My training this week is going well. I know it’s only Tuesday, but hopefully, I’ll maintain my fortitude throughout the week.
Yesterday I had the usual argument in my head on my way to work about whether to go to the gym for an hour before work or whether to do something else (also constructive). In the end, Wing Chun training lost out to learning PHP but what I did do was an hour of Chi Sau at lunch and an hour on the dummy in the evening. That’s not bad going for me. Two whole hours in one day. It would have been three if I’d gone to the gym in the morning, but I do have a life outside of Wing Chun that I’m trying to hang onto.
Doing three one hour chi sau sessions a week looks like becoming an established routine now, which is brilliant. My only concern is that chi sauing with the same person all the time gets you used to their way of working. Just because you can handle yourself in chi sau with that person, it doesn’t mean that your Wing Chun will stand up to someone else’s chi sau. But I do get to chi sau with other students during and after my weekly class, so it’s all good. And, up to a point, I think that doing a lot of chi sau with the same person is better than doing none at all.
This morning I did 30 minutes of Chun Yuen and 15 minutes of Siu Lim Tau. I also got an hour in on the dummy later this evening.
The dummy is going well. I read on a forum yesterday that the tan sau -> gaan sau -> kwan sau in the first section of the dummy form mirrors the third section of Siu Lim Tau. I’d not thought of that. I read somewhere else that a particular teacher’s method is to teach “the next bit” of the dummy every time students learn the the next form. So it sounds like the dummy is a way of practising the application of the forms in the absence of a partner. And it looks like maybe 0.01% of the crap I read on Wing Chun forums turns out to be informative.
Random Youtube Video
I think I was looking for “fast hands” when I found this. I’m going to ask sifu if we can start wearing biker jackets in class.
I like Fridays. Not only is it the end of the week, but I get to do some chi sau in my lunch hour with one of my friends.
Today’s chi sau was encouraging as there was no pain in my shoulder. This may be due to the self massage I’ve been doing on it every couple of days or so. It’s quite sore and tender when I do massage it, so I know that something’s not quite right. I get quite deep with the massage and use tiger balm on it, which smells realy good too. It’s not made with real tigers.
Anyway, today there was no pain when I was doing chi sau. We resolved to try and do an extra day during the week too, so I hope we manage that. Two lunch hours of chi sau + practice on my own on the remaining lunch hours + Saturday class = more improvement.
Before we started chi sauing, I asked my friend to run through the Xing Shou form in Chun Yuen, which he did. He was the one who sold me on Chun Yuen in the first place, so it was the least he could do! I was amazed. He was very precise in his movements and had an obvious sense of purpose. I’d seen him do the form a couple of weeks ago, but I was looking with stranger’s eyes and didn’t really appreciate the skill. Now that I’ve done a couple of lessons, and practised the form (or what little I know of it) nearly every day, I had a reference point and could look for certain things.
It’s always the same. If you are unfamiliar with a particular skill and see someone else doing it, you might be mildly impressed. If after studying and training that skill for a few years yourself, you become more critical of – and more impressed with – good skill. You recognise the expertise. That’s how it is with the Wing Chun, anyway, and I know that that’s how it will be with the Chun Yuen. The more I learn, the more I will recognise skill when I see it. Already I’m seeing more in my friend’s form than two weeks ago. And of coutse, the more I train, the more I’ll spot the subtle nuances I can’t spot now in sifu’s form when he does it.
That’s right, lunchtime chi sau returns. Over a year ago, I started chi sauing regularly at lunchtime with someone from class. That was a good move as the consistency of training pushed my chi sau skill up.
But then I got injured and had to put that idea in hold. My wing chun partner was fairly busy at the time, so I guess if there was ever a good time to get an inhury, that was it. And of course, over the last year my training has suffered.
But my wing chun friend rang me up and asked if we could do some chi sau today. I was going to go to the gym, but doing a bit of wing chun practise was far more appealing. My shoulder was OK on the whole, but I felt a couple of twinges towards the end. We were chi sauing for a good 30 minutes, which is more than I’ve done for a while.
It’s true that chi sauing with the same partner does get you used to responding in the same way to a particular technique, but the benefits of “getting used” to someone’s style far outweigh the disadvantages of not practising at all! One way that we will avoid falling into the same old routine as far as combinations of techniques goes is by practising techniques and drills learnt in class. The problem with stuff we learn in class is that we hardly ever get a chance to practise it. Then when the next class comes around, we’ve forgotten the technique.
The only thing I’m worried about at this stage is how well my shoulder will hold out. Fortunately for me, my partner’s skill is betetr than last time I chi saued with him and his hands are less heavy. If teh pressure on my shoulder causes it to ache then I’ll just have to work within my limits.
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.
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!
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.
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.
