Sunday, June 17, 2012

Pushing Is Important, But...

A fellow student (who also trains under another teacher besides attending Mr Kwek's pushing hands class) was sharing that his other teacher taught him that to learn pushing hands, he needs to push so that the partner learns to neutralise. Which sounds right, except that when he proceeded to push, he was using quite some force. His force was strong, but not rooted. It was stiff and it was not difficult to just relax and neutralise his force. But he seems to think that his other teacher is right.

I think there is truth in what his other teacher says. After all, if we don't push, our partner can't learn how to neutralise our force. The thing then is how to push. My teacher Mr Kwek teaches that to push, you have to relax, listen to your opponent's force and follow it in. His push can be slow and soft, yet strong. Trying to neutralise this slow but soft force is so much more difficult compared to the hard, fast but stiff force. And the soft push is not necessarily slow; it can be as fast or as slow as you want it to be.

So yes, during pushing hands, it is important for you to push so that your partner can learn to neutralise your force, but it is important to push correctly so that he learns how to listen to your force and then neutralise it. You can give him a discount and make things easy for him by using brute force to push him, but he is not going to benefit much from that, and you won't learn how to push correctly as well. Lose-lose. Push correctly, and your partner learns how to listen and neutralise. Win-win.

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