Double Kick

[mook jong man]

Wing Chun has some skillful and intricate low kicking techniques.
But they are not well known , because most people have never stayed in the system long enough to learn them. This one is not only simple and practical , but it is a good exercise in its own right.

It is used to stop the attacker advancing towards you.
As he steps in to punch or grab , stop his advance and keep him out of range with a low heel kick to the knee or shin .

Then without putting your foot back on the ground immediately follow up with a thrust kick to the groin. This should all be done in a one ,two motion with speed and economy of movement . From the knee or shin straight up to the groin. Needless to say you should also have your guard up .
After the two kicks drop your foot down , move in and do continuous punching to the head.


I'm aware not all lineages are the same , so I will explain the low heel kick first .

• From the stance , the foot goes straight to the target . Knee or shin
• Maintaining the angle in your leg.
• Turn the foot slightly outwards approximately 11 or 1 o' clock position , depending on which leg you are using.
• Peel your toes back and make contact on the target with your heel.
• Extend your heel through the target from your knee joint with a slight stamping action. Stay relaxed and kick right through the target
• Don't over commit , whip the leg out , nice and fast and relaxed and straight back to your stance.

Thrust kick

• Its pretty much the same kick except it is directed higher up , at the groin , bladder or chest.
• It also differs in that the angle of the leg does not have to be maintained.
• This is so that the kick can be done at extreme close range , within punching range if need be.
• The leg is raised up and the knee pulled into the chest and thrust out again , depending on the range of the attacker
• Keep the foot vertical , pull the toes back , extending from the knee and thrusting through the heel.
• There is also a pivot on your supporting leg with this kick , let the heel of your supporting foot rotate inward freely at the same time you make contact with the target.

Training the technique
I'm aware some people use a Chum Kiu stance as their fighting stance , ours is the Sil Lum Tau stance.

Anyway I say train the technique in both stances , unless you stand around all day with one leg forward. YCKYM stance is pretty close to a neutral , natural stance without the sinking and the pidgeon toes in my opinion.

• Get a partner to stand just outside kicking range.
• Have him take one step in slowly , slowly extend your low heel kick at his leg and make contact.
• This is your range , make sure he knows to stay just out of that range , because you will be throwing pretty fast kicks.
• Get him to take a step in on a nominated leg as though he is coming in to attack.
• As his leg steps into range throw your low heel kick at his knee or shin , then straight up for thrust kick to the groin or bladder. ( watch your control , don't actually kick him)
• Don't forget to pivot on your support foot when you do the thrust kick.
• After he has stepped in on both sides , get him step in at random on either leg.
• Watch his shoulders that will tell you which leg he is going to step in on .
• If you mess up , just ground your low heel kick and thrust kick with your other leg.

Power training

• Have your partner hold a kick shield over his leg.
• Make sure he is standing side on.
• Make sure he has a good bend in his leg to absorb the power and he is holding the kick shield by the sides up near the top of the pad so his fingers don't get kicked.
• Don't let him hold the straps at the back , those things are useless, the pad moves all over the place
• Check your range on the pad with your low heel kick , to make sure you can reach the pad ( your heel should reach the pad with your leg in the proper angle )
• Your partner has to be on the ball for this , because you are going to low heel kick the pad approx knee or shin height , then after your low heel kick .He has to quickly raise the pad up his body so that you can do the thrust kick at groin / bladder height.
• Make sure he is holding the kick shield , standing in a side on position , so that his nuts and bladder are well out of the way.
• Its just a matter of holding the pad down low on the leg and then quickly sliding it up and holding at the side of your hip and ribcage.
• Make sure you sink down in your stance and kick with good power to both targets , don't sacrifice power for speed .
• What I mean is don't do a half arsed low heel kick so that you can quickly go to the thrust kick , both kicks have to have stopping power.
• You will get more power and penetration in the kicks if you remember to relax and let your legs move easily from the hip joint like a dead weight.
• To practice the follow up , complete the two kicks and then start chain punching the pad. To facilitate this the partner might have to step back after the second kick depending on how far your second kick is moving him back.

Even if you never use the technique in a real situation , the balance and leg speed that is developed by training it will stand you in good stead for other techniques.

 

[Tensei85]

Mook,
Thanks for the info yet again.

Question: do you consider the aforementioned part of the Mo Ying Gerk syllabus?


Appreciated,

 

[mook jong man]

Sorry Dude I'm not up to speed on a lot of the Chinese terms , I know your saying something about the leg. (gerk) . My Sifu although he was cantonese had been in Australia for a long time , and was pretty Australianized .

He would use a fair few of the terms , but mostly it was pretty much " Some one try to fight you like this , then you do this " type of thing.

 

[geezer]

Wing Chun has some skillful and intricate low kicking techniques.
But they are not well known , because most people have never stayed in the system long enough to learn them. This one is not only simple and practical , but it is a good exercise in its own right...

People pay good money to try and learn WC through correspondence courses. Learning from scratch that way is impossible. But you can get good supplementary info for free, right here...

Thanks a lot Mook! You've ruined another of my get rich quick schemes! LOL

BTW--one of your expressions is a little unclear to me: "maintaining the angle of the leg" as applied to delivering a kick. It appears to mean keeping the forward angle as compared to bending the knee and pulling the leg up into a chamber. If this is correct, you are advocating that kick #1 should sweep straight forward to your opponent's shin. But, you do bend your knee (without withdrawing the foot) and chamber to deliver kick #2 (?). At least, that's how I read it.

