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:

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!

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.

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.