Stance

When I teach the Stance I like to get my Students to focus on their Torso and just let the Legs do what Legs do, and that is keep your Bum off of the floor, at the end of the Day as Human beings we pretty much know how to move from "A" to "B" without falling on our Faces, do not get me wrong I believe that correct Footwork is of vital importance I just do not see it as being such an important aspect of training the Stance, what I believe is the core of Stance training is acquiring and understanding Balance and Stability, if you understand these facets and maintain them when you move your Feet are unlikely to go anywhere they should not.

Renaissance.

Wow it has been so long since I posted on the blog, I have been preoccupied with FB and YouTube, they have great almost instant coverage but by their nature they are pretty brief, pretty Breakfast Cereal kind of Nutrition, useful but never enough for growth or health so I am going to try to simultaneously post to the Blog with perhaps a bit deeper analysis and some longer vids, but for starters I will put up all the Vids that I have recently posted to FB and You Tube.

Balance as a Game.

In a recent FaceBook post on the INCa's Thought Exchange I was talking about not pressing up through your Leg when standing, as this leads to a loss of Balance, Scotty mentioned that he could not feel if he was or was not doing this, here are a few things to play with to help you connect with feeling your Balance.

Stand in a even and relaxed way, Knees slightly bent, Ankles at Shoulder width and Feet parallel, make sure that your Knees are pointing in the same direction as your Feet and Arms hanging at your sides.

Very slowly lean forwards until you can clearly feel that your Balance has been compromised, and then return to where you started from.

Very slowly lean backwards until you can clearly feel that your Balance has been compromised, and then return to where you started from.

Very slowly lean to the right until you can clearly feel that your Balance has been compromised, and then return to where you started from.

Very slowly lean to the left until you can clearly feel that your Balance has been compromised, and then return to where you started from.

By doing this you have established what it feels like for your Body to be out of Balance. It may be hard to identify when you are in Balance because there is nothing happening that feels wrong, but once you understand what it feels like to be out of Balance if you do not feel this way the chances are that you are in Balance, and by repeating the above exercises a few times you will soon identify what it feels like to "not be out of Balance" just by comparison of the two sets of feelings.  Not being "out of Balance" is not always the same as being in Balance, you may be inadvertently using strength to avoid falling.

Leaning the whole body is a just an entry point to feeling awareness about Balance. Try starting in the same position as earlier and slowly raising your Right Arm sideways until you can clearly feel that your Balance has been compromised, and then return to where you started from.

Now raise your right Arm in front of you until you can clearly feel that your Balance has been compromised, and then return to where you started from.

Now raise your right Arm behind you until you can clearly feel that your Balance has been compromised, and then return to where you started from.

Do the same thing with the Left Arm, even do the same thing with both Arms together.

Repeat the exercise with your Legs.

Limbs are still really major disturbances, so how can we refine this idea?

Start as usual and now lean your Head to the left, then right, then front and then rear until you can clearly feel that your Balance has been compromised, and then return to where you started from.

After playing with these idea's we should be quite sensitive to our bodies Balance, now push up through the Legs and see what happens, do you stay in Balance?

If you are still not sure then try these balance corrections, go through the Arm raising exercises and when you notice your Balance has been disturbed raise the opposite Arm in the same way until your Balance has been regained, observe what feelings flow through your body as you do this and then once again push up through your Legs and observe if you are compensating.

If the Arm raising exercises are too subtle then do them on one Leg.

The very act of standing on one Leg will introduce you to a ton of input on Balance, if you wobble at all then you are out of Balance, and often the only way to not fall is to stick a Leg out in one direction and an Arm in the opposite direction.

The emphasis with these exercises is to "PLAY", do not treat it seriously. make up your own tests, stand on your Head, it is even possible to feel your Balance when you are laying on the floor, and feel it get compromised as you roll over.

Once the silliness of all this subsides and you start thinking Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? {W.T.F.} Try to identify exactly what it is that happens to, and within your Body as your Balance is compromised and equally important as it is brought back to Balance, go through all the silliness again with this thought.

