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Archive for January, 2009

Correct Pattern of Training

31 Jan

One of the more interesting facets of Wing Chun is the progressive nature in which it is trained. Some schools will teach a complete form and then the drills/applications, while others will teach a few movements to competence before moving on.

Regardless of “how” a form is learned, one thing that should always be adhered to is the “order” of the forms.

Because of the Internet, access to the entire Wing Chun system is now available in one medium or another. This is a good thing but it also poses a problem for those without the patience to learn it correctly.

So let’s discuss the “why’s” behind how Wing Chun is learned and the importance of maintaining the correct pattern of training.

The proper order of Wing Chun training is:

  • Siu-Nim-Tau
  • Chum-Kiu
  • Biu-Tze
  • Muk-Yan-Chong
  • Luk-Dim-Boon-Kwun
  • Bart-Cham-Dao

Note: Chi-sau, Lap-sau and Chi-gerk are interspersed at various stages of the above forms, but usually at different areas depending on the school.

Wing Chun’s first three forms can be equated to building a house, so let’s use that as an analogy to help us make sense of “why” things are the way they are.

Siu-Nim-Tau
Siu-Nim-Tau, or “Little-Idea” form, is the first stage of training. It is here that a practitioner learns the beginning mechanics of structure, as well as the fundamental “grounding” concepts of the art as a whole. Without a solid understanding and competence of what the Siu-Nim-Tau relates, all future learning will be of little to no use.

The Siu-Nim-Tau is the “foundation” of your Wing Chun “house”.

Chum-Kiu
The Chum-Kiu, or “Arm-Seeking” form, is the next stage of training. It is here that we learn to “seek out” the opponent in order to take the fight “to” him.

Chum-Kiu teaches many new concepts such as turning, angling, driving force into our defenses, learning elbow strikes, kicks and stepping.

Chum-Kiu creates the “walls” for your Wing Chun “house”.

Biu-Tze
The final empty-hand form is the Biu-Tze, or “Thrusting-Fingers” form. Here we learn extremely close-range attacks and explosive force delivery in order to penetrate and overwhelm the opponent in armed and/or multiple opponent situations.

Biu-Tze creates the “roof” for your Wing Chun “house”.

With a sound, competent house, you are now sheltered from most of what you would encounter in the real world. Naturally, however, there are always methods to improve your skills.

Muk-Yan-Chong
The Muk-Yan-Chong, or “Wooden Dummy,” allows you to train on an inanimate object that never complains, cannot be injured, is never late for class, and, for those that pay attention, can actually correct your angles while building a more powerful foundation.

It is here, however, that many practitioners new to the art make a grave mistake.

Because of the dummy’s popularity, a lot of people will purchase or build one, buy a book or video, and knowing nothing else about Wing Chun, they will embark on the wooden dummy curriculum.

Nothing could be worse for your training!

The dummy is the culmination of trained empty-hand learning, not the starting point. In order to even learn it properly, you need competence in what came “before” it. Otherwise, you develop improper habits and a false sense of security.

I have met more than a few practitioners over the years who learned nothing but the dummy form, and then got thrown around like rag dolls from even my lower-level students who have not even finished their Siu-Nim-Tau training. Why? Because my students understand and have learned how to ground themselves, how to protect themselves, and how to borrow what the opponent does in order to take advantage of it.

A curriculum of a higher level is of no use unless what came before it is trained to competence first.

Luk-Dim-Boon-Kwun
The Luk-Dim-Boon-Kwun, or “Six-and-a-Half Point Long Pole” form, is the first formal weapon learned in Wing Chun. Here we learn about long-range weapons and how to use a weapon as an extension of ourselves.

Bart-Cham-Dao
The final stage of training is the Bart-Cham-Dao, or “Eight-Cutting Broadswords” form. Using two 2-lb. knives, we learn short to medium-range weapons fighting, which – when combined with the previous long-range pole training – rounds out our weapons training and the art as a whole.

Summary
Each stage of Wing Chun training has a specific purpose and builds upon what came before it, which in turn prepares us for the next stage of learning. Remove any of these stages and you nullify the art itself.

It is said that Grandmaster Leung Jan, one of Wing Chun’s most accomplished fighters, spent decades examining and refining the art to a point of efficiency unparalleled by any who preceded or followed him. After decades of honing the art, he proclaimed that it could not be anymore effective than it was.

In my view, I believe he is right.

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The Nature of Wing Chun

17 Jan

For those versed in non-Wing Chun methods but now training in Wing Chun, one of the first things you probably noticed are the relatively few forms vs. the multitude of forms in other arts. In many arts, it is not uncommon to see 10, 20, even 30+ forms making up their respective systems.

So how can an art such as Wing Chun only have 6 forms?

You will hear a lot of reasons for this, but in my opinion, there are 2 main reasons:

  1. The simpler that something is, the more efficient it usually is. And the more efficient it is, the more effective it can be.
  2. While many arts repeat the same movements but in a different pattern, Wing Chun teaches new and/or expanded concepts with each progressive form.

The first revolves around the basis of “why” a movement is created. The use of any action needs to have a clear-cut reason for being, a realistic function. The more complex the function, the more difficult it will be to use it, and the more basic it is, the better its odds of success.

For example, some arts have a long series of maybe 4 or 5 steps to deal with a wrist grab. In one particular response, an attacker grabs the wrist and the defender grabs the attacker’s wrist. Using his/her hand that was first grabbed, he/she now grabs their other wrist and, through an angle of pressing down, pries the attacker’s hand loose. This is followed up with their own counter-attack.

