Ok, I need a little bit of education from my Chinese martial arts buddies - particularly from some folks with some taichi push hands experience. I have done no taichi, so I'm having some trouble figuring out what I'm seeing.
Renli recently posted a link to the following interesting video discussing some potential problems with American taichi competition rules.
What I'm really interested in is the 'uprooting' action demonstrated at about halfway through the above film. Is this flying backward with both feet a thing that the tori (thrower) is doing to uke (the backwards flyer) or is this a type of ukemi, a trained behavior that uke used to disperse tori's force? What stops uke from lifting one foot and taking a step instead of flying backward with both feet? Or, if there is so much force that a step won't disperse it, what stops uke from being thrown off of one foot?
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I rarely, if ever see this sort of hopping/floating backward in judo/aikido applications, and even in the video above, some of the competitors do throws analogous to some judo throws and this flying backward motion does not happen.
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I've had a taichi trained student in the past and he did this type of flying backward thing to get out of bad situations. It seemed to dissipate my force but it left him unable to follow up, so it was frustrating but unclear as to who had just attained the advantage.
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What's going on here with this hoppy flying backwards action?
Renli recently posted a link to the following interesting video discussing some potential problems with American taichi competition rules.