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: