Wednesday, September 08, 2010

After 3 Months

3 months not training (much) set me back by a lot (I think). My teacher has yet to comment but I think he is just trying not to discourage me. A lot of catching up to do...

What did I do for the last 3 months?
Silk-reeling exercise for about 15min each session, plus some other basic movements for 5min, total 20min of training each time.
Trained about 3 sessions each week, after averaging out. Sometimes I trained daily for 2 weeks, sometimes I missed one whole week of training.
Zero pushing hands... no one to push hands with.
I think I can count the number of times I practised routines... maybe 4 times of Chen style and 4 times of Yang style...

The other day during pushing hands class, I sort of lost control. My partner was using force and I was returning it to him. He then told me not to use force to push him... and then he started using more force, so it felt to him that I was pushing harder. Then he got a bit rough (elbow, two-handed arm lock, grabbing) which was okay at first. But he kept saying I was using brute force to push him. Every once in a while he tried to use two hands (we were doing single-hand push hands) so in the end I also used two hands and pushed him. This got him a bit mad, he became real rough, tried to throw me and when I didn't fall but instead sprung back towards him, I did a double-handed push on his stomach quite unintentionally. But the end result is the same. I hit him when I should not have.

Lesson here? When things start getting rough, break off. Find another partner. No point ending up sparring. That is not pushing hands.

A lot of catching up to do... and a lot of distractions to take me away from focusing on the training...

1 comment:

Terry said...

Sounds like a lot going on under the surface in that session from both partners! It reminded me about one of the beauties of push hands; it's power to show us more about what's going on in our heads than we would perhaps like to reveal.
A simple push is a very emotional act and getting pushed is also very evocative. Add frustration (of trying to do the task at hand) into the mix and it's perhaps a surprise that more people don't throw a punch!

Good luck with your continued training and take heart: some people don't realise the lesson of the situation as you did afterwards, later or at all.