Probably not what Joy intended with his comment, but the inaccuracies in LFJ's comment is that I never said "heel shifters" are back on their heels at all times, and I never said I trained in a lineage that tilted the pelvis back to an extreme, or keeps the weight all the way back on the heels in a neutral stance.
Deficiencies in WSL teachings
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Probably not what Joy intended with his comment, but the inaccuracies in LFJ's comment is that I never said "heel shifters" are back on their heels at all times, and I never said I trained in a lineage that tilted the pelvis back to an extreme, or keeps the weight all the way back on the heels in a neutral stance.
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"When people open their stance with their Wing Chun, there's this idea amongst a lot of lineages that you have to tilt your pelvis forward."
*leans upper body back*
"Watch what happens to my body automatically. If I'm in a neutral stance and I go to tilt my pelvis forward I'm automatically leaning backwards and putting my weight on my heels."
First of all, you're not tilting your pelvis forward. You're just pushing your pelvis forward. And secondly, your body is not leaning back automatically. You are doing that on purpose. It's entirely possible to do a posterior pelvic tilt without affecting your vertical axis or weight distribution in any way.
You then go on to say why your weight shouldn't be back on your heels, suggesting that people are keeping weight over their heels in a neutral stance and when engaging with an opponent, all based on you doing a pelvic tilt incorrectly.
I also disagree with your pushing from the ball of the foot to deliver force and your sports examples to justify it. Sprinters and tennis players care about speed and agility but aren't concerned with a bouncing COG or an interrupted line of force when stepping. We must be.
With correct alignment, the line of force from your fist goes through your elbow, to your hips, and back to the heel in a straight line, with equal and opposite force in the reverse.
Your forefoot is in front of that line, which means when pushing through the ball of your foot you are engaging and holding the force in your calf muscles and not allowing it to transfer into the ground through the heel as is the natural direction it wants to go.
By pushing through the ball of the foot you are encouraging more exclusive activation in your quadriceps, especially the relatively small VMO. Whereas, allowing the force to go through the heel will also fire the larger and more powerful posterior chain muscles of the leg which you are inhibiting by holding force in your calf and encouraging VMO "isolation".
Demonstration: Stand with a right rear leg and press into a solid object with your right arm with the elbow down like a VT punch and a slight posterior pelvic tilt (not leaning your upper body back like a clown). Push through the ball of your rear foot and you will feel almost nothing but the calf and VMO, relatively small muscles. Then allow the force to go through the heel and you will feel the entire anterior and posterior musculature of the leg firing together. = Greater force. Then try a short explosive punch with the same setup on someone holding a pad. You will notice you won't have near the amount of leg drive if you don't send it through your back heel. Do that and you'll have much greater force in your punch.
Also when pushing through the balls of your feet your heels are being raised slightly or wanting to (releasing weight) as the calves are firing and your feet are rocking forward and backward as you’re fighting to handle the force in your calves then relaxes off of them after issuing force, rather than allowing the force to solidly transfer into the ground through the heels.
This can be seen when hitting your BOB and dummy. It’s subtle but makes a big difference you can feel and can work against you if the opponent happens to cut into your timing.
In VT, we want to maintain an uninterrupted line of force at all times by not taking big steps and rocking the feet between heel and toes.
Now, that is not to say we are hobbling around on our heels either. Weight is evenly dispersed with the natural balance point over mid-foot. When delivering force though, it must be allowed to go through the heel with equal and opposite force in a straight line to the fist for punching power, stability, and balance during high speed movement in a fight.
Shifting on the heels in training is also not an application. When we pull someone in a drill and they shift on the heels it is testing central axis, balance, line of force, etc.. Many things.
People just look at the hands though and think pull, punch, block… technique applications. They don't understand the abstract nature of drilling and how it relates to free fighting.
I already went through this with KPM, who used lots of example from sports involving delivery of impulse force like tennis which, when photo checked, showed that heels touch ground at the moment of force transferrance. Discussing sprinters for example is irrelevant because sprinters are doing a different thing. The problem for KPM is that he can't admit error in biomechanical analysis because he is some kind of professional in this area. A shame for him, because he is certainly wrong here.
Correct, good post
Now this is off topic but these are the constructive posts I like. They counter an argument, explains your view clearly.
KPM may or may not agree but that is his concerns. Please continue at least every now and then like this.
Nice work. As for argumentation I failed to read the entire thread but agree with most if not all the things you said here about pelvic and power.
