What you say makes sense, but only to a small extent. Sure, if you are just talking about getting center of mass behind a punch, that is something that is subtle and can apply to many situations. And it isn't limited to Wing Chun! So that "internal" may not be apparent externally. But there is far more to Wing Chun than that. There is a biomechanic taught in the forms that includes how you step, how you align a punch, how you defend, etc. So if I saw your teacher Marty sparring without knowing who he is, would I immediately think..."Hey! That guy is doing Wing Chun!"....?
Adam Chan - Are forms useless?
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What you say makes sense, but only to a small extent. Sure, if you are just talking about getting center of mass behind a punch, that is something that is subtle and can apply to many situations. And it isn't limited to Wing Chun! So that "internal" may not be apparent externally. But there is far more to Wing Chun than that. There is a biomechanic taught in the forms that includes how you step, how you align a punch, how you defend, etc. So if I saw your teacher Marty sparring without knowing who he is, would I immediately think..."Hey! That guy is doing Wing Chun!"....?
Certainly there's more to WC than just what's going on inside the body. But (for me) the important stuff is what's happening inside because that's where it starts. When you have control of your Center it doesn't matter what is going on with your hands or feet. It doesn't matter what shape they take, or what they look like. I might argue that stepping and turning is about learning one aspect of using the Center and at some point you can get excellent power and results in a similar way without stepping and turning. Perhaps learning how to align a punch is an important part of development but at a later point it matters less. Your comment about Center use not being limited to Wing Chun is spot on. It's in a good golf swing, or swinging a baseball bat. It's in other sports and other MA. It's just that I learned it in WC. Please understand that by no means am I an expert at this stuff. I've only been playing around with it regularly for the last year, but it was initially introduced to me 12 years ago, and I just didn't fully realize the value of what I had been taught...well, frankly I didn't understand it except in terms of stepping and turning.
I'm afraid I'm in the camp that thinks at some level you might not see what appears to be WC in a fight. You might, but you might not. Regarding my teacher...he owned a bar years ago and got into a little altercation with a guy over the guy's ex-girlfriend. Heated words were exchanged and he ended up slapping the guy on the side of his face. The guy dropped to the floor in a heap, unconscious. I wasn't there but having experienced his power before I suspect what he did looked like the kind of slap to the side of someone's face you might see from anyone. It wasn't a palm strike, it was a slap. But I guarantee he was 'whole' and used his Center to hit that guy. It's just how he moved. So most observers would say he 'did not' use WC, but I would say he 'did' use WC. Different flavors for different folks. Just a couple more worthless cents. Have a great Friday...yay, I love Fridays!
That's back to the point of my post. There are multiple "looks" I can give you in a single technique - all applying the principles and mechanics of that technique, and varied only by my posture and angle. They'd look quite different, and only one of them is stored in the form for that technique (speaking to NGA now, as an example). So, if in a fight/sparring/whatever, I happen to use none of the versions that look like the forms, I won't "look like NGA" - if you are basing "looks like" on the forms. However, if you based "looks like" on the applications in drills, the forms are similar to some of the applications in those drills, and the applications in fighting/sparring are similar to those drills. The issue is that the drills/applications are in the middle. So if I use forms as the "looks like", it's entirely possible fighting won't look like NGA. If I use the drills as "looks like", then it will. It's perhaps (in my example, definitely) a matter of using an extreme or ideal (the forms) to identify what an art "looks like".
I think this is an excellent question. What occurs to me is that when we perform bong sau or tan sau or any of the other structures, is that we are performing them to their fullest potential.
In a fighting situation my opponent quite possibly is not going to be giving me the type of force that I have experienced within my training with my WC brothers,
So my structures may not fully actualize. I will still disperse, I will still sink the elbow, my arms will still fold and bend as they do in training, but only enough to accomplish the task. Things are going to be happening so quickly that unless you were doing stop action photography you may not see what looks to be WC structure
Just my immediate thoughts on the question what are your ideas on it?
Body might look static in SNT, but it isn't. SNT isn't about just standing there moving the arms around in an isolated manner. That's part of it, but not all of it. At least not the way I've been taught. Cheers.
Yes. I know this wasn't directed at me, but I completely agree.
Danny T
Senior Master
Wish I could like this numerous times.
Moving the arms to the particular positions and structures are but half of what is happening in SNT in good wing chun. And why one cannot learn from videos.
Is your body "static" or "not static" when you train SNT? You can't have both ways.
IMO, it's too abstract to say that:
- It looks static but it's not static.
- It looks straight but it's not straight.
- It looks bend but it's not bend.
- It looks slow but it's not slow.
- It looks soft but it's not soft.
- ...
For example,
His body is "static".
His body is "not static".
When you are "moving your arm to the particular position", are you moving your body
1. at the same time (4-wheels drive),
2. afterward (front-wheel drive), or
3. before it (rear-wheel drive)?
1, 2, 3 are mutual exclusive.
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Danny T
Senior Master
No my body isn't static at all. When an part of the body moves there is a change in the center of gravity. If the body were static as the arm is moved forward and away from the body the body would pitch forward due to the change of the center of gravity. As a body part moves other parts of the body will adjust for those changes.
All during SNT the center of gravity is being changed by the moving of the elbow and the arms away and towards the body, the diaphragm is moving causing the lungs to expand and contract again changing the center of gravity. SNT helps the practitioner feel those subtle changes. In Chum Kiu the body and arms are moved in coordination with each other. It is continued in the many drills used to develop the skills.
