Chi Sau

Sifu was away today, so one of the seniors took the class. We did a lot of chi sau and as he was walking around he must have noticed something that many of us were doing – i.e. giving up (or not giving regard to) the centre line.

Another Way Of Looking At The Centre Line

He stopped us and asked us to gather round while he tried to give an analogy to give us another way of looking at the centre line. He asked us to imagine that we were given a bomb, held it in one of our hands, and that we were going to blow somebody up with it. It’s only an analogy, we are not an extremist group. What would we do with ‘the bomb’. Would we put it down qhile we searched for the person we wanted to blow up? No – it might not be there when we return. Somebody else might then be using it. You would want to keep it with you, controlling it at all times. Until the moment you need to use it.

You can see where this is going. The centre line is the bomb. You need to have it at all times. Obviously, we wouldn’t actually treating the centre lin like a bomb, it was just another useful way of looking at the importance of the centre line.

We then resumed our chi sau but with more focus on the bomb/centre line. With something additional to think about of course everything went to pieces for a while. But… it felt like we were going in the right direction. We all know about the centre line, but it helps to be reminded every now and then.

Sneaky Chum Kiu Addition

Although sifu wasn’t around, at the end of the class I got one of the seniors to show me the next bit of Chum Kiu. You have to take your chances when you can. I seemed to have got the first bit down ok (disregarding the finer points) so I thought nothing wrong in adding just a smidgeon to my incomplete form. The additional bit was just the first bar arm, kick and 3 consecutive bong saus so it shouldn’t be a problem for my memory to stitch that on the end.

It was inevitable really. Only a matter of time. So here’s a selection of videos from Youtube featuring Wing Chun practitioners demonstrating their chi sau prowess. There is a lot of bad Wing Chun out there, but I’ve sifted through all that and presented here videos which I think show good Wing Chun skills via the magic of chi sau. Remember, Chis sau is not about overwhelming your partner with strength. It’s about light hands, good footwork and sensitivity (amongst other things). I will keep updating this post as I find more geniuses.

Emin Boztepe

Here’s Emin Boztepe all over his partner (Michael Casey?) like a cheap suit.

Jose Grados

Here Jose Grados is staying tight and giving a good demonstration of how a smaller guy defend himself against a muscley bruiser.

And if you like Grados, you’ll love this next one. This video was made in 1994, so you can imagine how good he is now.

Wan Koon Chung

I don’t know who the guy in the checked shirt is (I think he might be called Sifu Wan Koon Chung and his website is kooncgung.com) but I love what he’s doing! Look what he does around the 6 second mark. His movements are clean and precise and although you can’t see their feet, you know that they are moving around well. Around 1:30 he’s using his bong sau as some kind of striking technique – this is quite different to the what we do in our club, but it looks ok.

I get the impression that they chi sau together a lot and are used to each other’s style. It would be interesting to see them paired up with other opponents.

Augustine Fong

I’m a big fan of Augustine Fong. I like his style. He was so patient with his student in this video – apart from the end! If you like this kind of stuff, he has a couple more videos that you can see here – they are well worth the download.

Shaun Rawcliffe

How about a bit of blindfolded chi sau? Look out for some supremely fast hands at 42 seconds. I love that slapping sound! Shaun Rawcliffe is a great Wing Chun exponent in the UK.

Gary Lam

This selection wouldn’t be complete without some Gary Lam. Although his pak saus are explosive, he uses very little strength.

Didier Beddar

THere’s no denying Didier Beddar’s skill here. This clip shows much more than chi sau.

Bruce Lee

And now the master himself. I don’t know why Bruce Lee appears so far down this page, it just turned out that way. There are a lot of Bruce Lee videos out there, but most are low quality duplicates of each other and usually not very long. This one however is of decent quality and is quite comprehensive.

Dan Inosanto

Moving seamlessly from Bruce Lee, we have Dan Inosanto. I know that he is more Jeet Kune Do, but there is a lot of Wing Chun in here, especially the trapping. This is a good video as it includes some trapping drills you could incorporate into your practice, and some of the exercises might seem familiar to you. I know that we’ve practised some of these in our class. It gets more interesting around the 8 minute mark if you want to jump straight to it.

