A lot is not enough. The paradoxes of Practical Training methods in Tai chi Tuishou (Pushing hands).
There is a common argument made by martial art commentators about the need for pressure testing their martial art. This argument is often made in support of the benefits of martial sport, and competitive martial art practice. When speaking of the rare tai chi players such as myself, who teach tai chi as a martial art and who teach practical self defence, we often see invitations to compete in the UFC or other martial sports in order to prove or test the effectiveness of each person’s individual skillset, or the validity of tai chi itself as a martial art.
The main difference between a martial art and a martial sport can be described this way:
- In a martial sport the goal is to win.
- In a martial art, the goal is to avoid losing.
The former is a philosophy of self promotion. The latter is a philosophy of self defence. But for either to be effective for self defence, might it be worth considering testing certain skill sets in the other context?
Of course, neither martial sport nor martial art, needs to be defined in such shallow terms. Both can be vehicles for self development, cultural refinement, harmony, understanding, and tranquility. Both can also be used for more nefarious reasons. Bur for the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that practitioners of both art and sport are striving to be better human beings, and uphold the highest of ideals.
The point is that martial art and martial sport are not exactly the same thing. And, it can be argued that neither preserves its true character when crammed into the mold of a “Practical Self Defence Program.”
Most experienced competitors would admit that they would rather face a 300 pound opponent in the octagon boxing ring, or mat, than face a 100 pound opponent in the street. Context is important. Rules make a difference. It might be disingenuous of the typical traditional martial artist to say, “My art is too deadly for the octagon” if they have not actually pressure-tested their art with comprehensive scenario training, including some sort of live, creative, free fighting. However, Olympic champions have been coached by people who never competed. Successful fighters have been taught by people who never fought.
There are clear benefits to practising both martial sport and martial art, and to learning to apply those skills to self defence. And, under the right circumstances, excellence in a martial sport can be concurrent with excellence in a martial art. (People like Grandmaster Liang Shouyu and many of his students have demonstrated this truth for decades.) But while there is much overlap between the training methods of martial arts and those of martial sports, it is possible to be good at one, and not so good at the other. It is important to recognize that they are different things.
So, what happens when the goals of one get mixed with the goals of the other?
I’ll tell you what happens. Chaos, failure, contradictions, life, and competitive tuishou (pushing hands).
I am not opposed to martial sport, and have coached a number of competitive martial artists. But there must be a clear distinction made between martial sport and other types of “pressure testing.”
More important, however, is to emphasize that sport and other types of pressure testing is not a type of training. Testing might show you whether or not your skill works against a particular opponent, but it will not show you why, and will not help you fix any problems. The way to improve your skill is through cooperative exercises with a friendly training partner and through proper solo practice.
Tai chi tuishou is an exercise designed to improve martial skill for self defence, and can be applied in martial sport. But it works best when used as a study of subtlety, biomechanics, emotion, relaxation, and balance. The idea is to reduce the level of intensity until one can maintain relaxation, balance, and the optimal mechanical advantage. It is about balancing oneself in the face of external forces. It fails when one sacrifices ones own balance to attack the opponent.
When I teach tuishou, there are different modes of training.
In one mode, both participants are trying to maintain balance and alignment, like acrobats balancing balancing in a dangerous pose.
It is a cooperative exercise with both aligning forces with the precision of a person balancing a string of pearls on end, without the string. This is about lightness and precision.
In another mode, one player aims to maintain perfect balance and alignment while the other pushes them around. The receiver tries to stay balanced, without moving their feet, and without allowing the partner to increase the pressure. This requires a special set of skills. But the pusher is simply applying force and leverage to maximum advantage, attempting to push the other while maintaining balance themselves.
In a more advanced version of this exercise, the “attacker” tries to cause the partner to commit errors. This is a higher level of skill that combines offence and defence in subtle and profound ways.
It is true that competitive tuishou is a fun sport and an entertaining way to test your skill. However, the fact remains that, for the vast majority of students, competitive tuishou is counterproductive when both players are of comparable skill. (I expect to get some pushback from that comment.)
