Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
I understand that, just using the universal label. I agree! In the 70's at my school we were taught that way... our push hands are all about strikes, sweeps,locks, kicks, throws, and some grappling....that's all I knew.......it has been really frustrating lately when I play hands with other Tai Chi players outside of our school and they tell me I'm not using real Tai Chi because I do all of the above. All they want to do is push and say if you push somebody down enough they will get frustrated and quit.....I'm thinking no, their going to get pi$$ed off and get up and kill you. I also tell them that pushing is fine until someone slaps the sh!t out of you, then what are you going to do. It's crazy.
Push hands, like Chi Sao in WC, is in many ways the main problem.
A drill that was used to develop a certain skill set or attribute(s) becomes the "end all" of a system in terms of functional training.
Just sad.
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
Told this a few times before
Guang Yi Ren is Chen Xiaowang's rep in NYC. We ar friends with one of his students. They have video tape of the push hands competitions they do at Chen village
IT IS WRESTLING
it is not the touchy feely no force crap you see over here
a US based "push hands champion" went to Chen village and asked to push, he was picked up in a body lock and thrown, he told them they weren't doing tai chi push hands
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
there is something to be said for throwing them down hard and running away (or stomping on their head)
I think in the grand scheme, ground work must be intergrated, but I can see where they are coming from
to me, much of Tai Chi is wrestling, we know wrestling works, but as a friend said to me recently "only the Chinese could take wrestling and make it a non functional TMA"
Two names I respect the most.....been to a Chen Xiaowang workshop and plan to attend more! he's awesome...no BS
Our school went to Chen village in 98 and a couple of our masters pushed with a couple of theirs...your right it was no patty cake...we left with a lot of mutual respect.
Just so happens I spoke to my sifu about this subject, just last week. He said not as many fighters attended this event as you may think. He said yes there were some schools there and some Thai Boxers, but, not the level of experience you would expect to see at a event of that size.
He used an actor winning one yr as proof the competition was not the greatest in his opinion.
jeff
少林黑虎門
Sil Lum Hak Fu Mun
RIP Kuen "Fred" Woo (sifu)