If this still does not help you then the chances are that you are just F???ed.

I'm kidding.

Once we can feel our Balance we should also have a real sense of Gravity, and how it makes us want to push back, this is why we push up when we stand still, I will go into this later.

Prelude to Week 5's Lesson.

CHI SAU

WHAT IS CHI SAU,WHAT DOES IT TEACH US AND HOW DO WE USE IT?

Chi Sau is first and foremost a drill, it is not actually fighting, it is “a means to an end and not an end in itself” as Sifu Jim would often tell me early in my training when I turned it to some kind of Arm Wrestling . As a drill it is difficult to say what exactly it is it teaches us as it teaches so much, many aspects of Wing Chun training can be explored and refined in the Chi Sau drill, the obvious exception being Striking, Chi Sau does not incorporate hitting at all, Chi Sau is used to open up the partner so that if we wish we can strike, but once we strike we have for all intents and purposes stepped out of Chi Sau.

1. Softness and Stance Stability; in Chi Sau rolling we accept our partners force into our own structure through our Arms, if there is tension or misalignment anywhere along the network from Wrist to Shoulder the incoming Force will accumulate there, either collapsing the structure or moving the Body, to be able to absorb the incoming Force through the Arms and into the Body we need to develop softness in the Joints and maintain the Shoulder ⇒ Wrist alignment,  once the incoming Force has entered the Body if the Spine is not vertical the Force will accumulate in the Arch of the Back with the same result, it will bend you or move you,  if the Spine is vertical the Force will be transmitted into the Legs and then to the Floor, if the Hip Joint is not soft the same thing will happen again, to absorb Force we first have to accept it and not try to repel it, often this is a personal issue with the Ego and not really a Wing Chun Problem, our Arms fulfil the role of a Crash Barrier in the way that they absorb and redirect force and not a Bull Bar that crashes through or bounces force away. Softness is a difficult concept to put into writing, many people mistakenly confuse softness for lack of firmness and have no structure to their Arms, which is completely incorrect, it is an absence of imposed tension, strength or extra effort, when we walk we do not add extra strength to our Knees and yet we do not worry that they will collapse beneath us, our Knee joint is relaxed and soft and we keep it extended with just our intention and an alignment that does not put them under excess stress, it is the same for our Arms in Chi Sau, we keep our Elbows soft and relaxed and if we have the correct alignment then no amount of force will collapse them. It is important that at the early stages of Chi Sau, the first 5 years that we do the drill as much as possible in a stationary position, in this way we will be able to work on our stability, our softness and learn how to absorb and redirect force.
2. The Ball Concept; central to W.C’s defence is the thought that we have a large rotating Ball in front of us, this ball redirects incoming Force and rolls over obstructions, if this is not understood then moving from Taan Sau to Bong Sau and Bong Sau to Taan Sau will always be a mystery, once we have established Taan Sau in the correct position {Ultimate Angle} and we simply rotate it through the range of movement that is called Bong Sau by doing so we redirect Force that was coming into my Centre away in a less threatening direction, the reverse of Bong Sau to Taan Sau does a similar thing, just a different redirection. One reoccurring confusion is that the Ball is made up by both Arms, this is incorrect, each Arm is in fact an individual Ball on an axis that runs from the Shoulder to the partner, if this was not the case the Bong Sau to Taarn Sau transition would require us to move inside our own Ball.
3. Triangulation; if we extend our Arms out in front of us and place our Palms together we create a Triangle with our conecting C/L as the axis, this Triangle allows our Body weight to be transmitted evenly down both Arms into our partner {or down a single Arm with our C / L becoming the longer side of this Triangle, be aware that because the Triangles are mental constructs there can be multiples of them existing and operating at the same time in the same place} our defensive Ball can be seen to inhabit the space inside the Triangle and the rotation of the Ball creates the Taan Sau ⇒ Bong Sau transition from the walls of the Triangle with the guard being in the middle of the transition. By their nature Triangles prevent force from being applied evenly to their surface and act like a wedge opening up your partners Arms and allowing you to get at their Centre. Once we combine the Ball and the Triangle what we have is a cone shape that can rotate like a Ball but maintain the properties of a Triangle.
4. Correct movement of the Arm in the Shoulder; when we rotate our Arm from Taan Sau through to Bong Sau we are describing the shape of an Arc that moves around 180º, but our Elbow is only rotating through 45º, this is brought about by the rotation of the Arm in the Shoulder Socket and not by twisting the Elbow or Wrist and is part of the natural way that our Arm operates when movement is initiated from the Shoulder, this rotation allows the Elbow to raise up in a forward spiral towards our partner while maintaining the Wrist on the same level as it was in relation to the Shoulder, if there is a lot of tension in the Shoulder joint this rotation is inhibited and the result is that the Elbow tends to be lifted and twisted, this in turn tends to drop the Wrist below the Shoulder ⇒ Elbow axis, when this happens you are “Rolling Squares” and it is no longer possible to absorb your partners weight / force through the Arm into the Body and strength must be used to stop the Arm structure collapsing. If we again extend our Arms forward and touch our Palms together, if we rotate each Arm separately on an axis from our Shoulder through our Wrist until the backs of our Hands are now touching we have effectively moved from Man Sau to Bong Sau simply by rotating the Arm in the Shoulder socket.
5. Avoiding Force; Sifu Jim said to me on many occasions “if you could just understand what it really means to avoid force you would not need my help”, obviously I still do not fully understand but I am getting a lot closer, in Chi Sau we are using the rotation of our Arm structure to prevent me from running Head on into my partners force, I can avoid my partners force by redirecting it away from me, away from my C / L but I can also be more proactive and use my rotation to make his force go somewhere else instead of in my direction, and by force we mean the body weight of our partner, when we roll we must be rolling at our partners Centre of Mass and not just at his Arms, we must be attempting to upset his balance and structural stability, to achieve this we need to firstly apply points 1,2,3&4. 
6. Sticking Hands; by far the biggest misunderstanding is that Chi Sau sticks to and controls our partners Arms, our goal is to open up our partner to find a place to strike, when our partner feels our intention it is they who stick to us, if they fail to stick to us they get hit, we cannot possibly hit someone by sticking to their Wrists, so we need to pay attention and only stick to our partner when they are actually trying to strike us, this of course is the sensitivity that Chi Sau teaches.

