A short photographic sequence to help out students who have started playfully dancing their way through sumkete (weaving thrust) as a means to explore a greater skill level.
Remember geometrically you are targeting the points of an inverted (apex down) triangle. 🔽
1 - Start with a roof block guard position. In Tai Chi Sabre this is ‘Side Press’. It’s stable and can hide the true length of your weapon.
2 - Step the back foot forward, delivering an over thrust. This is aimed at the top right of the triangle. Whilst at the same time withdrawing your live hand to a protect position.
3 - Remain in this forward stance and loop the weapon (just like in the lemniscate ♾️ exercise) to deliver a back hand thrust to the top left of the triangle.
4 - Still in the forward stance retract and deliver a linear thrust down to the triangle’s bottom point.
5 - Step back into your original roof block position.
Being early days it’s best to stay static and there’s a lot of focus on the weapon hand, but once you get the sequence down and we add in some circle stepping the sensitivity of the live hand will come to the fore (just like in Tai Chi Chuan push hands) for leading, following and maintaining alignment between the dance partners.
Hope this helps 😊
Mathew
Facebook post 3rd July '25
