Push Hands

Push Hands refers to a wide range of exercises within the Martial Arts. Most fighting styles that train in push hands do not practice all these types of push hands. Here I will describe the general types of Push Hands:

• Single Hand (sensitivity drills)
• Stationary (balance drills)
• Restricted Step (technical sparring)
• Moving Step (free sparring)
• Beyond Push hands (San Shou and Weapon Sparring)

Single Hand Push Hands (sensitivity drills)

The most common form of push hands is done as an exercise to build the attribute of of feeling what your your opponent is trying to do. The most common of these drills is single-hand push hands in Tai Chi (though there are also other sensitivity drills in Tai Chi that are both one handed and different from this one, and two handed sensitivity drills):

Again push hands is trained in many different fighting styles. Here are push hands sensitivity drills found in Goju Ryu Karate:

Stationary Push Hands (balance drills)

Tai Chi is well known for improving the attribute of balance, aka fall prevention. Part of how this is done is with push hands drills were two resisting partners try to get each other to move one of their feet. There are actual completions in this type of stationary push hands, and most "internal" Chinese fighting styles have practitioners who participate:

Restricted Step Push Hands (technical sparring)

Resticed Step (or "fixed step") Push Hands is a bridge between Stationary Push Hands and free sparring. Because no one wins fights by simply getting someone to move their feet, Fixed Step Push Hands allows for higly limited foot movement in order to create the kind of momentum that can result in putting the opponent on the ground or out of the ring. There are different variations of Fixed Step Push Hands competitions, and each variation is very technical:

Moving Step Push Hands (free sparring)

Moving Step Push Hands is essentially the safest possible form of free sparring. The object is to get the opponent out of the ring or off of their feet; basically Sumo without the head contact. The most injurious techniques such as slamming your body down on your opponent, striking, joint locks, etc are not usually allowed:

There is a lot of variation in Moving Step Push Hands. In some schools or competitions they allow elbow or shoulder strikes to the body, or wrist locks, and various other grappling techniques not usually seen in other Moving Step practices. For example here is a training video from Chen Village which shows an in house Moving Step Push Hands workout allowing quite a bit of head contact:

You know how in boxing it gets boring when the referee has to break up the fighters from the clinch? Moving Step Push Hands is essentially that fighting which should be allowed instead of having referee interference. Moving Step Push Hands is then a base to build on for other types of free sparring, such as fighting on the Lei Tai or sparring with weapons.

Beyond Push Hands (Lei Tai and Weapon Sparring)

In Tai Chi and other marital arts we often see instructors adding more striking techniques from forms to the Moving Step Push Hands for free sparring.  Just for example, here is a casual Tai Chi practitioner in black pants applying his Tai Chi free sparring against a Kickboxer in a Lei Tai fight, and you can clearly see his Push Hands technique:

Another range of combat that can be built on Moving Step Push Hands is weapon free sparring. For example:

Fighting Style vs Open Fighting

The term "Martial Arts" is vague and could mean anything from doing Tai Chi line dancing in a park to fighting in a Sumo tournament. But usually when people say "martial art," what they usually mean is training in a specific fighting style. This is complicated by people not understanding the difference between training in a fighting style vs training for open fighting. While fighting styles have self defense applications outside of open fighting, open fighting is any competition where different fighting styles can be used against each other. 

Here are examples of different martial arts to help you distinguish between fighting styles and open fighting in the future:

• MMA
• Wrestling
• Judo
• Submission Grappling
• Boxing
• Muay Thai
• Savate
• Dutch Kickboxing
• Karate
• Kung Fu
• Sumo
• Moving Step Push Hands
• Tai Chi
• San Shou

MMA

MMA is the most obvious example of open fighting. One of the most famous MMA matches of all time was Holly Holm vs Ronda Rousey. Ronda Rousey had a winning streak of 10 undefeated MMA fights using primarily her background as an Olympian level Judo player, and she primarily relied on Judo inside of the cage. Holy Holm trained with the same Gym and coach as notorious MMA dirty boxer Jon Jones, with coach Michael Winkeljon, who learned to fight from Kenpo master Bill Packer. What proceeded was a classic Kenpo vs Judo MMA match, with Holm using Kenpo style low kicks ("oblique kicks") instead of Thai kicks to weaken Rousey's legs before knocking out Rousey with a classic traditional high kick, and during the fight used the "just stand up" strategy traditional martial artists insist fighters should use in MMA when entangled on the ground: 

