# When I see videos like this one with pushing hands



## TSDTexan (Oct 17, 2015)

I really wonder about Yi Quan.

Can you really defend yourself with it?

It is only redirecting incoming energy, and the stronger the incoming energy the more whole body power can grab and throw it.






I am 40something years old.
I wont be about to be on the hard external side forever.
Yi Quan sounds too good to be true.


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## Kung Fu Wang (Oct 18, 2015)

One should keep his friend close but his enemy closer.


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## drop bear (Oct 18, 2015)

TSDTexan said:


> I really wonder about Yi Quan.
> 
> Can you really defend yourself with it?
> 
> ...




OK two points made.
That video is ridiculous But push hands does work to a point.






And bullcrap you can't.





Masters boxing starts at 40.
Masters | boxing.org.au


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## Tony Dismukes (Oct 18, 2015)

TSDTexan said:


> I really wonder about Yi Quan.
> 
> Can you really defend yourself with it?
> 
> ...


Well done push hands is a totally valid exercise for building certain attributes which can potentially be very useful in certain combative scenarios.

Whatever's going on in that video, it's not push hands. I'd call it magical live action role playing or self-hypnotic delusion like the Yellow Bamboo no touch knockouts.


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## Xue Sheng (Oct 18, 2015)

Folks...before we get our panties in a knot and start showing each other the error of our ways....push hands is a "TOOL", it is for training, it is not how you fight, it is helping you learn how to apply what you have learned in things like Yiquan and Taijiquan. It is to "TEACH" how to stick, follow, find the other guys center, take advantage of that and when to attack.... by itself it is NOT for fighting....there is a WHOLE lot more one needs to learn and train in Yiquan and Taijiquan for fighting....so before style bashing stuff and statements by those that know nothing about push hands (but want to act like experts) begins I thought I would throw that out there.....

Now what has ruined push hands and given everyone the wrong idea as to what it is about is competition push hands...which is NOT to be confused with traditional push hands, what it is about and what it is for

as for the video I doubt its validity

Now please, carry on, don't let me stop you, with the inevitable silliness that is about to ensue


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## JowGaWolf (Oct 18, 2015)

TSDTexan said:


> I really wonder about Yi Quan.
> 
> Can you really defend yourself with it?
> 
> ...


I don't know what the video is about, but from what I know about internal fighting styles, they don't work like that.  My sifu demonstrates kung fu techniques on us and sometimes it hurts. He's not trying to break our arms or joints, but the stuff works.  Do you know what the students in my school dread the most about kung fu demonstrations? The day that our name is called to help demo a technique.   We dread it because we know it's going to hurt.  This guy takes 5 minutes of pain (I assume) and he keeps coming back.  If I demo a jab by punching you in the face, there's only so many of those jabs you are going to want to demo for.  When things really hurt we don't want more, we want less.  Unless this guy has a fetish for pain, no person is going to submit themselves to 5 minutes of the type of pain that he's showing. 

Push hands works but not the way people think it's working. When it comes to push hands it's all about sensing small movements in your opponent with the goal of knocking them off balance or attacking when they are off balance.  What is learned from push hands can be used in other fighting systems.  I've used the tactile sensing of push hands to identify the opportunity for a double leg sweep which came from a non-internal fighting system.  Push hands is not fighting, it's sensing.  The part that you see when someone is tossed or knocked off balance, that part is the fighting system, and not push hands.  


Like Xue Sheng says.. Push hands is a tool.


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## mograph (Oct 18, 2015)

Yes, we need to be careful about panty-knotting.

1. Push hands is a training tool, as Xuesheng and Tony wrote. Not every training exercise or tool can be _directly_ applied "on the street," but hopefully can lead to increased skill in an area such as sensitivity or reflexes.

2. Yiquan, to me at least, is a kind of _conditioning_ for reflexes and full-body usage inside and outside a martial context. In my opinion, it is a terrific _supplement_ to other martial arts that teach techniques. This is what I like about Yiquan -- it's interdisciplinary.

3. As with all martial arts, anybody can say they do Yiquan, but it doesn't mean they're any good at it. We need to be careful about assuming that any martial art or technique, on its own, is good when we see someone do it well, or bad when we see someone do it badly.

As for the video ... Yiquan doesn't promise that we can do that sort of thing. It's quite practical, and the guys that I know would never try that. Is the video magical? Naah. In my opinion, if the student is really stiff and easily surprised, the teacher can maneuver him into a position where he can exploit the student's natural reaction to freeze, and cause the student to stiffen up because he can feel how the student would react, and knows what it takes to stiffen somebody up. From my small experience, I'd guess that the student is neither in pain nor electrically shocked, but is mostly _surprised_ by his body's unexpected reaction to being lined-up and pushed just right to cause overall stiffness. (Recall that Yiquan is about teaching full-body usage, so full-body stiffness makes sense as the reaction of a junior Yiquan student.) However, if the student were more experienced, were very sensitive and relaxed (and not intimidated by the master), this technique would not likely work. In that case, the student would not let the master find the right alignment, and instead would let the master's push slip aside, even just slightly.

That's my opinion: while it looks like magic or hokum, it's a sensitive teacher finding a student's alignment and surprising him so he stiffens up. Once the student goes stiff, it's easy to bounce him away.

(I tend to favor the naturalistic explanation.) 

Oh, wait -- can stiffy-bouncy be used in a fight? Gah. Hell if I know. But I see the sensitivity training as useful: the master can probably read an opponent's movements pretty well once they make contact. It might be possible to surprise and freeze-bounce a stressed-out and angry opponent, but Yiquan also teaches you to just kick the knee (or stomp the ankle) and be done with it. Good Yiquan is efficient and practical: no woo, no magic. 

