Pushing Hands (Tui Sho), and Reality

(Olvasd magyar nyelven: A Toló-, Lökdösődő kezek Tui Shou, és a valóság)

In the title, I am referring to the useful practices of Tai Chi, but in reality, my aim is to shed light on an issue that highlights a deficiency in many gym-based training sessions.

I won’t go into the details of the reasons for this now.

In this post, I would like to draw attention to how differently gym practice and real conflict situations are from one another. I will write more about this in a later post, as this can be observed not only in Tai Chi but also in Aikido, [wingt∫un], etc.

I would like to emphasize that the issue is not with the movements or practices of the styles themselves. Rather, it lies in the training methods that fail to emphasize the transition between the two different situations.
A model (gym-based practice) and real combat or street fighting are vastly different. The modeled practices can be seen as elements of reality, from which the possibilities and solutions of martial arts styles to real-world problems gradually emerge.

It’s not my intention to belittle the art of Tai Chi or their training methods. Personally, I find them very interesting, and I have drawn many ideas from them.

It is visually captivating to see how masters demonstrate the practices.

In the videos above, you can see how beautifully the principles work during training, how a model is built, and how certain situations can be modeled—situations that could be elements of a real-life scenario!

Now, here are a few videos that highlight reality, but even these are not truly reality.

Naturally, practice and a combat situation are entirely different. How different would a situation be where a real fight occurs? We probably wouldn’t recognize the original Tui Shou practices any more than we do in competitive settings.

Image source:
thetaichinotebook.com