Xing-yi Beng Chuan and wing chun chain punch

[everything]

no idea about theoretical or practical power generation ... so just going off on tangents as usual.

it seems like wing chun was developed by its namesake nun mainly for unarmed contests with monks and nuns in training then used in situations (against bandits?) that perhaps ended relatively quickly. the whole deception and speed thing was probably important. sometimes with weapons, sometimes not. probably not wearing any armor, but wearing monks/nuns' light clothes.

it seems like xingyiquan was developed by actual combat, derived from spear techniques used in kill-or-be-killed larger scale "formal" combat situations. any deception was probably at army general level, not spear technique level. there probably was no deception in the "hey we are really fighting" level. power generation had to be enough to work with weapons of a certain weight and I guess some kind of armor?

so maybe just maybe that history informs the techniques and power???? maybe not. it seems pretty common sense-y, though. I'm not criticizing wc. I once saw someone get in a fight in a college bookstore. really stupid crowded thing of fighting for space. one guy kinda pushed this little dude slightly. little dude broke out his little chain punch thing. he "won" the fight by mutual silent consent and nothing else happened, but it didn't particularly do any damage as far as I could see. it certainly looked like he could do something cool.

[dspyrido]

Apocryphal stories are probably not good reference points.

Anyway I'll emphasise this again - wc straight punch has more in common with fire than it does wood.

As for body connection, power or mystical concepts ... meh i find how, when and where a decent strike is delivered is far far more important.

Is chain punching a joke? A quick 1-2 from any standing position makes for a great shock/surprise tactic if they are trying to knock your head off with big arcing punches. I've used it several times.

[everything]

i dunno. it seems pretty cool to me.

i don't know if those stories are apocryphal. seems like all the written stories say these stories.
wing chun the nun. almost by definition monks and nuns are not soldiers even if some have been both.
xingyi from actual spear usage used by soldiers.
if that is true, a lot of the conclusions here make sense. this isn't a criticism (afaik) of wc. but obviously the ima board might have a bias to prefer xyq (which I'd have to agree with, personally, having not done either art)

[dspyrido]

i dunno. it seems pretty cool to me.

Sure but one thing to add is how much styles evolve from generation to generation & instructor to instructor.

For example the WC pigeon toe stuff was supposed to have evolved on the red boats. I was told that the pole form was a later addition to WC which makes sense at it favours the horse stance. I am not even sure if the chain punch existed around ng mai or was introduced later.

Xy is the same. I wonder if we got all the XY'ers together how many of us would agree on how to beng away.

[everything]

That sounds like decay and not evolution :-(

For xyq, having no training, if I pick up a long pole, all elements make intuitive sense. Cannot say the same for any other art I can think of. Maybe fencing is like this?

It would be darn cool to have a xyq type of safe sport mode.

[GrandUltimate]

I think they have a lot in common at higher levels. This is mainly due to them having different trajectories for developing skill, which makes them hard to compare early on. IME, a lot of the talk (on both sides) about how these two arts are vastly different is convoluted and rarely proven in combat (unless we include anecdotal evidence). That said, I've got tons to learn myself and maybe I'm just being ignorant.

Having about 4 years of cross training in Xing Yi and being a WC guy primarily, I'd have to say that the big lesson from XY for me was that it reminds WC guys that they don't have to keep their body square all the time. This square body sickness limits power generation, mobility, reach, evasion, and more. Also, some styles of XY will emphasize waves and whatnot in the spine early on. Some styles of WC, like the Yip Man lines, usually stress this later. Thus XY in this case can also help WC guys use a specific skill much earlier than they normally would, which could have some benefits IMO.

I found the XY animals (I dont know them all) to be especially useful because the energies of the 5 fists can be somewhat general if you train WC enough. But the animals are a bit funky and can add some spice to your WC that is not at all contrary to the chun, but could take a lot longer to figure out if you didn't see some XY. That too, is just my experience. I remember learning the basic snake movement in XY and thinking "dang, I could do this on some days instead of the chun and tai chi." It's pretty cool.