Ha ha, I was checking my traffic stats just now and it appears that someone found my site after searching in Google for "chi sau does what". That just cracked me up. To me, this sounds like someone who is completely perplexed by the whole idea of chi sau and just wants to know what its purpose is. I can imagine, and clearly see in my minds eye, someone watching me do chi sau with my partner, and wondering why on earth we aren't actually hitting each other properly. Well, for at least one  person out there, here's my take on Chi Sau Does What!

Chi Sau Is Not Sparring Or Fighting

Chi sau is merely an exercise in which you practise with the help of a partner to develop the following:

• correct technique (bong sau, tan sau etc). Yes, you may be able to defend against your partner's attack but what hand is that? Are you using proper hands?
• good footwork - you move around in response to your partner to adopt the best position.
• range. This could possiblybe linked with footwork. I had a wake up call recently when someone pointed out that although I'd laap saued them deftly and snapped out a precision perfect punch, I actually couldn't reach them. My fist was still a few inches short of their face, with my arm fully stretched and at the time I was thinking I'd been "successful". I realised that for a while now I'd been thinking I could hit my partner when really I was out of range. Duh.
• sensitivity - you must be able to feel accurately what your partner is doing and respond automatically, and quickly, in the most appropriate way. Obviously, automatic responses can only develop from much practise.
• softness. Strength is not usually the best response, at least not brute strength. Better to redirect your partner's force, which is especially important if your partner is stronger than you. It's very interesting to see what happens when you try and maintain your softness when practising with a partner who does use strength. I'm still finding it difficult, because, of course, my ego gets in the way! My ego will not let me appear to come off worse against someone who is "doing it wrong". Duh x 2. I need a mindset change. Every difficulty presents a learning opportunity, and in a case like this it's better to remove emotions entirely from the equation.

Chi Sau Misunderstood

I've seen chi sau competitions on Youtube. The 'competition' aspect comes from the fact that you score points when you hit your opponent. So the chi sau tends to degenerate into a wrestling match. I say degenerate, but actually it starts out that way.

The whole idea of "winning" by getting a strike in is contrary to the chi sau ethos. Yes, there is some value in sparring, or even full contact practise, but that is different from chi sau.

Not many tan saus in ths one:

I love this guy's chi sau! It has a real flow to it and there is no (or very little) use of strength. It's all about redirecting the other person's energy.

Taking Turns In Chi Sau

But at the same time, the way that he and his partners are chi sauing is slightly....odd. They seem to be taking it in turns to do something. For instance the teacher's partner will attack and there will be a pause before the teacher counters. There will then be a pause before the partner does something else. It looks very much like they are taking it in turns to attack and counter.

It appears that the teacher invariably lets his student perform his attack successfully without trying to stop him. Maybe they are practising techniques. This whole business of "you go first, then I'll do something" is contrary to how our school chi sau. This style of chi sauing is apparent on his other videos too.

This is in no way a criticism of the skills on display here, as I don't know the purpose of training like this. They all look pretty skillful practitioners. And they all flow beautifully.

I spoke to the person who posted the videos and s/he explained that the teacher was 'feeding' the students. What you see is merely a training method that enables the student to practise their technique. Fair enough.

At our Wing Chun school, the chi sau is continuous until someone is completely overpowered. I don't mean overpowered by strength here, I mean trapped completely. There'll be odd times where I do pause, but this is usually because there is no advantage to be gained from moving at that moment, or I am thinking too much and can't think of what to do next.

How to stop thinking is a big problem!

Feeding Techniques In Chi Sau

What ysiddiqui said about 'feeding' students techniques led me to think about what my sifu does. He sometimes manipulates the chi sau deftly to keep repeating a particular scenario that demonstrates some mistake the student is making. Doing this, the student finds themself time after time making the same mistake. Whereas before the exercise, the student was unaware, when sifu does this he brings the faulty technique under the microscope so that the student has no choice but to see that something is going wrong.

