# Lat Sau



## Nabakatsu (Nov 20, 2009)

So.. how else here has trained lat sau? or.. how many lineages even incorporate it? I really enjoy the training, and feel like it's an unbelievable tool to putting things together, especially at my low level.
I'm curious to hear about other lineages, and how they foster combative knowledge into their newer pupils in the earlier stages of things. 

To those who have had training with lat sau, I'm curious to know What things you have been shown, I've gone through:
punching, both persons arms on the outside, called, "outside outside"
than we can "inside outside" after we learn to double punch and control whether it's inside outside, we learned how to apply tan sau's and pak sau's, also gan sau's to deflect low paks aimed at turning our upper body over and than as they release turn their hips to hit us, it's a spring gan sau really.. we've worked a bit of chi gurk in as well, short retreating step, short retreating step with a kick, long retreating step, with and without kick/attacks, thats pretty much all I have learned in regards to lat sau this far, but I'm curious to know if things like bong sau, fuk sau, or cao sau get incorporated in later? Thanks in advance for any information you share!

edit to fix some sloppy penmanship


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## yak sao (Nov 20, 2009)

, but I'm curious to know if things like bong sau, fuk sau, or cao sau get incorporated in later? Thanks in advance for any information you share!


I teach my students basic responses to things like boxing jabs, hooks, uppercuts, roundhouse kicks, etc. to get them in the ballpark. But I stress to them these are only representative ideas of the concepts of WT. Rather than giving them a long laundry list of techniques to use, I prefer that they discover for themselves what works for them in lat sao as they get further along in their training, rather than having me do all their thinking for them.
But to answer your question, eventually, all these things (bong, fook, kau ) are a part of lat sao.


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## geezer (Nov 20, 2009)

In my experience, the lat-sau drills were really expanded and systematized by the German branch of the WT lineage. Unfortunately, I missed out on learning a lot of it since I trained directly under LT back in the 80's... before the lat sau drills got integrated into the teaching program of the American WT branches.  

Now I'm getting filled in on this program by my old kung-fu brothers. Excellent stuff for practical application as well as conditioning. If I were teaching, I couldn't imagine running a school without it. 

Oh... BTW has anybody been checking out the latest news on the legal problems of LT lately? I have. And... tell ya what. I'm really _glad_ to be part of a break-away group that no longer uses the WT spelling. Check the internet and you'll see what I mean. It's pathetic.


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## Poor Uke (Nov 21, 2009)

Never heard the term before have heard of Lat Dao from the Knife form. Could somebody explain?


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## yak sao (Nov 21, 2009)

I'm an American,so I barely know english, but from what I understand lat sao literally means :free hand fighting, ie. sparring.


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## yak sao (Nov 21, 2009)

*Now I'm getting filled in on this program by my old kung-fu brothers. Excellent stuff for practical application as well as conditioning. If I were teaching, I couldn't imagine running a school without it. *



I agree. Without lat sao, WT is, or can be, a whole lot of theory. For all the complaints we hear about the Germans' business attitude toward WT,
(EWTO/KK in particular) we are fortunate here in the US to be learning their version.


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## mook jong man (Nov 22, 2009)

I've never heard of Lat Sau before , but if I'm understanding correctly it sounds like it is what we used to call ' random arms and legs'.
Thats where you had to counter any type of punch or kick thrown at you randomly , basically it was anything goes.
Is it like that ? 
Or is it more like chi sau sparring.?


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## Nabakatsu (Nov 22, 2009)

Copy and paste from wikiepedia here:

The Lat Sao program is something particular to the European branch of the Leung Ting style of teaching WingTsun; the other Wing Chun branches, including the Hong Kong branch of Leung Ting's organization, generally progress in a more traditional manner from the forms to Chi Sao training to sparring. Lat Sao roughly translates as "rolling hands" or "tumbling hands" training.
 Lat Sao is a sensitivity drill to obtain specific Chi Sao reflexive responses. Although it may look combative, it should not be mistaken for sparring or fighting. Lat Sao is a game, in which one partner plays the part of an attacker, and the other a defender. The attacker and defender generally switch roles frequently, or after a set number of attacks. If one is not paying attention, or if the teacher has not explained the drill properly, the training can accelerate and become competitive; if this happens, the students are missing the point of the exercise altogether. Lat Sao is not about hitting your opponent, but about feeding him attacks that he trains to counter. As your partner becomes better, the attacks can be gradually made more difficult to counter by making them faster or more precise. However, once the attack is consistently getting through, it should be slowed down again, so that the defender can identify his mistake, or "hole" in the defense.
 Lat Sao can be both beneficial and detrimental when not practiced with awareness of its benefits and its pitfalls. The benefits are generally a more technical and more precise style, because the student spends time testing his limits and finding his mistakes. A secondary benefit is a student's greater confidence and less shock when first confronted with free-sparring programs. The pitfalls are over-reliance on patterns learned in drills and mechanical execution by rote, rather than feeling the opponent's pressure and reacting to it. It is beneficial to confront the students with unexpected solutions to problems posed in Lat Sao, as an exercise and to demonstrate that each Lat Sao drill is just one of very many possible solutions to a given problem. A good exercise is also asking a student to solve Lat Sao problems using newly learned techniques in each program; even if the things they come up with do not work, the habit of investigating the problem from different angles and not taking Lat Sao as something set in stone will help them avoid the pitfalls.


