Psuh Hands

[Brad]

When do you guys think it's a good time to start pushhands training? I know I'll wait for my teacher to say I'm ready, but I'm just curious for other peoples opinions. Is it something that should be done right away? Or is it best to become profecient at form work first? The order in which I'm being taught seems to be like this:
1.Qigong
2.Basics
3.Form Work
4.Push Hands
5.?

[red_fists]

Hi.

In my style we start on Push-hands about the time when we finish the 1st Form (37 Postures).

Or about 6mth ~ 1yr into the Training.

Keep in mind my style is not traditional.

1st one is 2 hands, start static and go onto 1 step.

Hope this helps.

[Water Dragon]

I did freestyle push hands from the first class.

[Sam Wiley]

I really don't see anything wrong with starting someone off on single push hands from day one, but for the other types I'd wait until after the first third at least has been learned. More advanced stuff can come later. But I don't see any point in making someone wait until after all their forms have been learned.

[red_fists]

Hi Brad.

From my experience Push-hand can benefit form work and vice versa.

We learn a selection of different Push hand in combination with our Forms, and they seem to complement each other.

Cheers.

[Water Dragon]

Red Fists,
How do you guys structure the learning? We start with free hand push, including stepping for the first year or two. After that, we begin working on the basic other Tui Shou training sets to refine our skills. The logic we use is that you must first build true yielding by taking away all the non essential restrictions. Then, you add in restrictions to isolates principles and refine your skill.

In short, we go from the general to the specific.

[red_fists]

Hi Waterdragon.

Ok, let me try to explain our System.

We do Push hands in 3 stages:

1st stage(with 37 Posture Form):
The first Push hand exercise (2 handed) we use to sense the shifting of the Body forward and backward as well as lowering/raising the Body.
Simulated attack is a 2 handed ush to the Chest.

Advance Options: include sideways and circular walking rather than 1 step or 3 step forward/backward.

2nd stage(with 87 posture Form):
Here we now start to develop proper sticking and sensing.
This stage consits of 4 Push Hand exercises.
1.) 1 hand punch to chest, here we move the hands in a circle in front of the Chest. Intercept punch rotate waist to neutralise, counter punch.
2.) 1 hand punch to the chest, here we deflect the punch to the side and upwards to the shoulder into a possible throw or joint lock.
But counterpunch from there.
From the side it looks as if the hadns are doing a figure 8.

Both are very similar but one uses waist rotation only the other uses
waist rotation and larger and hand movement.

3.) 8 hand/forearm block method.
Here we stand opposite each other and block low/low/high/high step 45 degree block low/high to the side.
45 degree step block low/high
step 45 degrees into original posture but on reversed sides. Continue.

4.) 2 handed push.
Here we intercept a Punch and try to push the partner out and away.
Exercise here is to recover from a point where you are nearly of your center and counter.

These 4 are also combined with stepping and left/right hand changes during the execution.

Like:

start --> hand change --> step forward --> step backward --> hand change. --. stop.

Changing hands/steps happen either on command from Sifui or from one of the Guys suddenly.

3rd stage (with 98 posture Form:

2 sets of 4 Corner Push hands.

next step is sparring Hands --> Free sparring.

And I just heard that our Sijo has extented the "8 hand block method" into a "32 hand and foot block method".

Sorry, for not knowing the Chinese Names for these methods.
We use the japanese reading of the Characters.

Hope this helps.

[Prairie]

I believe that push hands practice should begin as soon as possible. Lessons gained from this sort of training can help learn the forms properly. These two methods of training (as well as others) are complimentary.