Moving Quickly

Moving quickly is attained from moving smoothly, moving smoothly is attained by moving slowly!

In Wing Chun many Students just simply fail to connect the dots when it comes to how we generate our Hand speed in punching or our foot speed in kicking, they just try to move their Hands or Feet as quick as they can.

If you have been doing Wing Chun for more than 25 minutes then you already know that we define "Power" as being the result of "Mass times Velocity", and that the Mass we are referring to is our Body.

In easy terms weight moving in an accelerating way {not necessarily at high speed for instance 100 Kph. high speeds tend to reach their own maximum velocity and as such have no acceleration, just at a steady increase in acceleration for instance steadily moving from 1 Kph through to 6 Kph}, and we do this by connecting a series of separate movements that run simultaneously.

If we take "Stepping Punch", the movement of the Leg pushes the Hip {or Centre of Mass} this in turn moves the Shoulder area at the same speed, we then add the rotation of the Shoulder joint that moves the upper Arm and extends the elbow forward, we then add the rotation of the Elbow Joint that that extends the Wrist forward and then we add the rotation of the Wrist that extends the Fist forward.

Leg pushes {Hip} Shoulder, Shoulder pushes Elbow, Elbow pushes Wrist, Wrist pushes Fist.

If the Leg is moving at say  4 units of speed, Shoulder at 3 units, Elbow at 2 units, Wrist at 1 unit then the fist at the end is moving with the combined total of 10 units {it would actually be more due to the accelerating velocity but this is not a Maths blog} 2.5 times the speed of our Body movement.    

