Push Hands

Push hands (推手, tuishou) is the two-person method of Tai Chi Chuan. Solo form trains the shapes; push hands tests whether the shapes survive contact with another person’s force. It is the laboratory of the art, and the Taijiquan Treatise is its rulebook.[1]

A name that changed with the practice

The modern name is young. The classical texts use an older word:

• 打手 (dǎshǒu, “striking hands”) — the oldest name, the one the Da Shou Ge carries in its title. The verb is honest: this was training for real striking.
• 揉手 (róushǒu, “rubbing hands”) — the early Wu-family and Yang-family term, emphasizing the soft, continuous quality of the contact.
• 搭手 (dāshǒu, “joining hands”) and 摸手 (mōshǒu, “feeling hands”) — the common spoken terms: the hands join, and each partner feels for the other’s intent.
• 推手 (tuīshǒu, “pushing hands”) — the name the Republican-era masters, Yang Chengfu and Sun Lutang among them, made standard, and the one modern usage keeps.

The shift from “striking” to “pushing” tracks a larger shift in the art itself — from combat toward health — and the archive keeps the older names visible because the older aim is still written into the method.[1][2]

The purpose: three steps of progress

Push hands is not random pushing. The Treatise fixes its place in the training path with one sentence: 「由著熟而漸悟懂勁，由懂勁而階及神明」 — “from mastery of the postures one gradually awakens to understanding energy; from understanding energy one ascends to spirit-like clarity.” The practice is the bridge between those steps:

1. 听劲 (tīngjìn, listening energy) — read the partner’s force through contact: its size, direction, speed, and emptiness. The Treatise states the goal: 「人不知我，我獨知人」 — “others do not know me; I alone know others.”
2. 懂劲 (dǒngjìn, understanding energy) — grasp the pattern of change in the force, so that neutralizing and issuing both come from reading, not from guessing.
3. 神明 (shénmíng, spirit-like clarity) — response without deliberation; the highest stage the Treatise names.

Every round of compliant drilling exists to move the practitioner one step along this path.[1]

The Da Shou Ge (打手歌)

The classic verse of the practice, six lines and forty-two characters, preserved in Li Yiyu’s “three old copies” (老三本):[1]

掤捋擠按須認真， 上下相隨人難進。 任他巨力來打我， 牽動四兩撥千斤。 引進落空合即出， 粘連黏隨不丟頂。

Line by line:

1. 掤捋擠按須認真 — Ward-off, roll-back, press, and push must be taken seriously: the four cardinal energies are the foundation, not a formality.
2. 上下相隨人難進 — when upper and lower body follow each other, the opponent cannot get in.
3. 任他巨力來打我 — let him bring enormous force to strike me.
4. 牽動四兩撥千斤 — four ounces can turn a thousand pounds: redirect, never resist.
5. 引進落空合即出 — lead the force in, let it land on emptiness, and issue the moment it is spent.
6. 粘連黏隨不丟頂 — stick, connect, adhere, follow; neither let go nor butt in.

The four principles: zhan, lian, nian, sui

The last line compresses the practice into four verbs, the rules every round is judged by:[1]

• 沾 (zhān, stick) — stay attached like glue; contact is not broken.
• 連 (lián, connect) — the force stays continuous, without gaps.
• 黏 (nián, adhere) — follow when the partner moves, like paste that will not come off.
• 随 (suí, follow) — yield along the partner’s line; do not oppose it.

A round in which neither partner breaks these four rules is, by definition, a round of listening energy. That standard — not winning — is what the classical texts set for the practice.

The eight gates

The classical syllabus names eight energies, four cardinal and four diagonal:[4][5]

The four cardinal hands (四正手):

• 掤 (péng) — ward-off: an upward, outward buoying force. Read péng, not bìng; the misreading is common.
• 捋 (lǚ) — roll-back: draw the incoming force past its target.
• 擠 (jǐ) — press: a forward squeeze against the partner’s frame.
• 按 (àn) — push: a downward-forward pressing force.

The four diagonal hands (四隅手):

• 採 (cǎi) — pluck: a sudden pull down and back.
• 挒 (liè) — rend: a sideways twisting throw; the rarest character of the eight and the most often miswritten.
• 肘 (zhǒu) — elbow: striking with the forearm’s point at close range.
• 靠 (kào) — bump: issuing with the shoulder or body at touching distance.

Names vary slightly from school to school, but the four cardinal hands are shared by every line, and in the Yang curriculum 靠 is sometimes counted as close-range method rather than a core basic energy — making the essential list seven.[4]

The thirteen postures

Wang Zongyue’s Taijiquan Shiming (太極拳釋名) closes the frame: the eight gates answer the eight trigrams (八卦), and the five steps — advance 進, retreat 退, look left 顧, look right 盼, central equilibrium 中定 — answer the five phases (五行), with 中定 seated at the center in earth. Eight plus five makes the thirteen postures (十三勢) that give the art its classical name.[1][2]

The four errors

The theory is the Treatise’s; the disqualifying faults are named in the Wu-family commentaries — Wu Yuxiang’s circle, transmitted in the Lianrangtang copies: butting in (頂), leaning away (匾), losing contact (丟), and resisting (抗). Each is a failure of the same principle — force meeting force, or force evading contact. This standard, not winning, is what the classical corpus sets for a good round.[1][3]

Three ways to practice

The traditional progression runs through three formats:[4]

1. Fixed-step push hands (定步推手) — the feet stay planted; only the hands change. The foundation: the four cardinal energies and the first listening skills.
2. Moving-step push hands (活步推手) — the feet move, and the whole body must follow the contact. Trains the Da Shou Ge’s second line: 上下相隨.
3. Large roll-back (大捋推手) — big circles and wide stepping at da-lü range, where leading in and landing empty (引進落空) become the whole game.