Static/not static is not entirely binary, unless we are using the physics definitions. If we use physics definitions, then the body in SNT is definitely not static. I know nothing about what they mean in those posts about it not being static, but small movements can look like "no movement".
I'm sorry if it's too abstract. None the less there is internal movement happening within whilst outward appearances would seem to be contradictory.
It's like Yak Sao said. SNT is initially a beginner form but later becomes an advanced form. It's a really cool thing. In the beginning there is mostly standing and practicing isolated arm movements. There's also Tai Gong and tension release and head up-soft back training. But when one returns to the form at later stages something more is going on. The IDEA of wholeness and the IDEA of using the Center. I'm sure there are other things going on that I'm unaware of but I will say it again, SNT is more than just standing there moving the arms.
And like Danny T said, 'you can't learn WC from a video'. Because as he implied, you can't see what is happening inside the body.
Cheers, Mr Wang. Have a great weekend!
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"Forms are not useless, but usefulness is formless"
"Forms are not useless, but usefulness is formless"
...in bed.
One might argue quite the opposite....
I find that the use of forms, or kata, or poomse, or patterns or whatever the individual wants to call them is an important teaching tool, if for naught else but to reduce the time necessary to build muscle-memory and change reflex structures.
In our TKD/HKD, then later in my Judo/Tomiki Aikido pedagogical paradigm, forms are used to teach and enforce structure & movement principles, until those principles are internalized, i.e. made the default/reflex activity. This is from the inside-out. From the outside-in, watching the student perform the patterned movement, and knowing what it is "supposed" to be like, shows the practiced instructor where the student's ... present... weakness or weaknesses in principles may lie.
In other words, "Here kid, go do this basic form."
"Yo mean this thing where I just low block, reverse punch, then pivot 90 degrees, do the block & punch again, then turn again, combo again, turn again, and combo again and then I'm done?"
"Yep. That's it."
Grumbling, student goes off to do basic form 1, mumbling "I thought I was gonna learn to kick butt..."
Instructor watches body mechanics, asks student to do it again, noting small changes literally from the 1st rep to the 2nd of the pattern, then has him/her do it yet again...
Then offers up a change, to be inserted and corrected.
The above seems very natural to me from the above arts. Let's just say that my Muay Thai time did not follow that paradigm.
In our TKD/HKD, then later in my Judo/Tomiki Aikido pedagogical paradigm, forms are used to teach and enforce structure & movement principles, until those principles are internalized, i.e. made the default/reflex activity. This is from the inside-out. From the outside-in, watching the student perform the patterned movement, and knowing what it is "supposed" to be like, shows the practiced instructor where the student's ... present... weakness or weaknesses in principles may lie.
In other words, "Here kid, go do this basic form."
"Yo mean this thing where I just low block, reverse punch, then pivot 90 degrees, do the block & punch again, then turn again, combo again, turn again, and combo again and then I'm done?"
"Yep. That's it."
Grumbling, student goes off to do basic form 1, mumbling "I thought I was gonna learn to kick butt..."
Instructor watches body mechanics, asks student to do it again, noting small changes literally from the 1st rep to the 2nd of the pattern, then has him/her do it yet again...
Then offers up a change, to be inserted and corrected.
The above seems very natural to me from the above arts. Let's just say that my Muay Thai time did not follow that paradigm.
Formless? ...you can take a pill for that.
...Actually, I was kinda serious in my earlier comment. Form is useful, and use is formless. In use, i.e. application, you express concepts, structures, and kinetic linkages learned through the forms, but the outward form of your movement changes and adapts as necessary.
Ya know, water is formless. Didn't somebody involved in Wing Chun say something about being like water? Or was that something I saw on Star Trek?
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I agree. But again, only to an extent. Just what does "formless" really mean? When you move you are still using biomechanics. So are you using the same biomechanics from your forms or not? We can talk abstractly about expressing concepts and linkages, etc all day long. But you are still moving and still using biomechanics of some sort. Is it the biomechanics taught in your forms, or is it not? And if it is the biomechanics taught in your forms....then why wouldn't we expect it to look like recognizable Wing Chun?
Now I realize that in a real exchange you aren't going to always be in a good position...you might stumble, you might get caught at an odd angle, or you might get rocked and loose your structure! But within a couple of beats someone should be back on track again....in other words....snap right back into their Wing Chun. So at times it might not look like Wing Chun because it isn't Wing Chun! But in a back and forth exchange of sparring or a real fight, those times should be minimal. If nothing in the fight looks like Wing Chun, then there is a problem!
Now.....too bad Nobody Important (Dave) is not around for this discussion! Because his premise in the past was that Wing Chun was a system that taught fine motor skills to be used to refine or add to another system's gross motor skills. So....if this is really the case, then the sparring or fighting would look like the base system because it would be using those "gross skills". The Wing Chun may only show up on occasion when some of the "fine" skills it teaches come into play! I find this to be the case with my Wing Chun Boxing! Western Boxing is the base...the gross motor skill. So basic sparring and fighting looks like boxing. The Wing Chun is used to add refinements and specific useful applications. So I have found that I HAVE been using Wing Chun in the way that Dave proposed it was intended to be used!
But we spend a lot of time training that "gross motor skill" from boxing. For some Wing Chun guys that end up looking like crappy kickboxing when they spar it may be because they are technically trying to use the same idea.....but they have never bothered to spend the time actually developing the "gross motor skill" that they end up using in their fighting!
The term formless can only be used in the striking art. It won't be able to use in the throwing art. In order to apply your "hip throw", you have to put your
- right leg in front of your opponent's right leg.
- left leg in front of your opponent's left leg.
- ...
There are certain requirement that you have to meet.
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