Last word: not all videos are suggesting "you can use this in a fight," so we need to be careful about reading that message into them.


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## drop bear (Oct 18, 2015)

mograph said:


> From my small experience, I'd guess that the student is neither in pain nor electrically shocked, but is mostly _surprised_ by his body's unexpected reaction to being lined-up and pushed just right to cause overall stiffness. (Recall that Yiquan is about teaching full-body usage, so full-body stiffness makes sense as the reaction of a junior Yiquan student.) However, if the student were more experienced, were very sensitive and relaxed (and not intimidated by the master), this technique would not likely work. In that case, the student would not let the master find the right alignment, and instead would let the master's push slip aside, even just slightly



Psychological


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## JowGaWolf (Oct 18, 2015)

drop bear said:


> Psychological


This is a good way to look at martial arts.  Those people are the same people who claim Christianity as their religion while other Christians would be stun with "WTF!!!! that's not in my church."  Martial arts have similar situations where someone does a martial arts demo that looks crazy where other practitioners who train in a similar martial art system say "WTF!!! that's not in my school."   I bet you can find other videos of Yi Quan push hands that don't look like the video in the OP.  If you ask those sifus, they would think the same "WTF!!! that's not in my school".


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## Tony Dismukes (Oct 18, 2015)

Xue Sheng said:


> Folks...before we get our panties in a knot and start showing each other the error of our ways....push hands is a "TOOL", it is for training, it is not how you fight, it is helping you learn how to apply what you have learned in things like Yiquan and Taijiquan. It is to "TEACH" how to stick, follow, find the other guys center, take advantage of that and when to attack.... by itself it is NOT for fighting....there is a WHOLE lot more one needs to learn and train in Yiquan and Taijiquan for fighting....so before style bashing stuff and statements by those that know nothing about push hands (but want to act like experts) begins I thought I would throw that out there.....
> 
> Now what has ruined push hands and given everyone the wrong idea as to what it is about is competition push hands...which is NOT to be confused with traditional push hands, what it is about and what it is for
> 
> ...



I see value in traditional push hands.

I see value in competition push hands.

I don't see value in whatever was being shown in that video.



mograph said:


> Is the video magical? Naah. In my opinion, if the student is really stiff and easily surprised, the teacher can maneuver him into a position where he can exploit the student's natural reaction to freeze, and cause the student to stiffen up because he can feel how the student would react, and knows what it takes to stiffen somebody up. From my small experience, I'd guess that the student is neither in pain nor electrically shocked, but is mostly _surprised_ by his body's unexpected reaction to being lined-up and pushed just right to cause overall stiffness.



I'm reasonably familiar with what it looks like for a student to freeze or stiffen up when being maneuvered into an off-balance position. That's not what's happening in the video. The teacher waves his hands a bit and then the student leaps backwards (not falls or stumbles or is shoved backwards ... *leaps *with both feet several inches off the ground), shouts, and then thrashes around a bit like he's just caught the holy spirit. Over and over again. That's not any sort of natural untrained reaction to a skillful push. It's either bad overacting or it's the same sort of self-hypnosis that leads to no-touch knockouts.


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## drop bear (Oct 19, 2015)

JowGaWolf said:


> This is a good way to look at martial arts.  Those people are the same people who claim Christianity as their religion while other Christians would be stun with "WTF!!!! that's not in my church."  Martial arts have similar situations where someone does a martial arts demo that looks crazy where other practitioners who train in a similar martial art system say "WTF!!! that's not in my school."   I bet you can find other videos of Yi Quan push hands that don't look like the video in the OP.  If you ask those sifus, they would think the same "WTF!!! that's not in my school".



Also what may seem to be a real result in the dojo. Could be a conditioned response by your partner from years of training.

The principles are reflected in other arts by the way.


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## JowGaWolf (Oct 19, 2015)

drop bear said:


> Also what may seem to be a real result in the dojo. Could be a conditioned response by your partner from years of training.
> 
> The principles are reflected in other arts by the way.


The worst demo sprawl ever.


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## mograph (Oct 19, 2015)

Tony Dismukes said:


> I'm reasonably familiar with what it looks like for a student to freeze or stiffen up when being maneuvered into an off-balance position. That's not what's happening in the video. The teacher waves his hands a bit and then the student leaps backwards (not falls or stumbles or is shoved backwards ... *leaps *with both feet several inches off the ground), shouts, and then thrashes around a bit like he's just caught the holy spirit. Over and over again. That's not any sort of natural untrained reaction to a skillful push. It's either bad overacting or it's the same sort of self-hypnosis that leads to no-touch knockouts.


That's a good description, and after some reflection, I agree with you. But we're probably also in agreement that it ain't Yiquan.


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## Tony Dismukes (Oct 19, 2015)

mograph said:


> That's a good description, and after some reflection, I agree with you. But we're probably also in agreement that it ain't Yiquan.


I'm not really familiar with Yi Quan. Closest I've ever done is Tai Chi.

I did some YouTube searching for Yi Quan. Stuff like this looks much more legitimate to me:


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## mograph (Oct 19, 2015)

Tony Dismukes said:


> I'm not really familiar with Yi Quan. Closest I've ever done is Tai Chi.
> 
> I did some YouTube searching for Yi Quan. Stuff like this looks much more legitimate to me:


Yep. That's more like it: Zhan Zhuang, then various kinds of force testing. If you're interested, I've found this to be a good guide:
http://www.amazon.com/Yiquan-Beginners-Guide-Basic-Skills/dp/1257161199


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## 23rdwave (Oct 22, 2015)

There are many flavors of yi quan.

Han Shi Yi Quan











Sam Tam


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