WC Kicking the forgotten part of the art?

[KamonGuy2]

Yeah don't get me wrong, I train wing chun kicking as much as anything else and I can break a persons leg with ease (as I am quite heavy). What I am talking about is an average wing chun practitioner (like my students) who kick first or block a teachnique and then counter with a kick.

It doesn't work. One of my students is an ex Muay Thai guy who used to train at professional level. His round kick would pretty much destroy anything. But even he had to admit that with bigger guys or in a clinch, kicks are difficult if not impossible

 

[Si-Je]

and there were many classes where the hour was spent only kicking. 50 - 100 repetitions per leg, then change and same again, at the time it was a killer, but the benefits were certainly there.
Heres one training trick we used, : Take one plastic chair (the common hall type/public chair) turn its back towards you. In stance weight on back leg , forward leg light, place your forward foot on the floor in line with the back of the chair. Proceed to practice your forward heel kick by lifting the knee and kicking out over the top of the back of the chair. The idea is to develop the technique of lifting knee, extending leg and bring leg back with knee up ready for another.
Another training technique, is to get a heavy bag, stand quite close and lift knee to place foot flat against bottom part of bag, now thrust forward hard with the foot, pushing the bag out and away, Keep the leg up and use the same foot to stop the back swing of the bag, ...helps with rooting for kicking.
To develop power in Wing Chun kicking, one needs strong upper leg muscles, for quick lift and hard thrust, the secret is getting the knee up high.

Cool! That's very similar to how we train. Plus isometrics. Man that's killer. We put a kicking bag and strap it to a tree and while keeping the leg in the kicking position continiously push repeatedly against the pad and tree. You get used to that kind of pressure, a large muscluar leg will not be hard to handle.

We also use kicks to cancel out an opponents kicking attacks. Or bong girk and Yap girk (spelling's probably off) which is a whole nutter deal.
We've been training to kick closer to the opponent, as in when grabbed by someone. It is VERY possible and effective. You also have your knees. Heck, when someone grabbs you firmly, your only option may be to kick.

As for MT roundhouses. I'm lazy, so I really prefer heel kick to stop that from landing. It's faster, more effecient, and keeps my shins from being totalled.

But, the point of all this kicking talk, is that it is cruitial to have it combined with arms, stepping and forward pressure. (don't refer to force, tends to make people tense up when instructing).
I guess I've gotten the answer to my question in this thread. It really seems that most WC/WT practitioners neglect the legwork and focus too much on hands. Which is fine, if your the same size or bigger than an attacker. And after a few years of hands training, sure, you could defeat a larger attacker. But that's alot of effort and time. Just saying it'd be twice as effective if you use all of your body to defend and attack.

Plus, you don't always have to kick the knee, there's the inner theigh, and the groin. And once their down a notch, there is the head, face, neck, etc.

In a fight I'm just saying use everything you've got. (Your arms and legs)

Just a girl's point of view.

 

[Si-Je]

As I said, my offer is open and you are more than welcome to come train. There are some techniques that will bring big guys down without using kicks.

It's good you have developed that power in your legs though

Where do you train at? That might be fun to swap ideas.

As for power in the legs. It's really all relative. Techique will save you more than power or strength. Especially when your a pettite, short, skinny minny like myself.

I could lift weights, train for power and muscle all day every day. But when it comes to crunch time, Men train for physical strength too, and I'll NEVER be able to compete with that. So better to use smarts. For me anyway.

 

[KamonGuy2]

Where do you train at? That might be fun to swap ideas.

As for power in the legs. It's really all relative. Techique will save you more than power or strength. Especially when your a pettite, short, skinny minny like myself.

I could lift weights, train for power and muscle all day every day. But when it comes to crunch time, Men train for physical strength too, and I'll NEVER be able to compete with that. So better to use smarts. For me anyway.

Exactly. That is why I love wing chun. Even though I'm a big guiy there is always someone bigger out there (as I have found)!

A lot of arts such as BJJ, Muay Thai, boxing, the more muscly you are the better. But in the real world you could find yourslef up against anyone

You are always welcome to come down after class and train for a bit. I'm not brilliant at chi sao, but I can certainly give you a few fighting techniques to go and play with and I'd be interested to see what you do in your fighting

I'm at the Epsom Class
http://www.kamonwingchun.com/ClassInfo.aspx?#Horsham

In Kamon, anyone is welcome to come down and watch a class. I know some wing chun schools get funny about people coming down and watching, but we don't mind.