There is a Hierarchy in place here that must be strictly adhered to, the events in the Chain must flow from the previous to the next, and all events must be operating at the same time, so when the final rotation of the Wrist happens the first push from the Leg is still happening, and so are all the other movements, it should be obvious that for this to happen the speeds of each link in this chain must never surpass the link behind them or the Chain gets broken and simply no longer exists. If you move your Arm quicker than your Body then there is no way that your Body's weight can can flow into that Arm.

Imagine a Relay Race, you cannot pass on the Baton if the next Guy in the Relay is running faster than you!!

At one time or another all of us have pushed a shopping Trolley, our Body becomes the source of Power that moves the Trolley, we are the accelerator, suddenly we come to the ramp that leads to the Car Park and the Trolley begins to get away from us, at this point our body becomes the Brake, this is what happens when you just throw out your Arm, not only do you loose the possibility for your Body weight to increase the power of your strike, your Brake / Body actually causes the strike to decelerate.

So if you wish to improve your contact power, slow down that Arm, slow down that Leg and work on smoothing out the co-ordination of your Body connections, after all that is one of the primary objectives of all of our forms.

Elbow "PUSH" Wrist

ELBOW PUSH WRIST?

My Sifu used to describe the extending Arm movements of Wing Chun to me as “Shoulder Push Elbow, Elbow push Wrist”, and of course I pass it down to my Students in the same manner, but recently it has become very obvious that some Students find this simple statement somewhat confusing, even Students with many, many Years training and teaching behind them.

So lets break it down’

1. Does the Elbow really “Push” the Wrist?
2. How does the Elbow push the Wrist?
3. What does the Elbow use to push the Wrist?

As is often the case in Wing Chun the English translation can be a bit ambiguous if not misleading, so the use of the word “Push” can be problematic, we should not think of Push as in “Push a Car” or “Push a Wheelbarrow” that implies the use of strength but more as in an idea of extension like “Push your Boundaries”, even “Push off out of here”! 

If there is a physical push then it is done with the least amount of Force that can be used. 

It’s Wing Chun after all. 

1. Does the Elbow really “Push” the Wrist?  The Elbow is a Joint, so it is not really possible for the Elbow to exert Force of its own accord, so the Elbow cannot physically push the wrist, it is a concept.
2. How does the Elbow push the Wrist?  The concept of the Elbow pushing the wrist is really about alignment, if I align the Elbow in a straight line with the Wrist then any energy passed into and through the Elbow will be transmitted into the Wrist.
3. What does the Elbow use to push the Wrist? The Elbow is connected to the Wrist by the Ulna Bone, so it could be seen that the  Elbow “Pushes” the Ulna into the Wrist, just as when you shoot an Arrow, the back of the Arrow “Pushes” the front of the Arrow into the Target.

Once we understand that it is more about alignment than power production we begin to see that it is about energy traveling along a Vector, not only does the Elbow “Push” the Wrist but it also follows the Wrist, if it does not it cannot continue “Pushing” through out the entirety of the movement.

When a Student is trying to extend their Tarn Sau against resistance, or even more obviously when they are trying to Punch out from their Sternum against resistance the most common mistake is to try to send the Elbow toward the intended target destination, instead of sending the Elbow in the direction of the Wrist, and using the Shoulder rotation to direct the Whole Arm, as a result the Elbow tries to move forwards on a separate Vector while the Fist is held motionless,  to succeed the Elbow must follow on the same path as the Wrist in order to be continually “Pushing” the Wrist forward.

Most of us drive Cars, and at one time or another would of lost the rear end due to too much speed or just a poor road surface, we understand that to drive a Car correctly the back end {Boot / Elbow} must stay on the same path / vector as the front end {Bonnet / Wrist}. 

We could use this analogy with the Space Shuttle, but then it would make Wing Chun sound like Rocket Science.

Notes from Training.

