Peace

Principle: Lose to win: Slow hand beats fast hand: Leverage

We've all heard the saying, "Four ounces moves a thousand pounds," but for reasons I can't explain, the topic of leverage isn't explicitly addressed. The Chinese leave the concept vague instead of describing what the saying implies as a simple machine, a lever. In Slow Hand beats Fast Hand, the initial application of leverage is introduced: body centerline capture using the opponent's arm.

As a hybrid of the basic intercept movement, the intercept creates a fulcrum behind the elbow and lever action along the opponent's arm, gaining a position of disproportionate strength. Since the elbow cannot operate in its opposite direction, any application of strength, lever action, is amplified by the distance from the wrist to the fulcrum at the elbow, creating more than sufficient force to capture the opponent's body centerline and throw them off balance,

This lever action at the elbow is no secret; it is performed every day in martial arts. What is different about it in Chen's, as Sifu taught it, was his demand for control. The picture he used to explain his desire was of a mother tigress. She had jaws that could crush bone, yet the same jaws could pick up her clubs by the scruff of their necks. Her precision was impeccable. He sought the same from his students.

Every lever formed in push-hands had to link to the basic principles to construct a system of what Sifu described as "gears." Still, from a leverage perspective, a better description would be a system of linkages: one system of links connecting the basics, the other interconnecting with the point of contact on the opponent and their centerlines. But more on linkages in the Five Elements.