Formosa Neijia

Thanks to Charlie Conklin for this. Below is a description of some push hands games from Cheng Hsin. As I understand them, the purpose of these games is to introduce elements of freeplay that move you beyond simple cooperative pattern work. You’re still cooperative in terms of playing the game, but you must now look […]

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Tabby Cat has commented on my recent post working with resistance and he brings up some interesting points (thanks for the kind words BTW )
Working with resistance is all well and good, but what about parameters? When and where do you draw a line?
I was discussing push hands recently with some people that do […]

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Confession time: I find it hard to have respect for people that don’t work with some form of resistance.
The martial arts world is big and there’s room for a lot of different perspectives. Whatever people want to practice is fine. To each his own.
But talking about borrowing the other person’s force is easy. Quoting classics […]

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I like games. I think they can teach us things that patterns and freeplay sometimes can’t. Patterns are fixed examples of principles that should be worked into the body. Freeplay exists at the other end of the spectrum, bringing all of our stuff together. In the middle is a bit of a no-man’s land that […]

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The following is a long quote from Rob Turtle’s comment about Marnix Wells and push hands. It’s a continuation of the thoughts started in behind the curtain. As readers know, I make long in-depth comments like this into a post so they won’t get buried int he comment section. Thanks to Rob for this.
Marnix will […]

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The quote below seems like a good follow up to yesterday’s post on the push hands tourney between the taiji grandmasters. Marnix Wells is well known for his translations and martial skill. Below he gives us his experience and it’s a bit against the common grain, so to speak. Here’s the original (I suggest reading […]

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Dojorat recently asked me what I thought about mixing harder techniques into push hands. His thoughts are here.
There’s no problem with mixing the hard with the soft to some extent. I’m fairly open to eventually mixing in strikes, kicks, and throws into two person practices but then this evolves into sanshou, not tuishou.
Sanshou is obviously […]

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Wow! Check this out. This looks much more high level than the usual push hands material that you see out there. In this clip, I especially liked level three. Look at the cooperative, yet controlling, play between the two participants. That’s very smooth. Almost bagua-like. Here is part of an article from them that […]

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This training was popularized in the West by Jou Tsung-hwa, if I’m not mistaken. I know that Jou took some flack from some people for this practice, because they thought it was “made up” or something. But it is a legitimate practice that I’ve picked up bits and pieces of from various taiji and bagua […]

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So I pushed with a new friend yesterday, and he was bigger than most of my push hands partners. I like pushing with bigger, stronger people so the challenge was welcome.
During our second session of the day, I had my left hand on top of his right arm near the tricep. My left thumb was […]

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