Practiced with Fleming on Sunday. he started 6 months ago uses his upper body too much. I told him to do more moving foundation to get the feel of generating power from the leg. His legs are weaker proportionally, so this is something he has to work on, to even out his body power potential.
Generating power from the leg is an elusive feeling, especially when pushing another person. My light bulb moment happen when pushing the big fridge and realizing the mistakes I was doing
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
When I got back from Toronto, my wife looked at me and said, Wow Bruce, you look like you’ve been working out really hard. Look at your arms! I weighed myself and looked at myself in the mirror. I had gained about 5 pounds of muscle mass, in my arms, chest and shoulders. Basically, this meant I was doing everything wrong pushing all those hours…. or at least a lot of the time. Master Chen, whenever he walked by, (he was constantly going around giving corrections) kept saying Bruce! Don’t Push ! I really was trying not to but, learning a new way of effecting your opponent is not easy. Clearly I need to declare war on my mind and body to establish new patterns or else I will constantly revert back to the regular way of ‘pushing’ hands. I need to train “don’t pushing hands”
We only want to push using upper body because this is what we have been doing. Our legs don’t have the fine control necessary and so we don’t traust to use it to push
My light bulb monment was after returning from my third fulltime. I guess by that time I have more control of my body from doing yilus, and I know what a ‘mistake push’ is from many hands-on with Master Chen
Couldn’t agree more Wilkin, your comment about the fridge triggered my whole thought process there. I can see how/why rubber cords are used as a training to tie peoples arms up to push, forcing the use of torso and leg joint articulation to maneuver opponent, can’t use your arms if you don’t have them….
Long time ago when I attended the week long workshop in Victoria, naturally we did push hand everyday. After the first 3 days, I could not lift my arms when I was in the shower. Yes, I used all my upper body strength in hard push. After 3 days, I could not continue that way of push. But there were still 3 more days of workshop, 3 more days of push. Only by then, I experienced the push without using arm/hand. That was a small break through for me. What the story I’m telling here is that before our body reach to the exhaustion we could not break the old habit in order to experience something new. I think (sometimes) a week long intensive training is necessary.
The above article is a perfect example of using Taiji in and out of the class. The rules/principles apply to most actions in our daily lives. Not just when we practice Taiji. Like moving the refrigerator I too had a similar experience. While at a local home improvement store I loaded a cart full of pavers. When exiting the store I had to go down a slope to the parking lot. The cart was heavy and moved me down the slope. Upon returning for the next load I used the moving circle method to stepping. I moved the rear foot heal to toe and then moved the foward foot toe to heal. I was in control of the descent with a lot less effort. I used this method for the remaining of my trips
Very cool guys. in learning applications in Kuntao. my eldest teacher and his disciples has the process of exausting us through forms and excersizes. I learned this at a young age. then when we couldnt move we would try to apply the form… this reality excused any possible deviance of application. i think its the only real way one can learn correctly. with the physical factors out of the way you have no choice but to move correctly. again very cool…