could feel your opponents energy before they use it, the attack would be really easy to counter.

But yeah dude, that vid really looks fake.

[Ray Pina]

The old man's technique is not that bad. He's always has his door closed but it's agile... yet it gets strong when he needs to keep the guy out. That's good.

The other guy is all over the place, big swooping movements opening himself. I won't criticize that though, because he's probably humoring the old man. I would think the same about the over reaction.

Sticking hands are great. Pushing hands are great. Hitting hands are even better.... each is a training method. Only hitting hand incorporates all three live. Once you understand the first two, the third trains them all.

[Eric Olson]

This is pretty basic push hands using the four energies of peng, lu, ji, an. It gets more martial at the advanced level. Not to say that these energies aren't martial, my old Tai Ji teacher would often lift his senior students off the ground using peng. But in addition to the 4 basic energies, you have the other energies which involve shoulder/hip slams, throws, breaks and small joint manipulation. Gotta learn the basics first though!

EO

[Ray Pina]

It is what it is. An 80 year old man doing pummeling with a young wrestler and scores an ankle pick.... it's no secret what happened. The young guy let him do it. But that doesn't mean pummeling is not essential for clinch work or that ankle picks are sneaky and crafty.

Learning to read, guide, unbalance, penetrate, draw in, uplift, sink.... push hands teaches all those things.

As with wrestlers and pummeling, kung fu guys with push hands have to understand that these are training tools, not fighting itself.

[David Jamieson]

don't assume old people are weak.

[Knifefighter]

It is what it is. An 80 year old man doing pummeling with a young wrestler and scores an ankle pick.... it's no secret what happened. The young guy let him do it. But that doesn't mean pummeling is not essential for clinch work or that ankle picks are sneaky and crafty.

Learning to read, guide, unbalance, penetrate, draw in, uplift, sink.... push hands teaches all those things.

As with wrestlers and pummeling, kung fu guys with push hands have to understand that these are training tools, not fighting itself.
Pummeling is specific to what happens in real fighting. Push hands is not.

[lkfmdc]

Pummeling is specific to what happens in real fighting. Push hands is not.

It really depends upon which "push hands" you are doing

In the US, for reasons I am at a loss to explain, we've gravitated towards patty cake, no power, fairy, fake, BS push hands like the crap in this clip

But in Chen village at the international tournament, what they do in the name "push hands" is basicly Greco-Roman wrestling! I've seen similar format in Taiwan now...

IE in some places push hands = wrestling which is a proven martial art

This, ie the stuff in this clip, is however, bull dung

[bawang]

the best kung fu skill i have ever seen is iron peenis kung fu i really want to learn that skill
i saw on youtube master tu jing shen break a concrete slab with his wang now thats kung fu

[TenTigers]

I wonder how many hits he gets on his Match.com profile with that.

[SavvySavage]

Ray,
I agree that pushing is important as a way to show that the other person can't get in on you. But I don't think that doing push hands endlessly like that is fruitful in terms of skill. What's the point of studying a so called internal art for decades if the end goal is to just push the other person back a step?

[bawang]

standing post was standing in horse stance holding a 20 to 50 pound ball , now its standing very high holding a invisible qi ball because the imperial family were too weak to do that

same with push hands, its clinching but corrupted for training weak/sick/old people
two hand push hands set up for wrestling, one hand push hand is setup for elbow

the "dirty low class" stuff were removed to train high class rich people

[taai gihk yahn]

standing post was standing in horse stance holding a 20 to 50 pound ball , now its standing very high holding a invisible qi ball because the imperial family were too weak to do that

same with push hands, its clinching but corrupted for training weak/sick/old people
two hand push hands set up for wrestling, one hand push hand is setup for elbow

the "dirty low class" stuff were removed to train high class rich people

bawang has qi-blasted the correct; fact is, Yang style is gentrified MA for weekend-warrior intelligensia - funny thing is watching people trying to justify al the changes he made, such as why the fist is held hollow, giving all these silly reasons, from allowing more qi flow to actually arguing that holding the fist hollow makes it stronger on contact! no one seems to appreciate that Mandarin nobility liked to wear their finger nails long and pointy, precluding the making of a tight fist...

