Pushing hands: Encyclopedia II - Pushing hands - Overview

Pushing hands - Overview

Pushing hands is said to be the gateway for students to understand experientially the martial art aspects of the nei chia (內家 nèi jiā or internal style) martial arts; leverage, reflex, sensitivity, timing, coordination and positioning. The theory being that there is a limit to the amount of physical conditioning available from performing solo form routines, so pushing hands adds the weight of the training partner's pushes onto the legs of the student, legs already bearing the student's own weight. The student then has to deal with the extra work load effectively from a martial point of view before returning their own pushes to the partner in turn. In that sense pushing hands is a contract between students to train the defensive and offensive movement principles of their martial art; learning to generate, coordinate and deliver power to another and also how to effectively neutralize incoming forces in a relatively safe environment.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Overview", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki