An Encounter with the Hoppers

After a long summer hiatus, I have to admit my goal of posting at least once a month has fallen by the wayside. After all, it only makes sense to post when there is actually something to share!

I’m sure many IMA/taijiquan enthusiasts have seen videos circulating on the internet of pushing hands demonstrations where the pushee (uke) seems to hop or jump away despite almost no movement from the pusher, as in this video:

As I am always on the lookout for ways to improve my pushing hands, earlier in September I made contact with a practitioner of a Yang substyle that is very popular in Beijing, the Old Six Roads (Lao Liu Lu) branch, sometimes called Imperial Yang in the West.

This practitioner introduced me to his teacher, Wei shifu, who studied from one of the prominent teachers in this line. I went in with an open mind, but have to say was very disappointed. When demonstrating with his own students, the pushees would hop or jump any which way, but when Wei shifu tried to direct me I did not feel any actual force, so just didn’t move. What was even more laughable was one of Wei’s female students actually hopped away herself when pushing with me, without me actually exerting any force on her!

Having actually gotten hands on with a teacher from this line, my assessment is it seems to be a highly cooperative exercise in which the pushee has been conditioned to hop even at the slightest indication of intent from the pusher. From my perspective such a practice is not martially useful and I won’t be going back to that group.

Obviously, one teacher is not necessarily representative of the whole group, and the level of skill varies tremendously within any style, so it may be that other subgroups (e.g. Wei Shuren’s students) would be more convincing.