Wrestling

Wrestling is an example of fighting styles that are clumped together to be mistakenly referred to as a type of open fighting, when in fact these individual wrestling fighting styles aren't employed against eachother (outside of some other form of open fighting like MMA.) American Folkstyle is the most serious Get Up Grappling, Greco Roman studies how to grapple without using your weaker arms against the opponent's stronger legs, and Freestyle is what people typically think of as Olympic Wrestling. A wrestler in the USA might practice all three types of wrestling, but they will be the first to tell you that these three wrestling styles are strategically different from each other, and different approaches have to be trained to succeed in each one.

Judo

Judo is a good example of a fighting style that is often mistaken for open fighting. It is very rare that a non-Judo practitioner will try to participate in a Judo competition. Even though each individual Judo practitioner specializes in their own personal subset of techniques, all Judo blackbelts are expected to be able to competently execute the same curriculum of techniques.

Submission Grappling

Submission Grappling is actually a collection of different open fighting rule sets. Examples of fighting styles that compete in Submission Grappling competitions are Sambo, Catch Wrestling, Gracie Jiu Jitsu, 10th Planet BJJ, various styles of Japanese Jujitsu, etc.

Boxing & Muay Thai

Boxing is probably the open fighting most often mistaken for a fighting style. If you compare Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s "Philly Shell" fighting style to Mike Tyson's "Peekaboo" fighting style, both have practitioners who are famous and competent boxers, but everything about the fighting styles are different: stance, structure of their strikes, internal vocabulary for describing techniques, footwork, head movement, training methodologies, etc. This is also true of Muay Thai were many people mistakenly believe that all Muay Thai gyms share the same exact set of strategies, techniques, and training methodologies, which is not the case at all.

French & Dutch Kickboxing

French kickboxing, known as Savate, generally has a the same set of techniques, strategies and training methodologies from gym to gym, and is thus a cohesive fighting style which other styles generally do not compete in. Same is true of Dutch Kickboxing, notorious for their brain damaging hard sparring practices, a hybrid of a Dutch style of boxing and Kyokushin Karate. Note that practitioners of the fighting styles of both Savate and Dutch Kickboxing have competed in Muay Thai open fighting.

Karate & Kung Fu

Karate is an example of how many different fighting styles get confused with each other because they were put in a category together, even if they were never part of the same fighting style at any point in known history. This is also true of Kung Fu, but to a much greater degree because Kung Fu is much older.

Sumo

Sumo is a classic example of a highly competitive fighting style, that though highly regarded as a sport in and of itself, is not regarded as open fighting precisely because only Sumo trainees fight in Sumo tournaments.

Moving Step Push Hands

Moving Step Push Hands is open fighting similar to the fighting style of Sumo, but without palm strikes allowed and a more technical scoring system. A wide variety of martial artists from different fighting styles, often practicing different fighting styles from Tai Chi, test to see who is best at staying in the ring and on their feet. 

Tai Chi

Tai Chi is an example of a family of related martial arts that is way too vast of a topic to be considered a form of open fighting or a specific fighting style..

San Shou

San Shou is an example of how different nearly identical practices can be confusingly similar but refer to totally different martial arts, yet be called the same thing:

1. "Wushu San Shou" is the type of Wushu focused purely on fighting. This is the type of San Shou people earn degrees in at Universities in China. These fighters mostly fight only other Wushu San Shou fighters, and is thus a fighting style with best practices for specific techniques and strategies.
2. Tournament Lei Tai Fighting that uses a rule set similar the Wushu San Shou rule set, but which is used at tournaments for fighters from very different Kung Fu systems to compete against each other, is also sometimes called San Shou. This is is some of the oldest open fighting around today, with numerous fighters trained in different fighting styles participating. This is what was meant by "San Shou" before "Wushu San Shou" ever existed: