Month: September 2019

When I started teaching several years ago, I actually didn’t want to. I didn’t think I had anything people would be interested in learning. Although I knew I had some skill, I didn’t think anyone would see any value in it. But my teacher told me that I had more than I realized—and that teaching would make me even better. It turned out he was right on both counts.

One of the first people to come check me out was a longtime martial artist with a background in Liuhebafa, Xingyi, and Baguazhang. He had a streetfighter’s mentality and was a tough, physical guy. Being a professional deep sea diver who had traveled the world on his own sailboat, he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty (or bloody). I was sure that the first time he came out to see me would also be his last. But to my pleasant surprise, after he touched hands with me, I could see from his facial expression that he was impressed and that he knew I had something worth his time. Unfortunately, because of his job/travels, he left Los Angeles after only a few sessions. But from that experience I gained the confidence that I could be a teacher and that I had something others wanted to learn.

Having taught the past several years, I now understand why my teacher said that teaching would make me better. In the field of medicine, doctors (in particular, surgeons) have for more than a century learned how to perform procedures by following a model of learning called “see one, do one, teach one.” Basically this means that to learn, you watch a mentor do a procedure, then do the procedure yourself, and, finally, teach the procedure to someone else. Although this model has its critics and has started to change in the last decade or so, it is still widely used (though sometimes with modifications or supplemented with other learning tools), including in fields other than medicine. Why? Because it works. I had seen my teacher do Zhu Ji, I had done Zhu Ji, and now I teach Zhu Ji. That last step has reinforced what I have seen and done, and in some cases it has even corrected or improved it.

Even if you’re not a formal teacher, you can still reap the benefits by teaching informally, for example, when you’re working with your classmates on forms or drills. Obviously, you don’t want to disrespect your teacher or your school, but in most martial arts classes that I’ve been in, senior students often handle much of the teaching. (Perhaps “see one, do one, teach one” actually originated in the martial arts.) Especially if you’re more advanced than your classmates, you may find that showing them what you know increases not only their knowledge but also yours.

The idea that teaching will take your own learning to higher levels is nothing new. But you might be surprised just how much you’ll learn by teaching. I know I have been very pleasantly surprised.

Since I was a kid, I’ve heard that a push—whether it be in the form of a good old two-handed push, a “push-punch,” or a “push-kick”—is a weak technique because pushing hardly does any damage, especially compared to a snapping type of strike.

In this Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method vid, the narrator says that when kicking the heavy bag, “If there is more push than hit, the sound will be a weak thud.” The narrator then continues by noting the difference between a true kick and pushing type of kick: “In both kicks, there is force exerted, except the hit will do the damage and the push will just knock the opponent down innocuously.”

I’ve seen western boxers and boxing coaches emphasize how push-punches are less effective than snapping punches. I’ve been around many martial artists who talk about how their punches and kicks are like bullets—the opponent doesn’t move back much after being hit (the way they would if they were pushed) but instead drops straight to the ground from the impact (the way they would if they were struck by a bullet). And I’ve heard people comment on how the pushes in tai chi, for example, never seem to really hurt anyone, despite how far the recipient of the push seems to “fly” backward.

So with all these expert opinions, why am I a fan of the push? Simple: I think the push is underrated, misunderstood, and trained and used incorrectly. Consider the following:

• A push (in particular, a two-handed push) can be an excellent way to create space between you and your opponent—space that might just give you enough time and room to avoid further confrontation in a humane way. (Also, if it ever came down to a jury, I also suspect that a two-handed push might be viewed more favorably than a punch, kick, or choke in terms of whether you were using excessive force.)
• A push (including a push-kick or push-punch) can help to measure the distance for and/or create space to deliver a more powerful follow-up strike. If you watch the legendary fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, I think you’ll see they push-punch and use both hands to push each other, sometimes to set up a snapping punch, at other times to clear space to rest for a moment, and maybe even to judge the distance between each other. (And yes, I am aware that boxing is a sport and that in an MMA match or streetfight, standup grappling and takedowns come into play, so a push might not work in the same way.)
• Depending on how you train, execute, and apply it, a two-handed push could be used to deliver a maiming or even fatal injury because of exactly the reason why most people think it’s weak—it sends you back rather than down. Although “dropping” someone might be ideal, sending someone back can be devastating, too, especially depending on what’s behind them (read one of my previous blog posts to see what I mean).
• Most people don’t train to push—and so most people don’t know how to push. There’s a push—and then there’s a push. If you think a push will just knock you down (and you think that getting knocked down can’t do any damage), I encourage you to read my earlier blog post I linked to above.
• Some of the best boxers in history (and who are also considered among the hardest hitters) use what I would argue are push-punches to knock people down or out in a devastating way:
  • Mike Tyson Knocking Out Eddie Richardson
  • Tommy Hearns Highlights
• The sound a bag makes when you hit it tells you a lot … or maybe it doesn’t. Do you find the cracking sound some people make when hitting a heavy bag to be impressive, almost like the sound of someone shooting a gun? The problem is that the sound that you hear when someone shoots a gun has nothing to do with the sound of the bullet’s impact with an object—it’s mostly the sound of the explosion when the bullet leaves the gun (and sometimes also the sound of it passing you at supersonic speed). It might sound good to say, “When he hits the bag, it sounds like a gun going off,” but the reason why the two sound similar likely have little relation.

Hopefully, you now see why I’m a fan of the push—it can be a very effective weapon. But there is another reason why I’m a fan: water boxing (and some other arts like xingyi) have refined the push, making it more powerful and useful than you might think. Interested in finding out more? Come check out a water boxing class.