This is for anyone else as well, who belong to another wing chun school and is interested to see what we do

SiJe, give me a private message or phone and we will arrange a time to train

 

[KamonGuy2]

Where do you train at? That might be fun to swap ideas.

As for power in the legs. It's really all relative. Techique will save you more than power or strength. Especially when your a pettite, short, skinny minny like myself.

I could lift weights, train for power and muscle all day every day. But when it comes to crunch time, Men train for physical strength too, and I'll NEVER be able to compete with that. So better to use smarts. For me anyway.

Exactly. That is why I love wing chun. Even though I'm a big guiy there is always someone bigger out there (as I have found)!

A lot of arts such as BJJ, Muay Thai, boxing, the more muscly you are the better. But in the real world you could find yourslef up against anyone

You are always welcome to come down after class and train for a bit. I'm not brilliant at chi sao, but I can certainly give you a few fighting techniques to go and play with and I'd be interested to see what you do in your fighting

I'm at the Epsom Class
http://www.kamonwingchun.com/ClassInfo.aspx?#Horsham

In Kamon, anyone is welcome to come down and watch a class. I know some wing chun schools get funny about people coming down and watching, but we don't mind.

This is for anyone else as well, who belong to another wing chun school and is interested to swap ideas etc

SiJe, give me a private message or phone and we will arrange a time to train

 

[Si-Je]

Cool website. I'm afraid that I'm not on that island. I hail from Texas, would be a fun trip.

 

[KamonGuy2]

That's a shame. My bro is in America at the moment - he resides in Baltimore and is good at wing chun. He lacks my size but he is a pretty formidable opponent

SiJe do you have your website?

 

[Si-Je]

Our website is up, but the school is closed now. Due to lack of funds, advertising, and students signing up.
We have several private lesson students. 6-7 That we will be continuing training with us. Unfortunately, with a schools overhead we needed 25 to continue to pay the rent on the building.
We're going to change up the website soon to advertise private lessons, and seminars availability only.

Here is the URL:
http://www.panthercitymartialarts.com

There are some more videos at my myspace account
myspace.com/ladiesofmartialarts This is a great site for women in martial arts. I started it to help keep women motivated and excited about being a martial artist. There are videos, pic's, and a forum.

 

[KamonGuy2]

Our website is up, but the school is closed now. Due to lack of funds, advertising, and students signing up.
We have several private lesson students. 6-7 That we will be continuing training with us. Unfortunately, with a schools overhead we needed 25 to continue to pay the rent on the building.
We're going to change up the website soon to advertise private lessons, and seminars availability only.
There are some more videos at my myspace account
myspace.com/ladiesofmartialarts This is a great site for women in martial arts. I started it to help keep women motivated and excited about being a martial artist. There are videos, pic's, and a forum.

Woah!! you needed 25 students to keep up with the hall rent?
Couldn't you get a smaller/cheaper hall? Or maybe increase the fees?
In the UK I only need 3 students to cover the hall costs.

I know that instructors want to keep prices cheap for their students, but don't do it too cheap!!

Good to see that you are encouraging women to get into the martial arts. I have noticed that most schools are devoid of female students!

 

[Si-Je]

Well, we weren't exactly cheap, but not the most expensive. Leasing a building is outrageous! We'd need to charge 12 people 100.00 a month to keep that place, and it was the cheapest we could find. And ridiculously small.
Then, the damn place flooded twice in two months! About a foot inside the building. The first time we were right in the middle of the kids class! Needless to say, we lost all our kids that day. It's been flooding all over north Texas these past three months. Totally ruined us, our neighbors, everyone up and down the street.
The landlord didn't care, and wanted rent, wouldn't work with us. Screw! I'll never, never, ever do that again.

 

[KamonGuy2]

Oh no, that is a shame.

I do find that most of my stress comes from hall hire and the unreliability of others.

Even in the UK some towns are more expensive than others.

I do an hour and a half session every Saturday and do a monthly charge of £40 ($80).

If there is anything I can help you with to get you up and running let me know. Maybe you could come to the UK, join Kamon and start a class here!!!!

 

[Si-Je]

That's very sweet. Thanks for the offer. We'll be okay, just starting over. We won't be opening a new school like that, it's too expensive here. We really don't have the ability to jet off the England, which would be fun! We've been wanting to move out of country for awhile.
Our senior student just moved to the Phillipines, so it seems to be a trend lately. lol!

But, there are other ways we can teach. Our students from the school are very eager to continue their training, which we will just keep teaching them via private instruction. And we'll see where that takes us. Me being a mom, it's hard to get training time in, but we're working on that too.