Trapping Part 1

Trapping Part 2

Trapping Part 3

I had an interesting exchange with someone recently about how much to train. Interesting not so much because of what he said, but because of my reaction to it. This guys has a few videos of himself demonstrating Wing Chun and although I don’t usually participate in all this ‘social networking’ business, in this instance I thought I’d reach out and connect with this like minded individual.

So I sent him an email via youtube complimenting him on his skill and asked him how much he trains and how he structures his training. I thought I’d offer him my training routine (however small!) first so he wouldn’t feel shy about revealing his training secrets, but he politely avoided the question. What he did say though was this:

• never look at training in terms of time as Wing Chun requires a different kind of attention. The point he was making was that it’s the quality of training that matters, not the duration
• He could practise for 15 minutes focussing on perfecting techniques, somebody else could practise for an hour and the two training sessions wouldn’t be comparable

While I agree that quality beats quantity hands down, why not have both. Obviously, you need to be heading in the right direction for any volume of training to be useful. There is no point in training a technique badly over and over again – and that woul be harmful to your skill. But…. as my sifu always says: “More practice”. How else can you get better? The more you practise – correctly – the better you get. This is how it works in everything.

I’ve just started learning Chum Kiu, and I’m damned if I’m not going to practise what I’ve learnt over and over again until I’m doing it in my sleep. And every class I go to I’m going to check with any senior around that I’m doing it correctly. This is how it works: you get taught in class, then you go away and practise it to perfection. You go back to class, what you’ve been practising gets corrected and when ready you get taught more stuff. But you need to put the hours in.

And it’s not just techniques that get perfected through the hours of training. Where would my gung lik be if I zipped through my siu lim tau in say a couple of minutes? I’ve heard scary stories about how my sigung makes his students take a whole hour over siu lim tau on his residential courses. People shake, people feel dizzy, people vomit – but their gung lik gets stronger. OK I didn’t hear of anyone vomiting, but they did shake and feel dizzy. And their gung lik grows.

More practice!

OK, I’m pretty bouyant at the moment. ‘Bouyant’ – what a polite understatement! At my Wing Chun class tonight I think I passed The First Test. Sifu asked me to do siu lim tau while he watched. He then asked me what the first section was for (developing gung lik), what the second section was for (developing fa jing) and what the final section was for (practising application). Though when he first asked me, I didn’t know what the third section was for. Part of the test involves the student being asked what the application of certain techniques is. After being asked how to use a hoon sau  and another technique I don’t know the name of (although I knew both applications), the penny clicked and I realised that the final section of siu lim tau is for ….. practising the application of techniques.

It was weird because it wasn’t formerly announced that this was ‘The Test’, so I’m assuming it was. Sifu showed me and another student chum kiu, which we then practised over and over so I think I did pass the test. Thing is, I’m too scared to ask in case he says no and I have to stop doing chum kiu! What a coward. We did it about 20 times in class and then after driving home I’ve done it another 10 times just to get it to sink in so I don’t forget.

I’m going to do it another 10 times before I go to bed, just to make sure, and then that’s what my morning practise will consist of too. It’s not quite accurate to say I feel like I’ve just started learning, more like I’ve just found the start of the path. But it required work to find the path. Look at me, now I’ve started learning chum kiu I’m talking riddles.

This is going to mean another revision to my training plan! I’m going to have to do chum kiu at least 2 days out of the week, but I also don’t want to have to give up any of the siu lim tau I’m doing. Something has to give. I’m going to have to give up my job!

It’s taken me a 2 years and 9 months to get to this point and to tell the truth, I wouldn’t have minded if it took me much longer before I started the new form. I hate the idea of ascending the heights undersevedly. I know I’ve not ascended heights just yet, but you know what I mean. I want to have really earned what I get. If I’m not ready, I don’t want to ‘move up’. I want to practise more, get better, and move up only when I’m ready.

Gotta go. More chum kiu to do!

It’s not actually the whole of chum kiu we did, just the first half. I’m over the moon regardless. Chuffed to bits. Ecstatic. Made up. Gobsmacked. Reeling. Buzzing, man.