This usually ends with an "ah - I see what's happening!" moment for the student, or sifu explaining what's happening. If necessary, sifu will demonstrate a better technique, or better use of the same technique and then chi sau will recommence. Sifu still manipulates the flow to keep repeating the same scenario, but now the student is better equipped to deal with it and can practise the technique over and over until it becomes natural.

So I can see that, in a way, my sifu does 'feed' us techniques, but only when he thinks it is necessary. And it is never "I go, then you go" unless we are practising a brand new technique. It is always a continuous exchange.

That's not to say that our way is better than ysiddiqu's way, or the other way around. They are just different ways of training.

One of the people who goes to my Wing Chun class lives and works near where I work so we decided to meet up recently in our dinner hours to do some chi sau practise. This is just the extra practise I'd been wanting to do for a long time. We decided to do a couple of techniques that we'd learnt in the last class.

The problem with learning a new tecgnique in class is that we leave the class thinking "wow, that was a really good technique" but then a week with no chi sau practice goes by and in the next class we either can't remember how to do The Move or we do it clumsily and ineffectively. When given something new, we need to practise it over and over until it becomes instinctive or subconscious. With the bright idea that my friend and I had, we can now do that.

It turns out that we are both free on Tuesday and Thursday lunchtimes, and what we've planned to do is do some free form chi sau on Tuesdays and practise what we learnt in class on Thursdays. That way we get the best of both worlds.

Usually I go to the gym in my lunch hour every day, and as well as being a welcome break from work it also keeps me fit. But recently I couldn't help thinking that if only I could do an hour of Wing Chun instead of going to the gym, I'd improve much more quickly. The trouble is, I can't really practise in the office and I don't relish the thought of all the spectators at the gym. This new turn of events is perfect though as we go to his house, 5 minutes away, and chi sau in his living room. That's nearly an hour of chi sau twice a week - extra.

Now it should only take another 20 years before we're as good as sifu!

For the last two weeks or so, sifu has been up to something and I didn'r know what it was until the last class. In the last few classes he got us all to pair up and chi sau and watched us. Then he would stop us, tell us that we couldn't move our feet and asked us to start chi sauing again.

Very difficult. No place to run or hide. Yet at that point, he didn't tell us what it was all about. I think he was hoping that we would figure it out for ourselves. At the last class he told us explicitly what we should be doing.

Turning! Turn to the left, turn to the right. It's a good way of deflecting your opponents energy and something I rarely do. The kind of turning I'm talking about is that repeated numerous times in Chum Kiu (think about the transitions into the first bong saus). Turning and footwork (ok, maybe they both fall into the realm of footwork) need work. This was a really good exercise and I hope we practise it to death.

At the moment, I feel that my WIng Chun is still very 2 dimensional. I'll face my partner straight on and we'll exchange. I do actually move around a little, but I still pretty much face my partner. I hardly every turn.

What's So Good About Turning?

Turning is useful for several reasons. When you turn, your head for example is no longer in the same place. Meaning, if somebody was aiming a punch at your head, they've missed. Also, turning can deflect your opponent's energy. In turning, one of your shoulders moves nearer your partner effectively bringing your target closer to you.

I know that when you turn, the centre line moves too, but I'm not sure about the precise impact. I'll need to ponder on that one and maybe ask sifu.

At the end of the class, as we were leaving, sifu said emphasized the importance of turning in Wing Chun by saying that it changes everything.

A Spare Pair Of Hands

Ryan is a friend of a friend and I've know him for maybe 4 years now. He came over at the weekend, and whereas in the past I've looked at him as a 6 foot tall 25 year old man, on Sunday I just saw a pair of hands! So I got him up and didn't give him a chance to say no to my suggestion of a bit of chi sau. Well it was rudimentary chi sau, and if you can remember back to when you didn't know how to roll, then you'll know what I mean. We both enjoyed it anyway.

The interesting thing I noticed was Ryan's immense use of strength. I must have been the same when I started, but it's so different to how I am now - but still not different enough. We can all use softer hands sometimes. We were just messing really, neither of us making any strikes, but moving hands inside and out, trying to get an advantageous position. Or rather I was and Ryan was busy looking nervous and reacting. Both my hands would be on the outside and when I moved one inside, he would jerk his hand down in a mad panic to block it. He's got quick reactions, I'll give him that. It was good to contrast what he did with how I now chi sau - and I'm by no means feeling smug here. It's just useful to get an idea of progress. Whereas he would blast my hand a good foot to the side with his make shift pak sau, my pak sau would be minimal. 'Just enough'.

