Internal Wing Chun

[C.J.Wang]

Have you had any hands-on experience with people from TST or Leung Sheung's lineages? I did a web search and found that Kenneth Chung is teaching in SF Bay area, where I will be moving to next month. Perhaps I should pay him a visit.

If you're going to be in the Bay Area and are interested in WC then you need to check out Chris Chan. He is, IMO, the top WC guy in the SF bay area and probably one of the top in the entire US. I won't make claims about being the top but I will say that he was a student of Yip Man's and is a very very bad man.

Thanks Omar. I will look into it.

And just exactly how "bad" is Chris Chan? I mean, I don't mind training under instructors who are strict for the sake of the students, but I also know and have heard of people who simply like to knock their students around to suit their alpha-male personality, which I hate.

[bailewen]

Ian,

Here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlcKheg8 ... A9&index=5

Parts 5 and 6 are Chris talking about Wing Chun. A little movement in 6 but then for the actual demo he calls a student up in part 7 who demos "stage 1" of Siu Lum Tao training.
part 8, a somewhat more advanced student demos it.
part 9 a dummy form "108 Combos"
part 10 a tiny piece of chum kiu and then some talk about biu jee.
etc.

Lots of really good stuff in this colleciton. Pretty amazing actually as just a year ago there was absolutely zip on youtube from Chris Chan. In

CJ Wang, watch him talking in the video above. He's not mean...unless you test him. He likes to leave little welts on your arm with his hok choi sometimes just to fuck with you but nothing serious unless you challenge him.

[bailewen]

The best thing about that collection of Chris Chan clip.......it was posted by our old friend "happeh".. . . lol.

[C.J.Wang]

Chris Chan showing some applications.



Some Chi-Sao

[Andy_S]

Interesting that you say Chan's SiuNimTao is done like Iron Wire. A lot of other close-range Southern Systems similar to WC, such as White Crane, do their forms with dynamic tension and I have often wondered if the Yip Man style of soft form is his own advanced style, and many people who do it that way never got the 'basic.'

But this is purely guesswork as I have done very, very little WC.

[bailewen]

Based on my conversations with Chris's students and observations of their training methods, I'd say that your speculation is right on target. Chris Chan is about as close as you are going to get to Yip Man these days. He learned his WC directly from the old man.

I've seen countless "WC uses no power" versions and none of them could fight worth a damn. 3 years of power training before they learn anything approaching "soft". If I hadn't crossed hands with some of Chris's top guys I would have no idea that they ever got soft. Not all of his students are soft, but they all have power and most of them can fight.

Gotta run.

[Teazer]

Based on my conversations with Chris's students and observations of their training methods, I'd say that your speculation is right on target. Chris Chan is about as close as you are going to get to Yip Man these days.

Regarding training the forms with tension, I find this unlikely. CC was a teenager training with YM, for max 5 years. Contrast that with earlier YM students like Lok Yiu, Leung Sheung etc who were older and trained with YM for far longer, with a more extensive martial arts background. Who do you think are more likely to retain the standard ways of training? Keep in mind these were people that were doing much of the teaching of later students for YM.

Comparing CC's training methods with those of both the earlier students and other branches in mainland China, using that amount of tension in SNT is pretty much unique to how he teaches, which in no way makes it similar to YM's method. That's not to say CC or his students can't fight with it, and there could be justification for additional strength training if the person needs it. However I don't think the forms are the place.

[Ian]

Anyway I visited TST's student's class in HK. They're good! Very annoying to deal with in an empty-hand, one-on-one format

Hi Ian, just wondering which group this was?

This guys' class:



He's good!


Omar, thanks for the clip.

Hmm, this is something which makes me wonder.... I didn't learn any Wing Chun (except one day seminar), but there are many people coming to us, who previously did Wing Chun/Ving Tsun/Wing Tsun, and what we on both sides always notice, that while we rather use to keep elbows a bit out, they have habit of keeping them in, close to body, close to center line, sometimes to extent which looks rather unnatural.

Now on this clip, I heard Gary Lam saying something like: "hands...is always elbow in". But when I watch it, I see, that actually most of the time he keeps elbows in outward positions, quite naturally, just like we tend to do practicing yiquan...

So, there is something I don't understand about Wing Chun...

Actually, this is one of the questions I have about WC as well. If keeping the elbow in for "Zhou Di Li" (Elbow dropping power) is so important in the style, why is it that in sticking hand and Bong Sao, the elbows are constantly raised up to shoulder level?

...because you can't do bong sau without raising your elbow? Anyway I don't see how it matters. Wing chun doesn't look anything like yiquan, apart from the obvious similarities you get from training an internal style.


Re: dynamic tension. When I visited Sifu Ma's class, I only saw guys doing very soft 'little idea'.

[shawnsegler]

I'd like to hear Ven Fish's 2c on this.

S

[bailewen]

Regarding training the forms with tension, I find this unlikely. CC was a teenager training with YM, for max 5 years. Contrast that with earlier YM students like Lok Yiu, Leung Sheung etc who were older and trained with YM for far longer, with a more extensive martial arts background. Who do you think are more likely to retain the standard ways of training? Keep in mind these were people that were doing much of the teaching of later students for YM.

Comparing CC's training methods with those of both the earlier students and other branches in mainland China, using that amount of tension in SNT is pretty much unique to how he teaches, which in no way makes it similar to YM's method. That's not to say CC or his students can't fight with it, and there could be justification for additional strength training if the person needs it. However I don't think the forms are the place.