These are the notes I used for the class on Monday 9 / 10 & Tuesday 10 / 10, they may not make total sense if you were not there to work on the idea's but if you were they will help you remember what we did and hopefully understand it a bit better.

Woo Sau and the Third Rotation.

The three rotations of our Arm structures in Wing Chun can be seen for ease of explanation as ;

1. The Shoulder rotates the upper Arm.
2. The Elbow rotates the Fore Arm.
3. The Wrist rotates the Hand.

The above explanations are not actual, they are just Ball Park descriptions for ease of explanation. We should all know what they are in reality from our analysis of Tarn Sau. If for some reason this does not make sense talk to me.

When posing Woo Sau {the Guarding Hand} we need to take advantage of the fact that the Wrist can actually extend as it rolls inward, rolls outward or even rolls sideways so that it can activate the whole Arm.

Despite the fact that most People view the Wrist as being similar to the Elbow or Knee in the fact that it functions as a Hinge, it is in fact a very complex joint that is made up of 13 bones {15 if we count in the ends of the Radius and Ulna}, multiple muscles and ligaments and is in all probability the most variedly mobile of all the joints in the Body.

As we present the Palm in Woo Sau we should be extending the underpart of the Wrist and not just folding the Hand backwards and compressing the rear of the Wrist, this will bring about the feeling that you are actually pressing something or emitting energy from your Palm.  One way to observe this is to do an exercise were the tip of the Index Finger stays in the same place in Space so that the movement causes the Wrist to move forwards to stop beneath the Finger tips that have not moved, and not that the Fingers move backwards to sit above the Wrist that has not moved. Words are complicated, movement is not.

Woo Sau should illicit the feeling that there is a Ball on our Wrist that the side of the Ball touches the back of the Hand, it should feel circular and not like a Right Angle. If we imagine the Ball to be a powerful source of Energy or Radiation it would emit the Energy / Radiation forwards through the back of the Hand and out of the Palm.

Fook Sau should illicit the feeling that there is a Ball on the inside of our Wrist that the front of the Ball touches the Palm of the Hand. it should also feel circular and not like a Right Angle. If again we imagine that Ball is a powerful source of Energy or Radiation it would emit the Energy / Radiation forwards through the Palm and out of the back of the Hand.

This is the beginning of Nim Lik.

 {Thought Force. The Force of Intention. Pick a Word that makes sense to you}.

In Dan Chi Sau as we change from Fook Sau to Woo Sau in response to the attempted Palm Strike the action should be formed by bringing the base of the Hand forward and rotating the Shoulder and not by tilting the fingers backwards and dropping the Arm. The incoming Strike tends to raise our Fook Sau  and compress our Angle, as we become aware of this we extend the base of our Palm forwards into Woo Sau {a bye product of this will be that we regain our Angle} and not use Force by extending the Elbow, something very strange occurs now, the feeling is that our our Hand is rotating upwards and forwards in relation to our forearm but at the same time the Hand is rotating forwards {and of course sideways as I regain the Centre} and downwards in relation to the my partner / opponents body.  This of course is the essence of how we intercept and redirect everything, and that is why Dan Chi Sau is so important and also so misunderstood.

Because Dan Chi Sau appears to be a Cycle where student “A” does this and then student “B” replies with this Ego tends to overcome intelligence and the whole idea behind Dan Chi Sau is lost.  Just like all of our Forms the apparent pattern to is simply to aid memory, there is no reason why Students cannot just work the Fook Sau / Woo Sau transition in isolation without needing to take it to the next phase of the exercise, and in fact it is only when this very thing happens that progress becomes possible.

As I tried to point out in Class, all Chi Sau movements are in essence the one move, It is a much more powerful learning aid when Students are asked to discover why all the moves in the Dan Chi Sau Cycle are exactly the same.  

Perhaps they are not, even that will teach you something.

But of course I would not suggest it if it was not the case.

Both the replying Punch and the passive Bong Sau are products of the 3rd Rotation.

Hearing it is one thing, seeing it is a totally different Fish.