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!