[lkfmdc]

standing post was standing in horse stance holding a 20 to 50 pound ball , now its standing very high holding a invisible qi ball because the imperial family were too weak to do that

same with push hands, its clinching but corrupted for training weak/sick/old people
two hand push hands set up for wrestling, one hand push hand is setup for elbow

the "dirty low class" stuff were removed to train high class rich people

I seldom say this to people I don't know, but I love you :D

Right on the mark, totally on the mark

[taai gihk yahn]

I seldom say this to people I don't know, but I love you :D

Right on the mark, totally on the mark

isn't it sad though, how it can be said so simply, so directly, and yet we have so much crapola to wade through on the other end of it?

[sanjuro_ronin]

You guys with your common sense and historically proven crap make me sick !!
:p

[lkfmdc]

isn't it sad though, how it can be said so simply, so directly, and yet we have so much crapola to wade through on the other end of it?

people prefer bull****

they may prefer different manifestations of bull****, but it's still cow dung and it still stinks

[bawang]

thanx for th complimet guys, when i dont know something i keep my mouth shut, but when people talk internal i kno my sheet and i need to change people's perception and spread truth about internal kung fu


Ray,
I agree that pushing is important as a way to show that the other person can't get in on you. But I don't think that doing push hands endlessly like that is fruitful in terms of skill. What's the point of studying a so called internal art for decades if the end goal is to just push the other person back a step?

every single push in taijiquan is a palm strike
"fist is light ,palm is heavy, elbow kills"

funny being an internal art taijiquan trains "bawang elbow" one of the most famou external training
in fact when my friend showed me some hung ga i saw some same techniques in taijiquan
roffles


You guys with your common sense and historically proven crap make me sick !!
:p

*emit qi in pants

[taai gihk yahn]

every single push in taijiquan is a palm strike
the push in push hands is a double palm strike, its "double cannon" except done with palm instead of fist
"brush knee" is the palm version of "mother and son cannon"
"fist is light ,palm is heavy, elbow kills"

some thoughts about taiji:

it seems to prefer "the bottom" when pushing hands (e.g. - "pang / peng" is about what to do / how to manage whne the opponent puts weight onto you) - so if pushing range is about setting up the clinch / grapple, then that "principle" is perhaps suggesting that it wants to get the underhook position to be able to uproot / throw? why would support the thesis that it was a grappling skill set primarily, as opposed to the greatest thing ever since the universe started...

another observation: there is a lot of palm technique, much higher incidence than fist, in fact; so why not call it taiji zhang instead of quan? wel, supposedly Yang LC called in min zhang - cotton palm, originaly...why the change from palm to fist? perhaps not to step on toes of Dong HC, who was teaching ba qua at same time, and who once met privately w/YLC to "talk" about things? dunno, just suggesting; of course, there may have been some influence from the Mo brothers, the scholar students of YLC who happened to just "find" conveniently the "lost" taiji "classics" (which, according to my sifu, are written in a literary style common to the time in which they were "discovered" as opposed to like, a gagillion years before that - the difference between Nabokov and Shakespere, in a sense...)

[bawang]

some thoughts about taiji:

it seems to prefer "the bottom" when pushing hands (e.g. - "pang / peng" is about what to do / how to manage whne the opponent puts weight onto you) - so if pushing range is about setting up the clinch / grapple, then that "principle" is perhaps suggesting that it wants to get the underhook position to be able to uproot / throw? why would support the thesis that it was a grappling skill set primarily, ...)
my opinion is taijiquan's clinch is mainly used to setup hitting and not wrestling, because taijiquan doesn't teach a lot of wrestling, even the few wrestling techniques from taizu is removed (look down at lake, fire burns sky, pigeon spin). i think shuai jiao was added later.

