I see people have viewed this thread (25) but no responses. Maybe that kinda speaks for itself. Chi sau is supposed to be an alive, free flowing, spontaneous exchange between training partners and one shouldn't have a routine or techniques that they always do to score 'points' or 'hits' with their training partner.
However, I do have a basic training chi sau 'drill' that I teach to help students understand some of the concepts of chi sau. We call it jow sau jip sau. Basically, you and a partner start out with poon sau. Then, from a fook sau hand in the up position (your partner's hand is in bong sau), you perform a gum sau downward with that hand to both of your partners hands, you withdraw your other hand from underneath the partners trapped hands and punch down the center. The trapped student waits for your punch to come forward, and at the last second your partner performs a quan sau (simultaneous bong and tan sau), being sure to open with the bong sau (not the tan), to stop the punch from striking. Your punch should be moved off the line and held out by your partners tan sau. You then huen sau with the hand that attempted the punch around your partners tan, and their tan then reverts to a gum sau, and the drill starts over again, with your partner performing a gum sau to you to continue the drill from the beginning. This just goes back and forth, with each person performing gum sau, punch, quan sau, huen sau, then back to gum sau. It helps students to learn to flow, relax, shift, go forward, attack, recover, and stop when cut off. Along the way you check to make sure the hand positions of gum, bong, tan, fook, quan, punch, huen, and wu sau are all doing their job correctly.
but don't tell me you don't have a favourite technique, even the TG at my place does. Maybe its not 1 sections, but its a setup or a trap.
I like tugging down my bong sau to remove his tan and enter with my fook -ofcourse my right side is exposed, but i can allways collapse my attacking fook and then trap his left arm and hit hit hit with my right?
It seems to me that your favorite technique totally depends upon who you are working with and what openings they give you. For example, one guy I train with appears to "over roll" his arms doing poon sau, so his bong sau crosses past center over his fook sau. But heaven help you if you try to use jut/gum to trap down his bong. His fook will come up and punch you like lightning. He looks vulnerable, but in reality isn't! In fact he knows exactly what he's doing.
Another guy I work with is soft and strong. But if you surprise him with a quick "cheap shot"... a wedging punch over his decending tan, for example, he sometimes stiffens up for an instant. At that instant, you can apply a lot of other things that would never work when he is relaxed. When it's working for you, there are no pre-arranged sequences anymore, you just play off their responses.
But the real problem is that these guys all know my weaknesses at least as well as I know theirs. Then I'm the guy being played like a yo-yo!
That's the way chi sau should be. Also, if you have no weaknesses, your training partner is the only person with problems. One of the objectives of chi sau is to be able to find and capitalize on your training partners problems or deficienties. That's how you learn, grow, and achieve hand skills.
For some reason, there are sequences that just come out rather easily, yet they don't depend on my preference... it depends on the partner I'm training with!!
For example, one of my students always seems to get hit with a fak sao/lop sao [left arm/right arm] that leaves him with an extended right arm and controlled completely in a straight arm bar (using my left shoulder as fulcrum), with his centerline looking completely to the side.
Another seems to get too close and ends up choked or taken down. Another ends up with his head punched and arms trapped.
And many times, new things just come up! So in an exploratory evolution of the Chi Sao, we find the holes in our defense and work to plug them.
I also note that there are strategic offensive and reactionary defensive techniques and sequences. One to open the space and attack, the other to counter and then attack. Both should be trained.
Again, Chi Sao as a platform for learning and teaching is among the best ever invented in my opinion.
