Fixed Techniques During Chi Sao

[wingchun100]

Lately at school Sifu has been running us through set drills in chi sao. The intention is to make each technique "perfect." (A relative term, I know.) We haven't been doing any "improvised" chi sao for a while. I can see why he is doing it, but I don't know how many newbies can appreciate it. Then again, I guess what he's aiming for is a student body that CAN appreciate his current approach.

Some people come in and want to know how to defend themselves on the street right away, and this microscopic focus on one technique at a time won't achieve that. However, it DOES have the potential to make your chi sao better than the next guy's. It'd be real easy to have a bunch of people doing rapid fire chi sao and LOOKING like they know what they're doing. (And against the average person on the street, they may very well stand a chance. I know I can handle myself on the street, but in class I look like a beginner! That's because I don't get to go much, which means not much chi sao practice.) But then you stand them against another wing chun person, and they get completely dominated.

So I personally like the way class is, but what about the crowd that comes in to learn self-defense? I mean, do you just teach them techniques without getting into the "theory" behind why we do things a certain way? That begs the question: what is wing chun...without the theory? Just another self-defense seminar?

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this.

 

[yak sao]

I think a person can learn chi sau too early. It's best to teach them lat sau (free hand fighting) in the beginning stages.
You're right, most people walking in the door of the school are more interested in learning how to handle themselves on the street than they are in learning something as intricate as chi sau.

So our lineage's approach is to meet this desire head on. we teach a lot of lat sau; the new student learns how to handle themselves vs. boxers, kickers, grapplers, ground fighters, etc. Once this demon has been put to rest, they are now ready to learn chi sau, which in turn, trickles down and makes their earlier lat sau training that much better.

We also teach prearranged chi sau, , that we call sections. These are basically, 2 man forms that serve to help pressure test structure from the solo forms. We have 7 sections that deal with the SNT and CK forms, 4 that deal with the BT form and 8 that come from the dummy. There is also a chi gerk section that correlates with the tripodal dummy drills.

Like a solo form, the sections are established movements, so that the student is able to practice and hone his structure over and over, and develop proper relaxation within the various structures so that later when free style chi sau is practiced, the movements happen on their own, without having to worry about proper "technique" and relaxation.

 

[almost a ghost]

So I personally like the way class is, but what about the crowd that comes in to learn self-defense?

Then point them to the nearest Krav Maga school, which I've done that before. I have the personal practice of only teaching Wing Chun to those who want to learn Wing Chun. I've met people that needed to learn how to protect themselves tomorrow and Wing Chun doesn't meet their needs and I hope when their needs are met and they want to expand their MA knowledge and have a specific interest in Wing Chun they'd remember that I was honest and come back.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

So I personally like the way class is, but what about the crowd that comes in to learn self-defense? I mean, do you just teach them techniques without getting into the "theory" behind why we do things a certain way? That begs the question: what is wing chun...without the theory? Just another self-defense seminar?

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this.

In artificial intelligence (AI), there is a method that's called "backward search". You start searching from a tree leaf all the way back to the root of that tree. When a new student comes to you, you should point out what kind of problems that he will need to solve. IMO, those problems are:

- boxer's punches,
- MT guy's roundhouse kick,
- TKD guy's side kick,
- wrestle's leg shooting,
- BJJ guy's ground skill.

You then point out the solutions and how to train it.