Over the past few weeks I’ve been practising one particular thing over and over again to improve my coordination. The meaning of coordination changes from one subject to another: in football I suppose coordination might be specific to the ability to do things like run, pick up a ball and pass it quickly. In Wing Chun, the coordination I’m talking about is the ability to put combinations of techniques together in a smooth and flowing manner.

The combination I’ve been practising is this:

• tan da (tan sau block and simultaneous punch).
• yan jeung (palm strike) with the tan sau hand. Other hand becomes a guarding wu sau.
• pek jeung (chop) with the other hand. Other hand becomes a wu sau.
• Repeat on the other side

All the strikes are performed against an imaginary foe directly in front of you. At first the movements may seem strange and you might feel uncoordinated. It’s important to break down the movements and perform them so slowly that you perform them correctly. Speed is not important at this stage. Only when you can perform the movements correctly should you try and speed things up. There’s no point in being able to do lightning fast strikes with sloppy technique.

You may never find yourself in a position where you can use a tan da – palm strike – pek jeung like this, but that’s not the point of the exercise. The aim is to become familiar with the transition between techniques with alternating hands. The fact that you can flow smoothly from a palm strike with one hand to a chop with the other means that you will be able to flow easily from a punch with one hand to a palm strike with the other (more or less!).

I remember when I first started WIng Chun, I felt really awkward doing even simple tasks like punching with my left hand. It felt awkward, simply because I’d not done it enough times. Through repetition, though, you can build familiarity with a particular technique so that you can use it at any time, quickly and efficiently.  Through building familiarity with how the technique feels, you can know when the technique is appropriate to the situation you find yourself in. Without that familiarity, you may find yourself trying to showhorn a technique into a situation that just doesn’t fit.

Variations On A Theme

I’ve tried putting the focus on different things when I do this exercise, like the following:

• turning (as in Tsum Kiu) when using the technique. So with left tand sau, you turn to the left etc.
• picking one technique and increasing its power in that technique only. For example, put the power into the punch only. The difficult one for me to put power into is the palm strike  after the tan sau. It takes a concerted effort to make it look like I’m not just wiping something off!
• try and get a flow going so that all techniques are performed smoothly at the same speed, and there is no break between cycles.

After hammering the combination above for a few weeks, I’m amazed at the speed and ease I can now execute it. It now looks like I do kung fu!

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.