At my last class I was waiting around for someone to chi sau with so I thought I’d make constructive use of the time by practicising the siu lim tau form. I wasn’t expecting my sifu to watch and assess but he did anyway. I’m glad he did because he gave me a long list of things I was doing wrong, and what I need to do to correct them. Here’s the list:

Marking The Centre

Very sloppy! I didn’t notice (we never do) but I guess my hands must have been flapping about loosely. Their movement should be well defined and precise like all the other movements in the form.

Wrist Strengthening

The next bit, the punch, after which the hand opens, bends up, rotates round, the fingers curl up one by one into a fist. That bit there, where it’s the wrist snapping up that puts the power into the punch (is it like a one inch punch…?), that bits important. It’s included in the form to strengthen the wrist for just such a purpose: punching.

Wu Sau

In the first part of the form after I’ve extended the tan sau slowly and amd slowly returning my wu sau, I bring it too close to my chest. In fact, it’s nearly touching. A collapsed wu sau like this is neither use nor ornament. It should be maybe 2 fists away from my chest. I’ll see if I can get some diagrams together to illustrate, but you get the idea.

Hoon Sau

In the second section, after the gang sau, low gang sau, the second gang sau (although I believe some variants of the form do a tan sau here) there is the hoon sau. Here I was actually drawing my arm back as I rotated the hoon sau so that my elbow moved closer to my body – wrong! I guess I was doing that to give myself more power in the dai jurn (probably spelt wrong – I need to find the proper spellings for these techniques ), but it’s still wrong. Instead, after the last gang sau the whole arm must remain motionless apart from the hand from the wrist up, which rotates in the hoon sau.

Bong Sau To Tan Sau

I thought I was getting this right, but I obviously need to tighten it up. I certainly think about these points as I’m doing it but it always helps when someone points out that you’re not actually doing what you think you’re doing. The transition from bong sau to tan sau: the wrist must remain stationary, as if it is a pivot for the movement.

Punch The Face

The very last 3 punches I was aiming around chest height but they should have been head height.

You know what, maybe I’ll put together some video footage to illustrate these points. I’ve always shield away from indulging in stuff like this because I ain’t perfect. But what the hell. I’ll look up prices of video cameras. Maybe the fear of showing myself up will force me to practice more!

My understanding of gung lik is that it is a kind of internal strength, and similar to endurance. I think this is one of those terms that defies a clear definition. I know how one can develop gung lik, and that is by doing the first form, siu lim tao, and by doing chi sau. A few times my sifu has ‘pushed’ us. This ‘pushing’ occurs in a chi sau position where we meet and equal the other’s push with our own. It’s a gently increasing pressure that is maintained for what feels like an eternity. It feels like an eternity for me because it makes my shoulders ache so much. Not so for my sifu, obviously, as his gung lik is so much greater than mine.

I asked one of the seniors at the last class if there was any additional exercise I could do to develop my gung lik. He surprised me when he said no. I was imagining an exercise similar to pressips, but instead of the constant up-down movement I would just hold the position, say half way down. When I mentioned this, he said that doing that would simply increase the strength I usually use, and this is something we should be trying to minimise in Wing Chun.

As the ‘pushing’ exercise is only done rarely in class, I’m now wondering if it isn’t so much an exercise to increase gung lik as a measure of it. That is, while my shoulders ache after a push, I know I still have work to do!

One of my friends at class (I hesitate at the use of ‘kung fu brother’, sounds a bit cliched!) , was thinking about doing siu lim tau whilst wearing some wrist weights to get some additional gung lik training. I’m not sure about this now. I think it might somehow distort the development of gung lik. I certainly remember that when I used to do siu lim tau (without weights!) for 40 minutes, my shoulders did ache so I know they were being exercised properly. At the moment I’m doing a 12 minute siu lim tau in the morning, and though my shoulders and arms don’t feel it, my thighs really do.

I’m going to ask my sifu what the nature of the oushing exercise is, and what its purpose is – whether it’s for developing gung lik or just assessing it. Often you get different points of view, depending on who you ask. This doesn’t bother me too much. If I know I need to do a certain thing to improve, it’s not as important to know
why (although it’s desirable).