Tuishou is the study of subtle forces, precise levers, and deep awareness. One should only train at a level of intensity where one can be aware of the errors. If you train with too much intensity, you will confuse cause and effect. You won’t know why you lost or why to won.
In practice, I would rather watch my students lose repeatedly and learn the reason for the loss, than see them win repeatedly without improvement. To win without awareness is to entrench yourself in ignorance. You just become better at being the way you are, not learning to be better than you are. Your skills will work until they don’t, and when they fail, they will fail spectacularly. It will be like adding weight to a poorly constructed bridge. The bridge will continue to work just fine right up until the moment of the catastrophe.
Tuishou practice, like tai chi forms practice, is an opportunity to engage your analytical mind, discover new things about yourself and the mind-body connection. Competition does not allow for growth and insight in the way that careful training does.
When tuishou practice is about defeating your partner, then the winner will often be one of two types – either the person who has done the most non-competitive training, or the one who is willing to raise the level of intensity higher than the opponent.
I had a friend who was like that. I always warned my students that, should they choose to train with him, they should always plan to lose. Otherwise, the intensity would continue to increase until someone is injured. The only time I ever defeated him was when, as a prank, he jumped me from behind, without warning, while I was taking with a neighbour in front of a grocery store. Had I known it was him, I would have chosen to lose. As it was, I saw the reflection in my neighbour’s eyeglasses, and a moment later was standing over my attacker.
He looked up wide-eyed at me, and said, “Wow! That was really good, Ian!”
“Sorry,” I replied, giving him my hand to help him up, ” I didn’t know it was you.” I’m fairly sure that I was feeling overly smug after that. I also never played tuishou with him again. I expected that he would have a chip on his shoulder and training with him would forever be dangerous.
There are different types of tuishou competition. The one that is popular in China is a modified version of shuaijiao (Chinese Wrestling). It looks like a judo match in which one is not allowed to grab the opponent’s clothes. Competitors score points for downing the opponent or pushing them off the competition area/platform.
The type of tuishou competition that is found in North America, and Europe, developed from the actual training method. Competitors score points when the opponent makes an error of balance that would put them in jeopardy in a real fight against a skilled opponent. You get penalized for errors such as losing balance, double grabbing, holding on, involuntary stepping, stumbling, falling, etc. It doesn’t require a powerful push, especially in restricted step tuishou, and you don’t get extra points for making the opponent travel a greater distance. In free-step tuishou competitions, you get points the same way, but get extra points for causing the opponent to step out of the circle.
I remember a visiting Chinese Teacher witnessing a tuishou competition in the USA during the 1990s and commenting about how “traditional” the western rules were compared to the Chinese version.
Why?
There comes a point, in any fight, where you lose awareness of what is happening. Sometimes the movement is too fast for you. Sometimes you lose your balance and can’t connect to the opponent. But the loss of awareness almost always results in panic and tension. You can’t feel what is happening. So, you tense everything to brace for whatever is coming next. This response is like playing the lottery. You know your odds of winning are slim. But, “you can’t win if you don’t play”, so you bet your last bit of tension on the opponent will miss the target, or that they have also lost awareness and tensed up. If the latter happens, then you can hope to recover awareness of the situation before the enemy does. The last person to make an intelligent decision usually wins. But often enough, an unintelligent decision mates with good fortune and produces a victory. Such lucky bad decisions then lead to training methods that rely on luck.
Tuishou, and other traditional training methods, keep the level of intensity below the most subtle level of panic. As soon as you become too tense to achieve maximum mechanical advantage, you must lower the level of intensity.
In the martial sport, one gradually increases the level of intensity to match whatever level of anxiety you are comfortable with. But in a traditional martial art, especially an internal style like tai chi, you gradually lower the level of anxiety that is acceptable, until you are training with a level of calm that defies credulity. You want to find the point where your mind starts to lose awareness, and intercept that panic. Through the course of training, you develop a more subtle understanding of what that tension is.
It may seem quite bizarre, and foolish, to witness two people “fighting” at slower and slower speeds, getting more and more relaxed, until they don’t seem to be doing anything. But, if you understand fighting, or martial sport, you will learn that most people (I’m referring mostly to spectators here) are unaware of what really wins a fight. Boxing fans will see the punch and think that the saw the winning blow. But the end is not the technique. There are many invisible things that happened to lead to that successful punch.