why focus on wrestling now? people dont want to get hit, people are scared to punch and kick

more importantly almost every single technique in the forms is hitting, wrestling and qinna mostly are "secondary" interpretatio or "secret application" which is dumb.
most techniques are straightfoward strikes very obvious
even "playing guitar" and "grab sparrow tail" are pipa finger strikes as the main aplication


another observation: there is a lot of palm technique, much higher incidence than fist, in fact; so why not call it taiji zhang instead of quan? wel, supposedly Yang LC called in min zhang - cotton palm, originaly...why the change from palm to fist? perhaps not to step on toes of Dong HC, who was teaching ba qua at same time, and who once met privately w/YLC to "talk" about things? dunno, just suggesting; of course, there may have been some influence from the Mo brothers, the scholar students of YLC who happened to just "find" conveniently the "lost" taiji "classics" (which, according to my sifu, are written in a literary style common to the time in which they were "discovered" as opposed to like, a gagillion years before that - the difference between Nabokov and Shakespere, in a sense...)

from what i was told by friends and relatives taijiquan was called chen family fist or long fist. then i read the quanpu from the beijing online library (they scan all books) and it said it was called longfist, then yang luchan;s personal style was called cotton fist, then some of his scholar friends saw him perform called it taiji fist
which makes me sad because that means those ancient wudang taiji are fraud

about fist and palm, mostly i do my techniques from taijiquan with fist and not palm. techniques and forms are not permanent, i think you can do with both fist and palm

[sanjuro_ronin]

I was told that because the palm is more Yin than the fist that is Yang, that the palm is preffered.
The other view was that since the fist needs some "conditoning" to be effective and many people were adverse to that ( and still are), the palm was favored.
yet another tale says that the palm delivers Qi to the target better than the fist.

[David Jamieson]

taiji people seem to be easy to punch in the head from my experience.

the majority of them that I've met have no fighting skills at all.

My own fighting skills are mediocre, but it would seem that every time i cross hands with a taiji player, they pretty much cannot handle the incoming, they can't deal with smothering, they can't deal with chin na, you name it.

It has become worthless as a martial art and frankly, I'm not certain it ever was worthwhile as anything other than a way for senior citizens to maintain suppleness and keep moving without hard physical activity that could injure them.


as the new cnn bit goes... just sayin...lol

[Lucas]

lol john stewart did a hillarious rip on that just sayin thing last night. that guy cracks me up.

ive noticed more that a lot of guys use taiji as a suplimental training outlet. most that ive met have been involved in various martial arts in addition to taiji.

i havent really met any strictly taiji guys except all these new age hippies that dont do martial arts but do yoga, tai chi, pilates, tree hugging, etc.

years ago i did meet one guy who did taiji only, but this guy was also like 6'5 and 200+ so he would probably be a tough guy regardless of what he did.

he did say to me tho 'i dont do that crappy new age tai chi stuff what i do is all martial' he said he had been practicing for 40 years...so i dont know, never got to see any of his skill.

[SPJ]

there is tai ji jitsu

there is also tai ji do.

--

:confused:

[Scott R. Brown]

Bzzzz.....bzzzzzzz......bzzzzzzt...t...t..ttt....s ssssssssssss!!!

Too.......much.......truth........bzzzztt.......to o..........much.....re......al..........i......... ty....bzzzzt!

Can.....no......lon.....ger..........func.......ti on......in.........fan........ta........sy........ .land.........bzzzzzzt!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

(lying on the floor,curled into a ball, rocking back and forth, while sucking thumb!)

I'm okay......I'm okay.........I'm okay!!!!!!

[SPJ]

alone the same line of thinking

ju jitsu

ju do

a ki jitsu

a ki do

MMA jitsu

Bu jitsu

bu do

---

one is focusing on techniques how it will work; will not work or make it work

do or the way is the abstractions of ideas

--

tai chi shu would be how it works, you train to make the techniques work

tai chi way or most people on the planet doing tai chi to gain balance and motions around the joints

thinking about the movements or imbodiment of yielding to neutralize, borrowing the opponent's power, using slowness/stillness to prevail over fastness, using the gentle/soft/yielding way to overcome hardness--- one hand/one side yin and the other side yang----

--

so for people that are doing tai chi for the way, they do not worry about fighting in reality or they just too old to fight anyway

they are thinking about doing the way or abstractions of the idea of tai chi.

they may or may not have the skills to do the techniques in real time against a resisting opponent.

--

just point out the obvious for millions

can not resist

:D