Now what about withdrawing the kick after completion? In the WT branch, the completed kick does not withdraw, but drops straight to the floor, becoming a step forward. There's a WC/WT saying, "Every kick a step, every step a kick" that applies. I find this a major difference between WC/WT kick application and that of many other systems, especially karate.

 

[mook jong man]

First off I don't believe in keeping any info secret , that is just B.S.
I used to get the impression sometimes from my Sifu that a lot of us gweilo's weren't getting the full picture because we weren't Chinese.

Especially when he would spend about 2 minutes doing Chi sau with you and wanted to spend that time asking you how many students your branch had and how much money it was pulling in.

What then irritated me the most , was that he would then go to a chinese instructor who was ranked a lot lower than me , and wasn't running a bloody branch for him I might add , with them he would spend ages correcting them and gibbering away in cantonese , it used to piss me off. Its not that I didn't learn from the man , its just that I learnt a lot more from my Australian senior instructors and through trial and error.
Rant over.

In our lineage when you are in your stance , the legs are in the optimum angle just like your arms. This angle is the best for attack and defence.
Generally to junior students we say maintain the angle in your leg , until your heel gets to the target and then thrust through the target.

So that the kick is done in one motion , which is non telegraphic. The main thing is that the kick goes directly to the target , which is economy of movement and directness. If they raise the knee first and chamber it , that is a one , two action and will be telegraphic and the kick is likely to be jammed.

Having said that when a person becomes experienced there is actually a very slight chambering action , a two movement action or stomping action.

But the practitioners kicks have become so fast from years of training that the slight chambering action is unnoticeable , and it looks like one action.
We don't tell this to new students because right away they will start using an exaggerated stamping action , using a lot of muscular force , when they should be using the angle and structure of their leg.


I hope you can understand that , they learn to use the angle and structure first , and economy of movement and years later when they are more proficient the rules are slightly broken.

So all the kicks are the same keep the same angle in your leg from your stance to the target and then thrust through , this means you are using your structure and stance , just like the arms. Later on when you are very fast and have economy of movement you can slightly chamber and use a more one, two stamping action.

There are two kicks that break this rule of maintaining the structure of your leg . They are the Stamp Kick in which you are very close to the opponent and the knee is raised up and your leg drops down almost vertically , using the heel to stomp down on the back or side of the opponents knee.

The other kick is the The Thrust Kick or sometimes called Close Range Thrustkick , that is the one I said to do after the low heel kick.
This kick is trained by starting off arms out finger tips distance from the pad , and then raising the knee right up and back into your chest and then thrusting the heel out again.

Later on when you are more flexible ( I suck at this kick by the way) you start doing the kick at fist distance from the pad and then even closer. Make sure when you make impact you pivot the other foot.


There is a big chamber with this kick so as you can do it at close range , sometimes even while controlling both their hands , if you didn't bring the knee up and in then thrust out , you would make contact with your shin or foot in their groin.

But with experience you learn to chamber it only as much as you need to as required by the range of the opponent.
The kick can be done chest , groin , bladder , side of rib cage.

You are right about the kick dropping straight down into a step , that is done to bridge the gap safely and get you into range , it also maximises the power of your next strike by capitolizing on the forward momentum of your bodyweight. And this is absolutely imperative that you do this on a real opponent.

But for reasons of convenience if you are just doing repetitions in the air or on a pad I prefer to save time by just firing out the kick again and again , with out having to step down and go forward and then go back again and make sure I'm the right distance from the pad. Its just easier to bring the leg back to your stance .

But you are absolutely correct in what you are saying against a real opponent don't bring the leg back to stance , drop it down , gain distance and then adjust your stance according.

But when learning kicks it is best to just do the kick , try and get the motion right , bring it back to the stance and do it over and over again.
What I should have said in my first post is do the Low Heel Kick first , then straight up to thrust kick the groin , then with the kicking leg step straight down , invading their space , time the grounding of your foot with your punch to maximise striking power.
Sorry about the long post , hope you can understand all of that.

 

[geezer]

First off I don't believe in keeping any info secret , that is just B.S.
I used to get the impression sometimes from my Sifu that a lot of us gweilo's weren't getting the full picture because we weren't Chinese.

Especially when he would spend about 2 minutes doing Chi sau with you and wanted to spend that time asking you how many students your branch had and how much money it was pulling in.

What then irritated me the most , was that he would then go to a chinese instructor who was ranked a lot lower than me , and wasn't running a bloody branch for him I might add , with them he would spend ages correcting them and gibbering away in cantonese , it used to piss me off. Its not that I didn't learn from the man , its just that I learnt a lot more from my Australian senior instructors and through trial and error.
Rant over.

Amen brother! Been through the same thing. Now I train with one of my more experienced kung-fu brothers. He's not a Chinese Grandmaster, but he's a far better teacher. And I speak as a teacher by profession.

Oh and BTW, nice breakdown of the kicks. Thanks again.

 

[Tensei85]

Sorry Dude I'm not up to speed on a lot of the Chinese terms , I know your saying something about the leg. (gerk) . My Sifu although he was cantonese had been in Australia for a long time , and was pretty Australianized .

He would use a fair few of the terms , but mostly it was pretty much " Some one try to fight you like this , then you do this " type of thing.

No worries, Mo Ying Gerk (no shadow/shape kick-leg) sometimes replaced with the tek or tui instead of gerk.

Most Southern Chinese Martial Arts had some form of Mo Ying Gerk so I wasn't sure if that's how you referenced the kicks in your line. Or if the concept is different.

Thanks again,