Wing Chun Auckland
Green Belt
KPM is correct in that there is this idea in many wing chuns that you have to tilt your pelvis which can cause you to lean back. And I have seen many lineages that do this and are literally leaning back and have an unstable stance. Can you tilt the pelvis forward without leaning back? Yes. It can be good. But it can also cause the hunch depending on how it is done.
The way we learn it in CST is that the titled pelvis is not actually an overtly physcal tilting of the hip. It is much more sublte. Basically you should stand naturally like you would normally stand.
The way we learn it in CST is that the titled pelvis is not actually an overtly physcal tilting of the hip. It is much more sublte. Basically you should stand naturally like you would normally stand.
Its not constructive because most of it is a strawman argument against things that were not what I was saying. Trying to refute all of it would take too much energy and would go nowhere. I know this from experience dealing with these two. So they can make all the smug comments they want. Please don't encourage them.
In lineages where I've seen it, such as LTWT, people have told me the leaning back is by tactical design. They do it intentionally to keep the head further away from the opponent and more weight off the front leg for various reasons. I don't like it, but it's not an unwanted consequence of the pelvic tilt. And it should also not be overdone.
Like, incorrectly? KPM was quite obviously leaning back on purpose to make his point.
And I wish you guys would stop saying tilt the pelvis forward. It's not forward. It's a posterior pelvic tilt and in no way affects the vertical axis or weight distribution over the feet. See the image below. Perfectly upright. No hunch compensation required.
Tilting the pelvis forward is an anterior pelvic tilt, and I've never seen any WC lineage do this.
What KPM did in his video is the forward shifted pelvis/ swayback, while saying forward (anterior) pelvic tilt. Obviously a bit confused. And it should be neither of those anyway.
I'm not completely locked out and immobile either. It's simply engaging the core which pulls the belly in and the front of the pelvis up, and engaging the glutes and hamstrings which pulls the back of the pelvis down and flattens the lumbar spine. This allows the line of force to continue from the elbow through the hips and into the heels.
The force is incoming. If you do nothing you will be pushed over backward. So it must go back but we also want to direct it downward into the ground. So the pelvis is tilted in that direction and the force is rolled through the pelvis and into the heels.
(Again, if we push from the balls of the feet we are holding the force in our calves, causing many problems outlined in my previous post, and not allowing it to go into the ground following the line it wants, i.e. through the heels.)
Maintain a neutral pelvic tilt while exchanging force with a partner in pun-sau and you will be easily unbalanced, because the force is not transferred back and down by tilting the pelvis posteriorly in that direction.
While exchanging force, slightly tilt the pelvis back (without affecting the vertical axis or weight distribution) and you will find the point where it redirects force to the heels. It's subtle and stable. Not a rigid lockout.
I've done this with giants that outweighed me by 50+ lbs. I didn't budge and easily launched them away. That would be impossible without a proper pelvic tilt and full lower body force through the heels. Small calves and VMO muscles with a "floating" pelvis won't generate near the required force.
Also, take a shot to the gut with relaxed abdominals and you will quickly learn to engage them!
OFF TOPIC:
It was constructive. I did not say that it was somehow doing yours justice but that they provided good explanation to each point. Meaning they made it very possible for you to communicate with them on where they misunderstood you or if they should look at something more closely.
They did open that post up for debate. You have to give credit where credit is due, after all I have complained endlessly that they don't do this normally.
It has been referred to as straighten your back by many. Gymnastics sometimes say to tilt your pelvic forward to achieve it. It is nothing magical. (this is where my English limits me as they say it similar but not identical if translated)
If you stand that way naturally it is really great. Many sadly don't due to sitting too much on chairs, sofas, working with computers daily and so on. Many lose that ability of correcting the spine.
This is what I have seen.
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Tilting your pelvis forward arches your lumbar spine forcing it into hyper-lordosis. It doesn't straighten your back. Again, look at the image above. The lumbar spine is pulled flat in the posterior pelvic tilt, not anterior.
Now you are missing a crucial point. English is not my native language. So I do not know what to call it. But a tilt is still a tilt, that other thing I do not call a tilt. Posterior or forward, if translating from my own language it would be more similar to forward tilt.
Edit: Actually correcting myself. It is upward tilt we would call it. Not forward.
I can agree with whatever you call it as it is irrelevant. But spine needs to be straight and without a tilt it won't be.
