In this week’s on the mats I’m going to introduce a new channel segment called Coach’s Corner as we take a look at some competition Push Hands footage coming up right after this.
Troy was that my mini seminar in La last month and asked me on Facebook to take a look at video of him doing some competitive Push Hands in the Pasadena California ICMAC tournament in participating in last month and give them my feedback.
First of all props to you Troy for stepping out on the Mast test your skills I think that always has to be said and you did awesome if you’re not familiar with competition Push Hands it can vary wildly depending on the rules set and who’s judging but in this case the rules were pretty free so it was essentially like a nogi Judo match.
First thing I’m going to offer some critical feedback based on my background in I Liq Chuan, which is entirely principle-based and Troy already received lots of tactical suggestions on Facebook so we’re going to focus mostly on body mechanics as opposed to any individual technique and then I want to end the video on a positive note by pointing out three really nice moves I spotted by Troy.
The first tip I want to offer is to make better use of the wrist as opposed to the hand for control which is one of the things I talked about when I was in LA. I caught a couple of times where your hand was laying flat on the opponent’s arm and he was able to use it against you. Maintaining the wrist as the point of contact will help you keep that as a pivot point.
The second tip is getting more comfortable with the lower hand and our lower hand sticky hand drills can definitely help with that. To me it looks like you spent a lot of time and energy just trying to fight for the upper hand position. Working on getting a little better at being able to control your opponent from the lower hand wood go a long way especially when a much larger opponent is basically just posting out on you like we see several times and your match.
Lastly I would work on maintaining the alignment of the shoulders and the hips a little more which we would talk about under the 13 points or the balance of yin yang, but we see here where you move either the hips or the shoulders first, as opposed to both together, winding in and out of the feet, really compromising the position of the spine and limiting your ability to transfer power from the ground to your opponent or vice versa.
On a positive note I was really impressed with how you managed to avoid what in kung fu they call a creeping or osoto gari in Judo despite being totally caught up in the double underhooks, which I think is actually called a Whizzer and wrestling if I recall correctly.
Secondly there’s a point in the first round where you’ll end up with your back turned to the opponent and you use a very bagua kind of stepping and turning to reorient yourself quickly and prevent your opponent from taking advantage of your back and lastly, I thought you did a very nice job of controlling your opponent’s arm early in the first round preventing him from getting that half guillotine after your failed single leg attempt.
That’s it for this week’s on the mats and our first edition of Coach’s Corner. Would you like some feedback on one of your videos? Hit me up on Twitter at lawyer going through or drop a comment below and as always thanks for watching and subscribing and I’ll see you guys next time.