You make some excellent points. His WC interpretation may not be very mainstream at all but then, he is still, IMHO, the most dangerous WC man out there. He has put plenty of those more famous WC teachers on their a$$e$. I'd rather not name names publicly. As far as I am concerned, those other branches can keep their "more standard" training methods to themselves. No one from any of those lines have ever impressed me the way Chris's students have.

p.s.
Basically, the SF CMA community is pretty damn broad and pretty damn old and having spent about 10 years or so in it, my opinion (purely subjective, I know) is that that top two guys in the city are Y.C. Wong and Chris Chan. I give extremely high marks to Dino Salvatore as well but at the end of the day I think I just don't like Choi Li Fut as much as I like Hung Gar and Wing Chun so my evaluation is not really very objective. v

[Teazer]

If keeping the elbow in for "Zhou Di Li" (Elbow dropping power) is so important in the style, why is it that in sticking hand and Bong Sao, the elbows are constantly raised up to shoulder level?

Bong sau is rarely an optimal choice of defense, and the system encourages not leaving it out, but to drop the elbow back down as soon as possible. That said, it is common enough to need to use it, so should be practiced, particularly so it leaves as little risk as possible despite it being raised.

while we rather use to keep elbows a bit out, they have habit of keeping them in, close to body, close to center line, sometimes to extent which looks rather unnatural.

Now on this clip, I heard Gary Lam saying something like: "hands...is always elbow in". But when I watch it, I see, that actually most of the time he keeps elbows in outward positions, quite naturally, just like we tend to do practicing yiquan...

I agree. Some people teach holding the elbow very close to the center. Personally I think doing it to the extent it hinders movement is unhelpful, and that they've probably misunderstood something along the way. The maxim taught is that the elbow should be sunk. They also talk about it being strong, and that raising one makes it weak. They don't say anything about the elbow needing to be close to the center. There's a time and a place, like for some applications of fook & jum sau, but even there it's more due to sinking. In all but the most extreme and awkward cases, dropping the elbow causes it to be closer to the center, so may be that's what Gary Lam meant in the video.

[pingpong]

Anyway I visited TST's student's class in HK. They're good! Very annoying to deal with in an empty-hand, one-on-one format

Hi Ian, just wondering which group this was?

This guys' class:

He's good!

Re: dynamic tension. When I visited Sifu Ma's class, I only saw guys doing very soft 'little idea'.

Thanks Ian.

Interesting that you say Chan's SiuNimTao is done like Iron Wire. A lot of other close-range Southern Systems similar to WC, such as White Crane, do their forms with dynamic tension and I have often wondered if the Yip Man style of soft form is his own advanced style, and many people who do it that way never got the 'basic.'

But this is purely guesswork as I have done very, very little WC.

Not sure about this, but from what little I’ve seen of Tsui Sheung Tin, dynamic tension (if I understand it correctly) would be the furthest thing away from the type of Wing Chun that he teaches. I don’t think that he would have missed out on the basics. As far as I know, he’s the longest living student of Yip Man out of the HK students (he’s the third indoor student after Leung Sheung and Lok Yiu, followed by Wong Shun Leung). His wing chun seems to focus heavily on relaxing but with lots of intent/forward energy. That comes from sil lim tao and doing it softly.
I don’t have any point of comparison from other types of wing chun, as I’ve only been exposed to his line of wing chun. From what I’ve seen though, it can still lead to lots of power.

Hmm, this is something which makes me wonder.... I didn't learn any Wing Chun (except one day seminar), but there are many people coming to us, who previously did Wing Chun/Ving Tsun/Wing Tsun, and what we on both sides always notice, that while we rather use to keep elbows a bit out, they have habit of keeping them in, close to body, close to center line, sometimes to extent which looks rather unnatural.

Now on this clip, I heard Gary Lam saying something like: "hands...is always elbow in". But when I watch it, I see, that actually most of the time he keeps elbows in outward positions, quite naturally, just like we tend to do practicing yiquan...

So, there is something I don't understand about Wing Chun...

Actually, this is one of the questions I have about WC as well. If keeping the elbow in for "Zhou Di Li" (Elbow dropping power) is so important in the style, why is it that in sticking hand and Bong Sao, the elbows are constantly raised up to shoulder level?

I agree with Teazer. I think that keeping the elbows down is a training aid, rather than a hard and fast rule that you can’t break. Keeping the elbows down helps to keep the shoulders down. You rotate the shoulder and keep it down. So rather than pressing at the contact point or pressing in the forearms, you move by rotating the shoulder. Like Ian said, you can’t do a bong sau without raising the elbow, but I think the key is that you don’t lift from the forearm or even the elbow, rather you rotate the shoulder. Like in this clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNRgatQX ... re=related

In terms of keeping the elbows in, again, I’m not that familiar with other styles of wing chun, but Tsui Sheung Tin explains in the following video that you move forward towards the centre rather than going straight across the body towards the centre.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8eQy49S ... re=related
Also, it seems that staying relaxed is more important than having your elbow in the centre. The idea is not to force the elbow in towards the centre, particularly to the point of it looking unnatural if this results in you tensing the shoulder to keep the elbow in the centre. I don’t know if this is necessarily more effective, it just seems to be the way Tsui Sheung Tin does it and what he emphasises. Given that Chris Chan’s wing chun seems quite different from that of Tsui Sheung Tin and emphasising dynamic tension and what not, I suspect there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and that everyone has their own way of doing things, all of which can still lead to be being able to fight and lots of power, etc.

[SimonMW]

But when I watch it, I see, that actually most of the time he keeps elbows in outward positions, quite naturally, just like we tend to do practicing yiquan...

A lot of WC guys let the elbow go out. There are reasons why the elbow should be kept in a lot of the time. It doesn't need to be kept in all of the time through. But when punching the elbow should be on the centre line because that is part of the skeletal structure of delivering a powerful WC punch. Letting the elbow go out takes away the structural strength. That's the trouble with most WC guys, their punches are literally getting power only from their arms (even though they talk a good structure).