I think if a person does not sit too much in chairs and so on we would have that tilt correctly without thinking. Damages of a western lifestyle.
Gotta admit though in your movie, you talk about tilting pelvic forward causing body to lean backwards. It is not actually accurate, the tilt you do is very well known core structure and it does not cause you to lean backwards. However what you do in the movie seems more like a shift of pelvic forward alongside the tilt. This shifting does cause you to lean back because what you are actually doing is bending your back backwards.
So in your movie you are stating that many lineages want a tilt of pelvic area but in arguments on why it is bad you are not actually doing a tilt but rather overdoing it to make a statement. This is fine since you don't do training in that tilt but it is worth pointing out.
In addition the tilting of the pelvic to straighten your back is a very well known thing in gymnastics, it allows them to generate power through core muscles which is crucial for their moves. Same way I use it for my WT.
As for shifting on heels, well I do not do that. I just agree that heels in ground will generate more power when back is straight, but there are other downsides of keeping heels in ground when shifting during fight. At least for me it might be quick to shift but terrible if the unexpected happends during fight in meantime. So not heels for me, means I have too little control on my footwork in that instant, instead I can ground a heel if need be.
(Note that I do not consider heels to be only way to generate power, far from it. Nor is it the only way I am using)
Gotta admit though in your movie, you talk about tilting pelvic forward causing body to lean backwards. It is not actually accurate
---Tilting the inferior aspect of the pelvis forward by pushing the hips forward (which is what a lot of people are taught) flattens the low back and will tilt the entire torso backwards if you do nothing to compensate. There are degrees of this of course. What I showed in my video was the worst case scenario so it would be more clear to the viewer what I was trying to demonstrate. But we've all still seen people that do things to this extreme. In fact, Wong Shun Leung's student/primary training partner in that old video had this problem, as well as a pretty pronounced "slouch."
, the tilt you do is very well known core structure and it does not cause you to lean backwards. However what you do in the movie seems more like a shift of pelvic forward alongside the tilt. This shifting does cause you to lean back because what you are actually doing is bending your back backwards.
---And this is what many are taught...to effectively thrust the hips forward.
In addition the tilting of the pelvic to straighten your back is a very well known thing in gymnastics, it allows them to generate power through core muscles which is crucial for their moves. Same way I use it for my WT.
---This is useful when your power must involve rigidity. Flattening the lower back and firing the core produces rigidity along the spine. But it also pretty much eliminates the Kua from actively generating power itself, because it becomes essentially immobilized. But you can "link and "delink" or turn it "on" and "off." So in other words you can produce this rigidity when you want to receive force and direct it to the ground as LFJ described. But you should also be able to turn it "off" and allow the Kua to "float" so that it can be part of short-range power generation. This is optimal mechanics. But most people don't ever really turn it "off" so they can use the Kua effectively to generate power.
As for shifting on heels, well I do not do that. I just agree that heels in ground will generate more power when back is straight, but there are other downsides of keeping heels in ground when shifting during fight. At least for me it might be quick to shift but terrible if the unexpected happends during fight in meantime. So not heels for me, means I have too little control on my footwork in that instant, instead I can ground a heel if need be.
---Exactly! The longer you have your weight back on the heels and your body in an up-right position the more vulnerable you are to being off-balanced by an incoming force. Again, that's just simple biomechanics. So from a viewpoint of optimal biomechanics you have your weight back on your heels as little as possible. That doesn't mean you never have your weight back on your heels. But you avoid it when you can, and use it for effect when appropriate. Pivoting in an up-right position is one of those times when being back on the heels makes you vulnerable. Like I pointed out in the video, people can absolutely make it work! But pivoting near the K1 point also works very well and doesn't leave you as vulnerable to being off-balanced by an incoming force. So this is optimal biomechanics.
---Tilting the inferior aspect of the pelvis forward by pushing the hips forward (which is what a lot of people are taught) flattens the low back and will tilt the entire torso backwards if you do nothing to compensate. There are degrees of this of course. What I showed in my video was the worst case scenario so it would be more clear to the viewer what I was trying to demonstrate. But we've all still seen people that do things to this extreme. In fact, Wong Shun Leung's student/primary training partner in that old video had this problem, as well as a pretty pronounced "slouch."
, the tilt you do is very well known core structure and it does not cause you to lean backwards. However what you do in the movie seems more like a shift of pelvic forward alongside the tilt. This shifting does cause you to lean back because what you are actually doing is bending your back backwards.