That is a series of 4 movements in response to a simple wrist grab.

By comparison, Wing Chun’s response would simply be to lash out with punches from the free hand, taking the previous response of 4 movements down to just 1. 4 movements replaced by 1 movement means efficient response, and the more efficient something is, the better your odds will be that it will succeed.

So the concept of functional use is the foundation of how the movements should be approached.

The second factor involves taking those movements and creating a logically progressive path for learning and training them.

When I was learning taekwondo, I reached 2nd degree black belt. By the time I reached this level, I had learned 14 forms which amounted to approximately 25 movements per form. With 14 forms and 25 movements per form, that is 350 movements.

But when analyzing the actual number of unique movements (movements that were not repeated), there were only 48 in a combination of punches, kicks, elbows, knees and grappling actions.

So out of 350 movements, only 48 were truly unique in and of themselves. This means that the remaining 302 movements were really nothing more than the same movements being repeated in a different order than previously learned, and/or performed from a different side, preceding/following another movement previously learned, etc.

Now, I will not say that Wing Chun does “not” incorporate a bit of repeated actions, because it does. One look at all the forms and you will see various movements being repeated throughout most of them. However, these “repeats” are not for amassing a storehouse of actions; instead, they merely allow us to transition from one action to another, as well as expanding on how the concepts can be used in different ways.

So while there are similarities between the repeated movements, they still have a real purpose.

In plain English: We keep things simple in order to make it more reactive, and we do not amass a storehouse of movements merely for the sake of trying to learn movements. If you focus solely on trying to learn a lot of movements in order to deal with every possible attack, what happens if you are attacked with a movement you have not learned the defense to?

Focusing only on learning the movements without the concepts that makes them work in the first place is termed as ”movement-oriented,” and this type of training is self-defeating. It can take years of training to learn every movement associated with just a few different attacks.

Instead of being movement-oriented (which is a complex action), Wing Chun is “concept-oriented” (which is a basic action). By not re-hashing previously-learned actions over and over, and by learning “universal” responses, the same concept be applied to a variety of attacks without having to learn new movements for each and every of them.

One example is kicking.

By learning the concept of “how” to kick, the concept can now be applied to jamming an incoming kick so that it cannot reach you (called Jeet-gerk or “Jamming-kick/ Stop-kick”). We can also “explode” our steps, as well as use the kicking concept to wedge the legs into the opponent’s legs in order to disrupt his balance, thereby bringing us into our preferred range.

One concept (kicking) that suddenly has 3 different uses.

This is the overall nature of Wing Chun and why we have so few forms. It is this reasoning that keeps Wing Chun simple, which in turn makes it efficient.

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Forms – Punches to the Head or On the Centerline?

04 Jan

The primary punching method of Wing Chun is straightline punching. The first punch learned, known as Yat-chi-chung-kuen or “Character ‘Sun’ Thrusting punch,” is taught along the centerline. This is to learn not only the attributes of efficiency via straightline punches, but also the essentials of what the centerline are all about.

After just a short time, however, you will see a puzzled look on the face of a new practitioner. He/she has been taught to punch on the centerline, but they are also taught the Wing Chun addage of attacking the face so that the rest of the body cannot attack “you.” The problem is, how can you punch along the centerline “and” attack the opponent’s face?

The best way to describe this is that the training follows a set pattern of progression. First, we learn the body’s structure and how it produces force. Within this realm are a host of elements such as how to stand, how to breathe, how to relax, and how all of these areas come into play for producing force.

We learn about the arm mechanics such as a horizontal fist vs. a vertical fist, using the back and shoulder muscles to produce punching power vs. the chest, and how the entire arm acts like a “shock absorber” to withstand the brunt of contact.

Along the way, we also learn about the centerline. The centerline is a point directly in the middle of your sternum that, if you pictured an imaginary line extending directly forward along a straight line, allows the arms to remain at an equal length.

If you turn to the side, one arm will be closer to your opponent than the other, which effectively removes the equal use of both arms. Keeping your centerline on the opponent, you now have equal use of both arms, which allows you to respond more efficiently, regardless of what side the opponent is attacking on/from.

Once the concept of centerline and straightline are competent, confusion sometimes results when put into practice for sparring sessions, because the student is always punching at their partner’s chest vs. his/her face. And as everyone knows, the fastest way to end an attack is to attack the face so that the rest of the body cannot respond.

However, if all you do is train for centerline/straightline, “how” can you attack the face? The face is at a higher level than our centerline, so where does that fit in?

It is all about “tactics.”

When one is competent at straightline punching, he/she understands that this straight line can be enacted at any angle necessary. When combined with the centerline principle, he/she also has equal use of both arms. Therefore, their coordinated use is “why” the Wing Chun punching method is so efficient and effective.

Rather than twisting or arcing punches like many other arts, a Wing Chun punch “explodes” or “pistons” along the straightest line possible, which means that it has less distance to travel. Because of this, it is harder to defend against.

When combined with the simple tactic of “what” targets to attack, e.g. the attacker’s face, then even though the Siu-Nim-Tau form teaches punching solely along the centerline, common sense would tell us that we can also punch at other targets.

When you think of areas of Wing Chun that might not make sense at first, take a step back and examine the “concept” vs. merely the “movement.” Wing Chun is concept-based, which is why even a handful of concepts can overcome hundreds of pre-learned “mechanical-only” actions. With so many ways of delivering attacks and defenses, you always want to take the shortest, most efficient route to the target.

And that route is usually Yat-chi-chung-kuen to the attacker’s face.

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