Grandmaster Tse’s Tàijí Fist 210

Tuī Shǒu 推手 Training – Part 8

Once we have become familiar with Huó Bù Shuāng Tuī Shǒu 活步雙推手 – Double Hand Stepping Pushing Hands, we can begin to use almost all the skills of Tàijíquán 太极拳. Now when we train with our partner, we begin by go through and drill the Péng 掤Lǚ 履, Àn 按 and Jǐ 擠 sequence three times, then after this we can do almost anything and it is almost like fighting, however we still do not punch or kick. The reason for this is that we are so close, that it is not safe and too easy to hurt each other. Besides this, we also still need to concentrate on Péng 掤, Lǚ 履, Jǐ 擠, Àn 按, Cǎi 採, Liè 裂, Zhǒu 肘 and Kào 靠 and we need to work out how to use them on a partner. In particular we should work on Cǎi and Liè to develop our Qínná 擒拿 – Locking and Controlling skills. But again, we need to be careful and not hurt each other whenever we push, pull, grab and break. We should just make our partner feel they lose their balance and fall gently to the floor and not try to break them. Chén Shì Tàijíquán 陈式太极拳 – Chén Style Tàijíquán’s Fā Jìn 發勁 – Release Power can be very powerful and can easily hurt your partner so we need to learn how to control it.

Eventually, we only need one contact to throw our opponent across the room or make them fall. Tàijíquán’s fighting skill is about breaking their centre of gravity.