---And this is what many are taught...to effectively thrust the hips forward.
In addition the tilting of the pelvic to straighten your back is a very well known thing in gymnastics, it allows them to generate power through core muscles which is crucial for their moves. Same way I use it for my WT.
---This is useful when your power must involve rigidity. Flattening the lower back and firing the core produces rigidity along the spine. But it also pretty much eliminates the Kua from actively generating power itself, because it becomes essentially immobilized. But you can "link and "delink" or turn it "on" and "off." So in other words you can produce this rigidity when you want to receive force and direct it to the ground as LFJ described. But you should also be able to turn it "off" and allow the Kua to "float" so that it can be part of short-range power generation. This is optimal mechanics. But most people don't ever really turn it "off" so they can use the Kua effectively to generate power.
As for shifting on heels, well I do not do that. I just agree that heels in ground will generate more power when back is straight, but there are other downsides of keeping heels in ground when shifting during fight. At least for me it might be quick to shift but terrible if the unexpected happends during fight in meantime. So not heels for me, means I have too little control on my footwork in that instant, instead I can ground a heel if need be.
---Exactly! The longer you have your weight back on the heels and your body in an up-right position the more vulnerable you are to being off-balanced by an incoming force. Again, that's just simple biomechanics. So from a viewpoint of optimal biomechanics you have your weight back on your heels as little as possible. That doesn't mean you never have your weight back on your heels. But you avoid it when you can, and use it for effect when appropriate. Pivoting in an up-right position is one of those times when being back on the heels makes you vulnerable. Like I pointed out in the video, people can absolutely make it work! But pivoting near the K1 point also works very well and doesn't leave you as vulnerable to being off-balanced by an incoming force. So this is optimal biomechanics.
Ooh, nice clever save!
But come on. Who the hell ever refers to that when saying tilt the pelvis?It's pretty straightforward what anterior and posterior pelvic tilt mean. Is the pelvis rolling forward or backward? When a car is spinning its wheels in reverse do you say the wheels are rolling forward because the "inferior aspect" is coming "forward"? lol
You don't need to make everything a competition. Just talk facts and compare methods.
What about when you don't want to receive force but do anyway?
Use your kua like that while pushing through the balls of the feel and you kill your leg drive, concentrating instead on your humping action. Whatever power you can generate that way is nowhere near as great as full lower body force. I mean, you can try it as I described earlier and see for yourself.
Think back to your last fight, if you've ever had one. When were you standing in place and pivoting both feet together while force was incoming, in whatever way you do?
Ooh, nice clever save!
Note in my response to Phobius that I pointed out that people are typically taught to push the hips forward...hips are the lower aspect of the pelvis. This is why trying to discuss anything "constructive" with you is pretty pointless.
Who teaches that? What lineages?
CSL is the only one I've seen tell you to literally press your hips forward, so much that your body comes forward over your forefoot. The spine is kept erect by pressing up and forward with the sternum, but the hips and torso actually travel forward as you press from the balls of the feet and this engages almost exclusively the calves and VMO. Then when pressure is released you "delink" and settle back to the natural balance point over mid-foot.
The problems with this are as I've already described. It doesn't allow force to actually transfer into the ground via the natural line to the heels to create real stability and full lower body force equal and opposite in the reverse. Instead, it holds force in the relatively small muscles of the calves and VMO, from which not a great deal of force can be delivered even with your little humping action.
Additionally, it means you are swaying your weight forward and backward on the feet which interrupts the line of force and compromises balance if cut into. We avoid this for some of the same reasons we avoid swaying the axis side to side.
In WSLVT, we maintain a steady stance over the natural balance point at mid-foot and when force is sent and received it is allowed to transfer back through the heels, and this doesn't require us to adjust our central axis backward or forward from the balance point. It simply activates the lower body musculature, solidifying the stance with little to no perceptible movement until releasing the immense force the leg drive generates. This means we are always stable with no interruption in line of force and no swaying of bodyweight.
If you have to do a big movement humping your hips into the target and leaning forward, you're wasting effort and not even getting as a big a return as you could with full lower body force through the heel.
I'm just repeating things now, but you can try it out and feel the difference.
Plus we must always keep our minds in free fighting, not chi-sau energy drills. It is the simple things that work most reliably. It's more practical to maintain a steady baseline than it is to make all kinds of adjustments in a high speed, high stress situation.
