A few improvements to my post:
1) My first sentence might create an impression of arrogance I didn’t intend to make and would be better-phrased as, “Nobody I personally see on the net these days seems to know anything about real Wing Chun …”
2) In section two, I left out my second-favorite WC technique, which I personally call “The Controlling Palm”.
Forget all that movie crap; you don’t blow bodies up inside with palm strikes, you instead keep rotating your hand so your palms press here, there, and everywhere to eff up every effing thing the attacker is trying to do to you. You’re almost never trying to hurt him, just to frustrate him. Palm and move his arm for 1/10 of a second, THEN hit him with your other hand when his arm is out of the way. WC fighters LOVE to pin both of a guy’s forearm against his chest for 1/10 of a second, then hit him.
And that, Dear Reader, is THE number one technique of the Wing Chun fighter, btw.
3) The openhanded wrist grap. WC fighters train very hard … in the non-fraudulent studios anyway … at that technique. They do not grab hard, like the BJJ fighter, because they don’t want to grapple, they want to blast away. They just slide your arm out of the way a few inches for 1/10 of a second and … stop me if you heard me say this already … THEN they hit you with the other hand, or they feel you freak out and try to jerk your wrist back, and they know that your guard is down with your other arm so they palm and pin that arm and THEN they hit you, or you’ve lost your weight distribution on your feet while jerking your wrist back, so they footsweep you and THEN they hit you.
4) I think WC may have lost a lot of effectiveness when the outlaw and revolution-waging Red Boat WC fighting masters were caught by the government. Other RB experts went over to the dark side and … this happened a lot, they say … became teachers of violence in the Chinese Mafia, the Triads. Like criminals everywhere, they didn’t tend to make themselves known, and lived life in the underground of society.
You can see rare videos of Red Boat WC on the net, but not from professional martial artists who are in their prime. And I don’t see a lot of RBWC that looks like any missing part of the WC system that Yip Man supposedly never learned.
Sticky hands from what I gather, is kaki uckae if I’ve pronounced it ok. Is a means of deflecting an opponents strike and guiding a punch away then still in contact grabbing the arm/ wrist to pull your opponent off ballance. It’s not to punch but strike soft targets in sequence that disorientates your opponent to be able to do what you like 😉
Awesome video, I like the way the techniques are done, nice and smooth:)
I also appreciate this Sifu`s passion for martial arts, there is a lot about basic respect, the energy and humility he has in teaching the students, which is sometimes lost in competition. He is only showing a small part of the system here, so bear that in mind when you start the whole comparison narrative that I see in the thread.
Had an interesting (to me, anyway) thought, in the vein of a Devil’s advocate type argument.
Could some things like ‘sticky hands’ or ‘circle punching’ have applicable training benefits in spite of not being direct means of striking in a ring, cage, dojo or street?
Take speed bag training, for example. I’ve actually heard it criticized on more than one occasion as being useless because it doesn’t emulate a real punch that you’d employ in the ring. At least superficially, there seems to be some truth, at least to the second half of that statement. Nonetheless, most of the top boxers and coaches still use it, am I right? There must be good reasons or they wouldn’t do it. I assume it has to do with acclimating the boxer to the high volume punching typical of a boxing match; running for your arms, so to speak. So, to me, the critique of speed bag training is akin to saying running is useless because it doesn’t simulate a real kick you’d execute in the cage. Not what it’s for.
So, in that spirit, I wonder if ‘circle punching’ could be useful in developing hand speed, and if ‘sticky hands’ could help develop reaction time and creativity in dirty boxing scenarios where there’s a mix of grappling and striking against the cage, say. Tony Ferguson comes to mind as someone who actually employed a bit of that type of training on a Wing Chun dummy. I’m totally out of my depth here, so I’m just spitballing.
-a
PS: obviously, I’m aware that many (most?) Wing Chun practitioners likely propose to apply these things as actual striking techniques, rather than simply developmental exercises.
