Recently I realised the importance of keeping my shoulders stationary as I move between the different Wing Chun hands and decided that this was something I was going to practice. But man, this is difficult.

I devised an exercise: I would simply move between bong sau and wu sau and back again, turning to the left for the bong sau and then turning back to the front for the wu sau again. Repeat over and over, monitoring the shoulders and making sure they don’t move. I’ve got to say, it’s boring. Surprisingly, when I slow the movements right down to tell better whether I am moving them, this makes my shoulders ache. The boredom isn’t the only problem though. I’m finding it hard to know whether I am moving my shoulders by feel. For this reason it feels like a wasted exercise, just because I can’t determine whether or not I’m doing it right. What I need is a mirror that I can face while I do it.

So this is the plan: save this practice for times when I can stand in the mirror and watch what my shoulders do. I’ve got some turning routines that I do involving doing those bar arm turns at the start of chum kiu, turning whilst changing bong saus and turning whilst changing tan saus etc. I’ll do those exercises but this time I’ll focus on what my shoulders are doing and try to keep them still. I might have to slow the movement right down to stop the movement.

I initially wanted to do some research on the Wing Chun forums out there so that I could list what I considered to be the more useful ones. However, I’m a bit bemused at the moment. In the past, I haven’t really been one to get involved in the martial arts online community, because to tell the truth, it just never occurred to me. The most important thing for me was to learn, and that was best accomplished simply by going to class and practising on my own. But then I got curious to see what was out there. Bewildered isn’t the word! Some forums are dead. Others are active but provide nothing for someone studying Wing Chun.  Some do have an active Wing Chun sub forum, but are spoilt by childish bickering and personal insults! Some of the participants in these puerile scuffles are grown men! I’ve listed the best one I’ve found (in my opinion) first.

Inter Martial Arts forum

This is a huge forum covering just about every martial art you can think of (and probably some you can’t). There’s a Wing Chun forum, too.

Martial Talk

I discovered this Wing Chun forum recently and I really like it. There are some knowledgeable people here who explain things well and it feels friendly.

Kung Fu Magazine

Despite ranking first in Google for “Wing Chun Forum”, this forum is pretty quiet. Having been created in 1999, it’s certainly well established. Be warned: check this thread out for childishness. I really don’t know why the moderators don’t step in. I’m not sure how representative this thread is of the forum as a whole, so it may just be a one off.

International Wing Chun Academy

Focused on Wind Chun in Australia.

The Wing Chun Archive

This is a very useful resource, comprising lists of Wing Chun schools, movies and videos, places to get wooden dummies and articles. There’s also a comprehensive list of Wing Chun forums.

Martial Arts Planet

It comes up first when I search for “martial arts forum” in Google, but sadly there is no Wing Chun forum. There is one for Kung Fu in which the odd thread concerning Wing Chun is created and then trashed.

As I said above, it’s only recently I started looking on the internet for Wing Chun forums, so maybe there’s a good one hiding somewhere.  The search continues.

I’ve just had a mind blowing class. Not mind blowing because some complicated technique was revealed, but quite the opposite. This was something very basic, something very simple to understand but very difficult to do. As with every basic principle, its mastery is crucial if you want to progress to a higher level. So what is this crucial principle? Not moving your shoulders when you bong sau, tan sau, wu sau etc.

The teacher today (not sifu) noticed that we were all distorting our positions and tensing our shoulders when we chi saued, so he stopped us and got us to follow him. We stood in basic stance, right hand in a wu sau and proceeded to move into a bong sau > tan sau, back to wu sau. Every one of us moved our shoulders, some more than others and some even stretched their shoulders forward. Bad, bad bad! The shoulders must remain immobile and relaxed whilst moving into those different hands.

Why Keep Your Shoulders Still?

If you move your shoulders when moving between the different hands, the following can happen:

• the shoulders become tense making it very easy to lap sau your bong sau
• you commit yourself to a certain position instead of remaining neutral and relaxed
• if your shoulders are misshapen and tense it makes the transition into the next position slower
• you are not as balanced as you could be
• your opponent can feel what your intention is

Sifu is a perfect example of this principle. He moves seamlessly from whatever hand to whatever hand keeping shoulders relaxed and immobile, yet his gung lik is very strong. He’s also very quick.

Exercises To Develop Relaxed Shoulders

Understanding what we need to do, and the reasons why are all very well, but how can you just do it? Well, you can’t. You have to practise. I asked whether the best approach to take was to deliberately practise hand movements whilst minimising shoulder movements or to just practise our usual routines whilst placing special attention on correcting the shoulders shoulders. The teacher let us in on his little practise sessions for this:

• adopt the basic stance with one hand in wu sau
• turn to the left and bong sau
• turn to the front and wu sau again
• repeat this many, many, many, many times, bringing awareness to how much your shoulders are moving. Try and minimise this movement
• when you’ve worn out your bong sau replace it with other hands like gang sau and tan sau
• when you’ve worn those out, try mixing up random sequences, both to the right and the left

The devil really is in the details. The above may sound a little tedious and boring, but you have to ask yourself how good do you want to get? And how much do you want that? If you want to progress as far as you can, these tedious little exercises must be performed, and these trivial little problems must be ironed out.

The problem with deconstructing the very fundamentals of your skill when you chi sau is that you will get hit. It’s like going back to the beginning and learning everything again, but with a special eye on the finer details now. And we should get hit, because our technique is not as good as it could be. The teacher today had a perspective on this that I liked. He said that we should be brutally honest with ourselves and with our partners. If they don’t take advantage of our bad technique and hit us then they are lying to us and cheating us. And if we don’t notice and try to correct our technique, then we are lying and cheating ourselves. As is so often forgotten, the class is not about winning, it’s about studying. And it’s not personal. I agree with hime wholeheartedly.

After around 3 weeks total abstinence from Wing Chun due to a mysterious injury, I’ve started my training again. I usually go to class once a week, twice in a good week, and do 15 minutes training on my own Monday – Friday so a complete stoppage was really hard to take.

This morning I did a quick Siu Lim Tau and Chum Kiu (which I learnt just before I got injured) and it felt good! Thankfully, I could remember Chum Kiu in its entirety, so in that repect I don’t think I’ve lost anything. Obviously, my technique is a bit rusty, and certainly my muscles aren’t as strong as 3 weeks ago, but at least I’m back. All being well, I’m going to try to make all 3 classes this week.

The injury is still there but its symptoms have reduced. There’s some swelling round my left knee (I hate joint injuries) and it hurts when I kneel down but both the swelling and the pain have reduced. I think it might be bursitis. My main concern was the pressure exerted on the knees when doing siu lim tau and also that exerted on them when turning in chum kiu, but my speedy routine this morning didn’t cause any pain. So it’s looking good!

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.

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

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).