Master Chen’s Zoom Lesson August 17, 2020 – Twist Towel Exercise

by Susanna Chwang on 2020/08/18

These are my notes from the 2 hour lesson Master Chen did on twist towel.  I missed the beginning of the lesson, so if anyone could fill in the gaps I would appreciate it.

  • Redirect lightning through you to the ground

  • When doing twist towel, lock the 2 ends, move the middle.

  • We can’t actually not move the head, we are not open enough, but we try to move the head only 1 unit; the kua moves 3 units. (Something moves 2 units. I missed this.)

  • the kua moves the hands. Like moving a book on the table. The book doesn’t move by itself.

  • Our body has a tendency that every body part likes to follow the other body parts, but it’s just tossing

  • You need to have independent moves

  • When you hammer a nail, the swing is a swing, the straight line is a straight line. The hammer swings, the nail goes in straight.

  • E.g. a kid jumping to reach a basketball net. They run fast, then stop under the net and jump up to reach it. They don’t use the run and convert it into a vertical jump

  • Thrust is still there. Convert your run to the movement forward

  • The vertical move is designed to power your arm

  • First we try with bending at the waist forward and backward, but actually, it’s a vertical move

  • The shoulder goes down, the heel pumps to move the kua up towards the shoulder

  • We all need to re-calibrate. We think we are doing everything with the kua. Actually we are doing very little.

  • Your hand is tied to your opponent

  • Your kua needs to go to your elbow, not your shoulder

  • This is a characteristic of our system. There are 3 parts to each move so it can apply to any body part

  • Power comes from the kua, there are no individual moves

  • Zhuo. Connect between kua and elbow. It means clutch.  Or to adhere.

  • First we train to isolate body parts so that they don’t affect each other. Then they must be able to engage and disengage

  • it is exactly gears

  • The centre cannot move, you can’t reach out, you only extend

  • This is the connection we want: the opponent is on your foot

  • Kua very big, shoulder is zero

  • During training; foot to kua to elbow to hand, this is the alignment

  • During Push hands, when you touch your opponent; hand to elbow to kua to floor. Your opponent feels it on their foot.

  • This was a characteristic when you touch grandmaster Hong. You touch him and you immediately feel like you’re floating, or something is wrong with your shoes

  • Energy alignment (? I missed this)

  • Application is 用法

  • 打法 is free fighting

  • The kua is the semi opposite of the hand. The foot is the complete opposite of the hand

  • At first, when you begin learning, you use your kua to mirror the opponent’s hand.

  • Then as you get better, use your foot to mirror your opponent’s hand. You mirror from below, so your movement is much bigger than your opponent’s move

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