It was scary for me too because I found it hard to deal with his strength. In class it's stressed that we should use soft hands and avoid using strength and so to a certain extent we pair up with compliant partners. Ryan of course wasn't compliant and was quite strong. I know that if it was a street situation, I would at least try to 'finish it' quickly, but I was hoping my chi sau would be good enough to redirect some of his energy against him. Sadly it wasn't. My little world crumbled around me ha ha.

The good that came out of this though, is that it spurred me on to practise more. Take it more seriously.

Another thing I was struck by was how stiff and rigid Ryan's arms were. I mean, they were like iron girders. And this allowed me to actually do something right. Because they were so tense I could very easily disrupt his balance, either by  pushing his arms awkwardly into him or by just giving them a cheeky little lap sau. His balance was totally gone.

The real point of my practising with Ryan was to get better at defending against something I described here. Ryan would have his hand inside my fook sau and he would loop it around in a hooking motion towards my head. Man, he was fast. Strong too, I may have mentioned. Owing to the dangerous nature of this exercise I quickly found us something a bit safer to do!

I know that Ryan won't mind me dissecting his performance. It's meant with the best intentions. It would be fantastic if he decided to take up Wing Chun, because then I'd have someone to practise with!

Arms Like An Orangootang

At the last class I found myself chi sauing with someone who was much shorter than I was. I'm 6'2" and have arms like an orangootang so really I should have had quite an advantage. And to start with I did. We started chi sauing and I guess we were compromising on the height difference so that our hands could meet, but surreptitiously he would lower his hands and I would follow. Before I knew it (and I didn't realise until my partner pointed it out), my hands were much lower than they should have been. This was good for him, but my shape was all wrong and I could no longer take advantage of my super long arms and height.

Accommodating Your Partner

I find that I, and for that matter many people, have a tendency to accommodate their opponents. How many times have you simply followed your opponents hands, even if they are off centre and the best thing to do is simply go forwards down that centre? I think that to a certain extent this is a natural human response. Someone leads, the other follows. In hypnosis, the hypnotherapist matches the subject and then leads him or her (think pacing and leading). That's it - I was hypnotised goddamit! And maybe I'm not joking... In chi sau your unconscious mind takes over your actions: you no longer break things down into components and say to yourself "she's punching forward so I'm going to pak it". The pak isn't instinct, it's a learned response that over time has become an unconscious one. And following hands is an unconscious response to your opponent's actions.

Unlearning Unconscious Habits

The trick is to observe what you are doing when you are doing it and stop it. It sounds so simple, but as you know, it is the hardest thing to do. Correcting unconscious routines that you perform on your own is hard enough. You tell yourself before you start a form that the way you've been executing your gang sau for the last 2 years is in fact wrong and it needs to be completely different. And over many re-iterations of the form you can keep correcting it until it becomes a new unconscious pattern. But that's learning in the comfort of being undisturbed by an attacker who is trying to knock your block off. It's much harder to stop ingrained habits with a distraction like this.

Of course it's hard work. That's what makes it so good.

Pattern Breaking

I've just thought of another example of people accommodating their partners hands during chi sau. Changing from inside to outside and vice versa. This is an often performed transition and you become so familiar with your partner doing it that you eventually stop seeing the openings there. When he/she makes that switch, it's an ideal opportunity to strike. Sometimes the switch is so sloppy they leave the centre wide open anyway, but because we are so used to the transition taking place, we accommodate it. Did I say 'we'? I meant 'I'. Except that I've started to wait for these moments of change to strike. Now, I'll just roll with my partner and wait for them to do somethig - anything - and then strike myself. And it seems to work.

