Push Hands
Pushing Hands is said to be the gateway for students to understand experientially the martial art aspects of the Internal martial arts (內家 nèi jiā); leverage, reflex, sensitivity, timing, coordination and positioning. The theory being that there is a limit to the amount of physical conditioning available from performing solo form routines, so Pushing Hands adds the weight of the training partner's pushes onto the legs of the student, legs already bearing the student's own weight. Training with a partner also allows a student to develop ting jin (listening power), the sensitivity to feel the direction and strength of a partner's physical and energetic intent and thereby avoid or redirect it. The student then has to deal with the extra workload effectively from a martial point of view before returning to push their partner in turn. In that sense pushing hands is a contract between students to train the defensive and offensive movement principles of their martial art; learning to generate, coordinate and deliver power to another and also how to effectively neutralize incoming forces in a relatively safe environment.
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