Ma Yueh Liang (1901-1998)

Ma's the best.

top notch. the real thing

very powerful, I love internal arts :D

I have been fortunate to study with a true master and after 8 years had the privilege of doing push hands with him for a demonstration of issuing of energy. You have no control of your body and leave the ground with a shock. Very unsettling. Very hard to describe what is happening to yourself and completely impossible for somebody just watching. I hope you get an opportunity to experience true internal application. Feel very privileged to have access to this footage.

so very true. he is not jumping back, but being popped. that energy, when one stays connected, goes right through you and sometimes right out your feet.... BAM!!! you're jumping. if someone has not experienced this, they see something they can not possibly explain or understand.

at 1:10, i think the move is a 3-D spin, look closely at Yuehs, left hand movement, i think he spins upwards along with sideways, which would throw the oponents shoulder differently, i beleive, accounting for the stumble factor

dude, you're putting the cart before the horse.
he bends his legs to try and sink the first attack.
the second attack uses this attempted defence to send him flying.
its an old jedi mind trick....

And....the desire to stay engaged in push-hands leads to the build up of energy/body-tension and so the dramatic effect when one opponent/component loses balance. In some ways this creates an artificial situation since there are clearly times when disengaging would allow for re-centering of balance. However, that is not push-hands, since the aim is to stay in contact.

Paul - maybe we all see what we want to see. My take on this is that knowing you are being unbalanced is not always sufficient to avoid being thrown in push-hands especially when your oppentnt is better than you! Ma's opponent is pretty good and Ma much more so. The opponent clearly gets more energetic in his "attacks" as the session evolves and this is used by Ma against him to increasing effect.

watch the move applied at 1:10, i agree this move would upset your balance but it would not make your opponent stumble as much as the guy in the vid.Due to the twisting action of this move your opponent would basically spin on the spot landing at your feet facing away from you.

lets us also take note-if he was able to jump early enough to 'avoid' falling then that means he knew what move was gonna be applied before it had been,meaning he would be able to avoid getting into that situation nullifying any attacks.

i been waiting a while for these replies, lets consider the theory that he was jumping to avoid hitting the floor,if you watch his legs just before any moves are applied, you can see that he loads them (bends) ready to jump and as the move is applied up he goes,if he was jumping to avoid falling his feet would be stumbling backwards to try to catch up with his upper body falling away from him.

jumping back?? this is real taiji at a very high level. some things you have to feel and cant understand from watching a video

If you look again I think you might see that he is jumping away in order to avoid falling to the ground, which to start with he just about manages to do, but which by the end, when he starts to tire, he can not void. I have just come back from 3 hours' Tai Chi practice during which I did quite a bit of "jumping", and I can tell you it was not for show. That floor (like ours) is hard, and it is no fun landing on it flat on your back, shoulder, hip or coccyx, as he did at the end.

Paul - try pushing hands with someone who knows what they are doing. A real push hands master, such as Ma was widely recognised as being, will literally wind you up without you realising it (or if you do realise you find you are unable to do anything about it). Once you have been sufficiently wound up all your opponent has to do is let you spring off. I have 20 years of combined karate and tai experience and still end up lookng like a fool in the right hands!