There's a subtle distinction between using force and... using force. Up to this point I'd been under the impression (ok, it was my mistaken belief) that you shouldn't use force/strength under any circumstances - unless you were finishing off you're opponent. I realised at a class today that it's not quite as simple as that. And yet it's not much more complicated either.

If I'm face to face with someone and I try to push them out of the way, this is bad. I'm using strength to overcome them. But if they are walking backwards already and I simply add my weight to their movement by guiding them backwards a little faster, this is good. Similarly if someone charges towards me and I charge towards them, that's two equal and opposite forces meeting in the middle - bad. Bang bang. If someone charges towards me and I slip sideways and then my deft push adds to their momentum to send them on their way - in the same direction - good.

So using strength isn't always bad. We did a couple of drills today that really made the penny drop for me. They both started with me pushing my bong sau against my partners fook sau. The bong sau actually changed to a lan wan sau (bar arm thing!) to do this and the action was merely to get a response from my partner - that response being his resistance. When he met my pushing bong sau with his own unconscious resistance, I could use his energy by rolling my bong sau on the inside into a tan sau. But because he was pushing back against me, I could actually help his arm go in that same direction with my tan sau, so the tan sau pushes his arm in the direction it's already going. This is the use of force that isn't bad. His fook sau is already going in that direction because he's resisting my bong sau, so it's ok for me to help it along with my tan sau.

Does that sound complicated? It's not at all, but of course trying to string a coherent sentence together that describes the movements is tricky. I really need to video these things to illustrate. But saying that... it's actually quite useful for me to articulate what we did, and write it down, because it aids my memory. Maybe I could do both

The next drill used the same setup. The old "bong sau pushing forwards against his fook sau to provoke the resistance that we can harness" trick. Sneaky like a ninja. This time, when I felt his resistance I had to lap sau it out of the way with my other hand, trapping his tan sau in the process. My lap sau is almost coming back towards me and I have to move to my left to get the angle (assuming my right arm is the bong sau). After the lap sau comes the punch of course, but the important bit is creating the space in which to punch.

These drills really illustrate the subtlety of wing chun. Redirecting energy, you have to love it. The pushing bong sau doesn't have to be that strong, and people invariably resist it without even knowing they are. This resistance is most accommodating of them, because without it the technique won't work.

Recently I was messing with my girlfriend (who doesn't do any martial arts) and we were facing each other, long wu saus touching at the wrists, I would pak sau and punch blah de blah. Well after a few goes, when our wu saus met, I could really feel her pushing against me. Of course she didn't know she was pushing until I quickly moved my hand away and her hand flew to the side because I was no longer resisting it! I'm always being told to stop pushing, and I know I'm much better than I used to be.

I wonder how much of your partner's energy you just don't notice. Energy that you could use to your advantage but is just going to waste. I know for a fact that I'm not yet tuned in sensitively enough. But then, who is?

On a side note, if you want to see numerous examples of how not to use strength, search youtube for chi sau competition. Some of that stuff is not that far removed from wrestling! It ain't pretty.

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

When I chi sau it's like my feet are rooted to the floor. Even when my partner attacks I might move backwards but rarely do I deviate from that straight line between us. We face each other and trade blows! Duh. I know that I should create angles, move to the side when it makes sense to etc but at the moment you can have handwork or footwork but not both.

When it was drawn to my attention by one of the seniors that we should use our footwork more, my steps became exaggerated as though I was overcompensating. And because I was concentrating on my footwork and not my hands, I got slapped. Obviously the ideal is for the whole body to move as one; hands, feet and posture working together but before that becomes natural in chi sau, I need to practise this on my own.
I've been trying to think of exercises/routines I can do. So far I've come up with:

• forget the hands and just move backwards, forwards and sideways randomly whilst maintaing correct posture, stance and hands up in wu sau
• pick a focal point and move around that as though it were an opponent. This is much trickier. At work there is a pillar that I use for this before my colleagues arrive. I move forwards and do a kwan sau. Move sideways and go into a bong sau and then just mix it up randomly. There are pause between movements while I think of what to do next and the movements are very much broken down into discrete actions, but that's only until I become more familiar with the exercise and it becomes fluid. Wing Chun shadow boxing!