Sawing Wood Tai Chi Exercise

Video Transcript

"In this segment I'm going to introduce you to a partner exercise that I term sawing wood. It is not a technical term but what we do is we start with one foot forward and you grab like here you grab each other like this but not tight right so what you are going to do is basically just like you would be sawing wood so if I'm going to push he's going to pull and as soon as he pushes I pull and you can decide who is in initiating the movement so in this case I would say the push working person initiates so as soon as I start pushing he has got to pull and as soon as he starts pushing I have to pull. Now what is very important here is you use your whole body not just your arm so if I am pushing and he pulls without using his body he is going to get thrown off so if he pushes and I just use my arm it is not really helpful for our pushing development so it is using the whole body. So I am going to push with my whole body and he has to pull and see how he has to turn his body and if he doesn't turn then his arm is going to go behind him. So as soon as he pushes with his whole body I shift and turn. My arm is in front of my body so as soon as I push and he comes back his arm is in front of his body and if he allows his arm to go back then it is in a very bad position because if now he tries to push from his arm look at what happens. But if he brings his arm in front of him and pushes then he can have some power so this is both a sensitivity exercise and learning how to align your body so when you are moving you have your whole body connected."