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## yak sao (Nov 22, 2009)

In WT, it is basically sparring. At first, not so much putting the gloves on and going at it, rather it is a systemized program to develop a new student's ability to defend themselves before they actually begin their chi sau training.


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## profesormental (Nov 22, 2009)

Lat Sao sounds like progressive Chi Sao training.

Is it done while rolling hands or defending against street attacks?

If someone can explain the process it would be helpful. Thanks.


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## mook jong man (Nov 22, 2009)

Thanks for enlightening me Nab and Yak Sao , we had something very similar where one guy played the attacker and the other the Wing Chun guy.
The attacker would feed in various punches in pre arranged attack patterns , later on as the student becomes more proficient the attacks become totally random , both in timing and angles.
Its an absolute must , this type of training , in my opinion.
Its great for hand eye co-ordination , they're hand and your eyes.
Whilst it is good to have great tactile sensitivity in your arms from chi sao training , the fact remains you are going to be attacked from out of contact range first .
You will be depending on your vision in the first instance to get your hand up to intercept the strike , only then once arm contact is achieved will you be able to bring your chi sau skills to bear.
I think in some schools there maybe too much emphasis on just gentle rolling type of chi sao , don't get me wrong this type of training also has its place when you are working on something specific like angles , correct technique etc .
But it should not be a mainstay of your training in my opinion , one thing I like to have students do when they are practicing chi sao is for one nominated partner to suddenly break off from contact , jump back out of chi sau range and start throwing haymakers , jabs etc.
The other partner will counter the attacks and then they will both  go back into chi sau again.
This type of training has a couple of benefits 

It maximises your training time , in the sense that you are training in two ranges , in contact and out of contact.
It also makes you switch on and be ready for anything , a lot of people go into a type of soporific stupor when they just stand there rolling . Watch them wake up when you suddenly jump back and start throwing some bombs.
It also trains you for a situation where an opponent has gotten away from you and you have to chase after him again to get into chi sau range.
Advanced students can also work on not letting the opponent break off in the first place , this is done by detecting his intention to break off early and then latching him back in again before he gets away.
This is just a couple of ways in my opinion that  can make chi sao training a little bit more interesting and productive.


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## Nabakatsu (Nov 23, 2009)

I'll try and add some detail based on my limited beginner's experience.
The first thing I learned was how to preform a punch with my right arm against an opponents left arm, or their right arm against my left arm, this is called outside outside, the sensitivity aspect of this is that, when I meet an arm in this outside outside position, I know to lock out my arm, we start at the chest and aim for the throat of course, during all of this. next we have inside outside, when right arm vs right arm, or left vs left arm occurs, whoever is in on the inside position locks their arm out, and whoever's arm is on the outside keeps a bent elbow, if your arm is on the centerline this will keep you from being hit. we learned how to transition from outside outside to inside outside first. sometimes we wont throw a punch to make sure our training partners aim is on. after we got the double punch down, which is how we transition from inside outside to outside outside or vice versa, we started training tan sau's and pak sau's into all of this. I don't really want to try and explain how each technique is done from each possible location. but theres a fair ammount of ways to apply these hand positions, it's not really sensitivity based, only the punching relies on sensititivity, altho I have done one thing, a gan sau, similar to the spring bong you are resisting the whole way, and when released it snaps back into place at the appropriate spot. anyways, we have chi gurk within this trained as well, eventually we will work in hooks and uppercuts and all that junk so says sifu. Hopefully this makes a little more sense, I'll check out youtube real quick and see if I can't find a video to do it a bit more justice.

wow it's hard to find lat sau videos on youtube.. no luck as of yet, too late to dig much deeper, I'd just like to add that we typically are throwing anywhere from 2-6 punches per second during lat sau, depending on how well we can cope with the feeds.

also.. I would like to add I have got some pretty nasty bone spurs from doing lat sau, and my first few times my arms were bruised from wrist to beyond my elbow..
If anyone knows a good method to use for healing bone spurs please share!


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## Poor Uke (Nov 23, 2009)

Yes thanks for the info. Does sound like stepped up fan sau.


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## mook jong man (Nov 23, 2009)

Nabakatsu said:


> also.. I would like to add I have got some pretty nasty bone spurs from doing lat sau, and my first few times my arms were bruised from wrist to beyond my elbow..
> If anyone knows a good method to use for healing bone spurs please share!


 
I've done very similar stuff to what you describe , and I think banged up arms are just an unavoidable  part of hard training.
You can do your best to deflect but every now and then you will get the odd one that results in a bit of a clash.

If its any consolation after a couple of years your arms harden up and get used to it and it doesn't seem to hurt as much.
In the past I have used a product called Wood Lock Balm which worked ok , but it does burn a bit and the fumes are pretty powerful. 

 Its a bit of a case where the cure is worse than the disease with some of these products I think.
So most of the time I just don't worry about putting anything on them , if its that bad tell your Sifu and maybe he can let you work on something else for awhile like your kicking while your arms heal up a bit.


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## Nabakatsu (Nov 23, 2009)

I had just been sucking it up this whole time, letting my bone spurs slowly grow, but last Wednesday we were again doing some lat sau and man, it sent electricity down my spine, after 2-3 of those made at full contact I had to finally speak up. he told me to use ice and press very hard rubbing it, until it breaks up, if ice didn't work than try heat. Was just curious for a second opinion, thanks much!


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