One thing I should clarify for the record, since I have a standing "meetup" offer out there for any martial artist who wants to play the kuzushi unbalancing game.
When I work push hands with anybody I am never using more than 5% of my internal power. May sound weird but that's the fact. It's for a historical reason. Once long ago at one of my teacher's out-of-town seminars, a tough, large guy (outweighing me by 80 or so pounds as usually the case in the past 20 years) sought me out for play. Of course he knew some Tai Chi but he told me his real thing was boxing, grappling - "real world" stuff.
Fine. So we're playing and I'm nudging him here and there in my normal kuzushi (unbalancing) style but I could tell he's getting increasingly unhappy and rougher and roughter in his attempts to counter-attack. Which is normally fine with me, all part of the game. But for some reason as we went on this guy's attitude ruffled my feathers, don't really know why. And his talk was all stuff like "Yeah you moved my foot, but in reality I could've [done this or that]."
Well, yeah. Hey I know better than most that it's all kind of fake. A point I have often made right here on this very TCGS blog, it's an attribute drill, not a combative technique practice. I've known it from day one.
You should all have memorized the TCGS tag line:
Only Boxing Is Real!
... but anyway somehow this guy's attitude bugged me.
So the next time he came in with an attempted killer lunge, I thought just for fun I'd unleash just a bit more of the internal than I normally do, just a flash of irritation on my part.
Well, I triggered him with over 5%, not full-on by any means, but I did unleash it a little on purpose, and he was blasted back arms pinwheeling, about 20 feet til he body-slammed, helplessly, butt-first into a set of sealed and barred emergency fire doors. Those doors were the type with an alarmed cross bar, so they can be opened but only in EMERGENCY. Well, his whole body weight slammed into the center of the doors (I hadn't really taken the backstop situation into account obviously) and he blasted clear through them and slammed a dozen feet out onto the asphalt parking lot outside, landing flat on his back.
Well, that set off the alarm and the entire building (a high school facility) had to be evacuated according to law and of course the fricking fire department clamored over in a hook and ladder truck - I mean, it was BAD. Bad I tell you!
Was my face red. What if the pavement had been concrete and he hit his head landing? Fortunately the guy was abraded, bruised, and shocked but not permanently injured. But my teacher seriously raked me cross the coals and told me the 5% rule and said if anything like this ever happened again we were DONE. Yikes!
Not that I go around broadcasting this 5% thing all the time. Just saying it now, is all. But when I do occasionally mention it, sometimes it provokes the following predictable response:
"Hey look I wanna feel it - I don't mind getting hurt, I'll sign a Death Waiver, I'll notarize anything you want in blood... c'mon! Just do me!"
And to that I always respond, "Come back when you can stand firm and keep your balance when I work you with my current 5% limit. Someday, when my 5% can't move you any more, when you can do that, we'll talk."
So anyway, whether after our session you conclude that I'm a deftly insightful and delightfully quirky boutique Tai Chi instructor, or just goddamn meglomaniacal blowhard, internet legend merely in his own mind - either way is fine but one thing you will NOT have experienced is more than 5% of the internal power.
