http://www.fallingleaveskungfu.com for more info
Tui Shou (push hands) or Chi Sao (sticky hands) are common practices in Chinese martial arts, meant to develop both structure, sensitivity, power, offense and defense. All too often though they become overly formalized practices that leave the original intent far behind, and as a result practitioners fail to develop any real, usable martial arts skill.
At Falling Leaves Kung Fu in Tempe, we strive to practice these drills in the spirit which they were developed, a real, “live” drill.
We ran these stationary drills taking turns being the “anchor” and then cycling through the line. each person got two minutes as the anchor, then at the end I wanted to shoot the clip and the students thought it would be funny to challenge me to just stay in the anchor spot until i dropped. Unfortunately we ran out of space on the sd card before I gassed completely but i was just about all in by the end anyway.
So what we were doing is trying for the anchor to start out as “lower hand” and then we play “control”.
Definition of “control” is:
lower hand can tap the partners arms and body (like striking) and try to get to “upper hand”.
upper hand can pull / push from the get go and wants to try and defend from the lower hand attacks.
both upper and lower attempt to maintain contact/stickiness throughout.
once lower gets to be upper then the roles reverse.
The idea was to maintain the harmony of the 13 points, manifest 45 and 90 to the point, manifest offense and defense (highest point), etc. at all times and under duress, while at the same time constantly shifting level of play (hard and heavy with the guys and lighter with the ladies, and even the difference in body types and energy on touch between the guys), to challenge the attention while in a state of fatigue.
Duration : 0:6:20
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