One of the core elements of internal martial art training is standing meditation, and slow movements. This is the practice of tuishou, without a partner. You are not imagining an opponent. Rather, you are finding the conflict within yourself. You are seeking the mental, emotional, and mechanical inefficiencies within your own nature.
First we learn to stop fighting ourselves. Then we learn to stop fighting the opponent. The advanced skill involves becoming so balanced and efficient that not-doing becomes our tactic and strategy, and the opponents defeat themselves by the nature of their attack.
You can use this skill in martial sport and in self defence. But it is never about winning. It is about not losing.
There is an episode of Star Trek TNG, in which Commander Data, an android played by Brent Spiner, faces a master strategist named Siena Kolrami (played by Roy Brocksmith) in a game called Strategema, (a sort of holographic high-speed 3-D go-moku.) Early in the episode, Data, loses to Kolrami in such spectacular fashion that he questions his own worth, runs diagnostics on his positronic brain, and attempts to resign his position, believing that there is some flaw in his nature that makes him unqualified to make good decisions.
By the end of the episode however, Data finds a way to use unorthodox strategy to defeat superior tactics. He demolishes Kolrami in a rematch by not trying to win. Kolrami storms off in a huff.
Data: Why have you suspended the game?
Kolrami: Because this is not a rematch! You have made a mockery of me.
Riker: Data, you beat him!
Data: No, sir. It is a stalemate.
Worf: No game has ever gone this high.
Kunta Kinte: What did you do?
Data: I simply altered my premise. Working under the assumption that Kolrami wanted to win, he expected me to play for the same goal.
Wesley: You didn’t.
Data: No. I was playing for a standoff – a draw. While Kolrami was dedicated to winning, I was able to pass up obvious avenues of advancement to settle for a balance. Theoretically, I could challenge him indefinitely.
Dr. Crusher: Then you have beaten him.
Data: It is a matter of perspective. In the strictest sense, I did not win. I busted him up.
At the core of high level skill is stillness and emptiness. It is represented in the first posture of every tai chi routine. It is often called “preparation posture” and is treated like getting ready to do the form. However, a better translation is “be ready.” I prefer “expect nothing / be prepared for anything”. The traditional name is “Wuji” which means “non-duality”
As food for thought, as if to challenge everything I have said by supporting it, here is a quote from an article about Corporeal Mime and the teachings of Etienne Decroux:
Etienne Decroux confiait : « Ne pas bouger n’est pas assez, il faut vouloir ne pas bouger » (Pezin 198). Un aphorisme régulièrement repris au Théâtre du Mouvement. Decroux soulignait ainsi la dimension active de l’acteur dans l’immobilité. Il prenait par ailleurs pour référence de son travail la figure de l’hippocampe comme modèle d’une immobilité en mouvement5. Un léger mouvement de la queue presque imperceptible le tient immobile, ce qui donne l’impression en le regardant d’un mouvement sur place. Cette qualité de l’immobilité est décrite dans ses Paroles sur le Mime : « C’est l’immobilité mobile, la pression des eaux sur la digue, le vol sur place de la mouche arrêtée par la vitre, la chute différée de la tour qui se penche et se retient. Ainsi qu’on bande un arc avant d’avoir visé, l’homme à nouveau implose » (Decroux 71).
Etienne Decroux confided: “Not moving is not enough, you have to want not to move” (Pezin 198). An aphorism regularly repeated at the Théâtre du Mouvement. Decroux thus underlined the active dimension of the actor in immobility. He also took as a reference in his work the figure of the hippocampus as a model of immobility in motion5. A slight movement of the tail, almost imperceptible, keeps it still, which gives the impression when looking at it of a movement on the spot. This quality of immobility is described in his Paroles sur le Mime: “It is the mobile immobility, the pressure of the waters on the dam, the flight on the spot of the fly stopped by the window, the delayed fall of the tower who bends down and holds back. As one draws a bow before having aimed, the man again implodes” (Decroux 71).
La suspension du temps à travers le traitement de l’immobilité au Théâtre du Mouvement
Véronique Muscianisi