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A few improvements to my post:
1) My first sentence might create an impression of arrogance I didn’t intend to make and would be better-phrased as, “Nobody I personally see on the net these days seems to know anything about real Wing Chun …”
2) In section two, I left out my second-favorite WC technique, which I personally call “The Controlling Palm”.
Forget all that movie crap; you don’t blow bodies up inside with palm strikes, you instead keep rotating your hand so your palms press here, there, and everywhere to eff up every effing thing the attacker is trying to do to you. You’re almost never trying to hurt him, just to frustrate him. Palm and move his arm for 1/10 of a second, THEN hit him with your other hand when his arm is out of the way. WC fighters LOVE to pin both of a guy’s forearm against his chest for 1/10 of a second, then hit him.
And that, Dear Reader, is THE number one technique of the Wing Chun fighter, btw.
3) The openhanded wrist grap. WC fighters train very hard … in the non-fraudulent studios anyway … at that technique. They do not grab hard, like the BJJ fighter, because they don’t want to grapple, they want to blast away. They just slide your arm out of the way a few inches for 1/10 of a second and … stop me if you heard me say this already … THEN they hit you with the other hand, or they feel you freak out and try to jerk your wrist back, and they know that your guard is down with your other arm so they palm and pin that arm and THEN they hit you, or you’ve lost your weight distribution on your feet while jerking your wrist back, so they footsweep you and THEN they hit you.
4) I think WC may have lost a lot of effectiveness when the outlaw and revolution-waging Red Boat WC fighting masters were caught by the government. Other RB experts went over to the dark side and … this happened a lot, they say … became teachers of violence in the Chinese Mafia, the Triads. Like criminals everywhere, they didn’t tend to make themselves known, and lived life in the underground of society.
You can see rare videos of Red Boat WC on the net, but not from professional martial artists who are in their prime. And I don’t see a lot of RBWC that looks like any missing part of the WC system that Yip Man supposedly never learned.
Sticky hands from what I gather, is kaki uckae if I’ve pronounced it ok. Is a means of deflecting an opponents strike and guiding a punch away then still in contact grabbing the arm/ wrist to pull your opponent off ballance. It’s not to punch but strike soft targets in sequence that disorientates your opponent to be able to do what you like 😉
Those grabs don’t functionally work.
Awesome video, I like the way the techniques are done, nice and smooth:)
I also appreciate this Sifu`s passion for martial arts, there is a lot about basic respect, the energy and humility he has in teaching the students, which is sometimes lost in competition. He is only showing a small part of the system here, so bear that in mind when you start the whole comparison narrative that I see in the thread.
Had an interesting (to me, anyway) thought, in the vein of a Devil’s advocate type argument.
Could some things like ‘sticky hands’ or ‘circle punching’ have applicable training benefits in spite of not being direct means of striking in a ring, cage, dojo or street?
Take speed bag training, for example. I’ve actually heard it criticized on more than one occasion as being useless because it doesn’t emulate a real punch that you’d employ in the ring. At least superficially, there seems to be some truth, at least to the second half of that statement. Nonetheless, most of the top boxers and coaches still use it, am I right? There must be good reasons or they wouldn’t do it. I assume it has to do with acclimating the boxer to the high volume punching typical of a boxing match; running for your arms, so to speak. So, to me, the critique of speed bag training is akin to saying running is useless because it doesn’t simulate a real kick you’d execute in the cage. Not what it’s for.
So, in that spirit, I wonder if ‘circle punching’ could be useful in developing hand speed, and if ‘sticky hands’ could help develop reaction time and creativity in dirty boxing scenarios where there’s a mix of grappling and striking against the cage, say. Tony Ferguson comes to mind as someone who actually employed a bit of that type of training on a Wing Chun dummy. I’m totally out of my depth here, so I’m just spitballing.
-a
PS: obviously, I’m aware that many (most?) Wing Chun practitioners likely propose to apply these things as actual striking techniques, rather than simply developmental exercises.