Beyond these lies free pushing hands, which is close to sparring and already leaves the drill behind.

Push hands is not wrestling

The two look alike — two people in contact, someone ends up moving — and the resemblance misleads:[5][7]

• Wrestling aims to put the opponent on the ground, uses whole-body force and grips, and is judged by the fall.
• Push hands aims to train listening and understanding energy, keeps contact mainly at the hands and forearms, uses reading rather than strength, and is judged — in the traditional setting — by the quality of the force, not by who fell down.

One sentence separates them: wrestling uses force to fell; push hands uses energy to issue. 发人 and 摔人 are different verbs.

The gate rules

With no written rulebook, the schools kept their standards as transmitted rules. The Yang-family rules: the round begins the moment hands touch and contact is not withdrawn; putting the partner on the ground is not the aim; listening and understanding are; force without reading is rejected; injury ends the round. The Wu-family rules are stricter still: fixed step, no breaking contact, level judged by the quality of neutralizing, no clumsy force at all. Traditional push hands is an examination, not a contest — a test of whether the solo form was built correctly.[6]

The Four-Character Secret: the advanced mind-method

Wu Yuxiang’s Four-Character Secret (四字密诀) layers an advanced method over Wang Zongyue’s basics: 敷 — spread the energy over the partner’s force so it cannot move; 蓋 — cover the incoming force so it cannot advance; 對 — match it without butting or releasing; 吞 — swallow it entirely into one’s own frame. Wang Zongyue supplies the foundation, the four verbs of contact; Wu Yuxiang supplies the interior architecture. The Four-Character Secret page gives the full text and its five generations of commentary.[3]

Daoist thought in the round

Push hands is Daoist philosophy performed rather than stated:[7]

• 無為 (non-forcing) — do not compel; follow the line the partner gives.
• 不爭 (non-contention) — no butting, no resisting; 顶 and 抗 are named faults precisely because they contend.
• 柔弱勝剛強 — the soft overcomes the hard: four ounces against a thousand pounds.
• 反者道之動 — the reversal is the Dao’s movement: lead in, land empty, and the partner’s own force returns him out.
• 陰陽相濟 — empty and full alternate; hard and soft complete each other.

To understand the round without the philosophy is to miss half of it; the philosophy is not decoration — it is the operating principle.

A check of the “1929 rules”

Modern accounts sometimes cite official pushing-hands competition rules from the 1929 guoshu era. The archive checked and states the result plainly: no independent, official set of pushing-hands competition rules from 1929 is known to survive. The Hangzhou Guoshi Recreational Assembly of that year ran a free-fighting lei tai, not pure pushing hands; the Central Guoshu Academy taught pushing hands in its syllabus but fixed no competition rules for it. In the Republican era the practice lived under gate rules, not published regulations. The formal rules of the sport are a creation of the state sports commission after the 1950s.[11][12] The archive states both readings as its method requires — see Editorial Method.

Modern competition, and the debate

After the 1950s the state sports system rebuilt pushing hands as a sport: rules drafted from the 1980s, national championship events, weight classes, scoring for pushing an opponent off a raised platform or down upon it, and protective gear in some events. Traditional practitioners have a standing objection: scored competition rewards shoving and wrestling, and the listening energy that defines the classical practice — the thing the Da Shou Ge is actually about — disappears from the platform. The debate is real and unresolved: the archive keeps the classical standard and the modern sport as two things descended from one root.[14][15]

Cautions

• No “1929 rules” exist as an independent document. Republican-era pushing hands ran on gate rules; modern rules date from the 1950s and after. The archive does not cite a rulebook it cannot produce.
• Push hands is not casual play. It has three explicit training aims — listening, understanding, clarity — and a technical system behind them.
• It is one part of Tai Chi, beside the solo form, the weapons, and free practice — not the whole of the art.
• Practice progressively. Careless force in the round is how knees and lower backs get injured; the gate rules exist partly as safety law.
• “Four ounces moving a thousand pounds” is mechanics, not magic — leverage, timing, and the opponent’s own force, working together.
• Other internal systems have two-person exercises of their own, with different names and aims; pushing hands is the representative form within Tai Chi, not a universal internal-arts practice.

The record continues

The theory lives in the Taijiquan Treatise; the advanced method in the Four-Character Secret written by Wu Yuxiang; the curriculum that made the round standard practice belongs to Yang Chengfu and the Yang system. The Golden Eagle schools taught fixed-step and moving-step push hands as required work beside the long form, and the archive’s own account of that teaching is part of its history.

[1] Da Shou Ge and the Treatise — the classical verse and theory, as preserved in the Lao San Ben copies. [3] Wu Yuxiang, Four-Character Secret. [4] Yang Chengfu, Method of Application, and the eight-gate verse of the Yang school. [5] Gu Liuxin, Research on Taijiquan. [6] Yang-family gate rules, gate-circulated manuscript. [11] Hangzhou Guoshi Recreational Assembly proceedings, 1929. [12] Central Guoshu Academy archives, 1928–1937. [15] General Administration of Sport, Wushu Pushing Hands Competition Rules.