Ahhhh. The wonderful world of Chi-sau. Today revolved around the seven sections of Chi-sau as presented within the base Chi-sau curriculum of Siu-Nim-Tau and Chum-Kiu. Created by Master Leung Ting as a way to build on a solid foundation of training, the base curriculum is a logical progression of angles, responses, and counters that further progresses into an infinite number of blocks of instruction.
For most, THIS is what they came to learn. The day began with an introduction to Chi-sau such as what it is for, how it is trained, and how it relates to real fighting. Next, we delved into single-arm Chi-sau (Chi-dan-sau) for a couple of hours, including basic attacks, basic defenses, and advancing/ turning.
Following this, we jumped right into the double-arm Chi-sau training. From Poon-sau and Luk-sau to all seven attacks and defenses, we spent the full day exploring not only how to train the actions but also how they work within each other. In many cases, one section leads into the next to the point that a full path of training can be easily seen.
At the end of the day, a bit of Chi-sau sparring was worked between myself and each student. I was extremely pleased at the progress that everyone made in such a short time, and I have no doubt that we are in the presence of some of the more talented Wing Chun exponents out there.
Tomorrow we explore Lap-sau with all six attack and defense sections, and then the last half of the day will entail Lat-sau training. We will be exploring how true fighting applications are created in the Wing Chun environment, so I am sure it will be a day we will all remember for a long, long time.
