Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby .Q. on Sat Sep 19, 2020 1:28 am

My only student right now has done WC for a while. I showed him some footwork that enters on an angle recently, but unfortunately he found that to be so counter-intuitive from his training (along w/ a bunch of muscle activation problems) that he was having a hard time getting it to flow. I explained to him it's similar to the Biu Ji move he showed me before and he instantly got it. Turns out his teacher was really old school and wouldn't move you on to the 2nd form until you got the 1st form down pat, so he hadn't really learned Biu Ji (3rd form) but only knows what it looks like (if I interpreted what he told me correctly). I obviously don't know jack about WC but he showed me a few Biu Ji moves before and I could map it to similar Bagua moves, that's why I could see the correlation when he couldn't. This makes me think that a good amount of people think their system is missing X or Y simply don't understand their system well enough. I haven't seen any impressive WC footwork online but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist (it might actually be lacking, beats me). It's not that I believe any system is "complete", but it's easy to misjudge whether a system contains something because CMA tends to be secretive, expansive (so many people don't actually get the full picture) and taught in an inefficient manner.
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Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby johnwang on Sat Sep 19, 2020 10:47 pm

There are at least 2 issues in the WC systems that bother me.

1. The WC single sticky hand only train your right arm deal with your opponent's left arm.

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The WC sticky hand doesn't train your right arm deal with your opponent's right arm. If WC guys train this, it will make the WC Bong Shou meaningless because your opponent's left hand can reach to your right elbow joint.

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2. If your feet are

- parallel, I will need to move my back foot side way before I can sweep you.
- inward, I can sweep your heel without moving my back leg side way.
- outward, even if I move my back foot side way, my back foot still cannot reach to your heel.

The WC inward stance is not only dangerous for double legs, it's also dangerous for foot sweep.

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Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby johnwang on Sun Sep 20, 2020 1:17 pm

I just find some WC right arm deal with right arm training clip.

The nice thing about this is you can train almost all throwing skill if you want to.

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To guide your opponent's one arm to jam his other arm is an excellent strategy.

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Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby dspyrido on Sun Sep 20, 2020 3:28 pm

WC has many cross armed drills & they usually start with basic drills & then evolve into the two person sticking (lap sau)



Then they should go random:



The parallel leg (yee ji kim) gets modified into a front leg stance in the 2nd form:



Then the training is all about stepping with a lead leg and other stuff which goes into things like sweeps (chi gerk)




WC does turn, does not just do frontal moves, does have kicks, leg sweeps, learns to counter. It even changes to sink down much lower into the horse stance which starts to condition the legs.



So where the problem?

When I first started WC in the first 4 years I had various instructors teaching me 2 of the 3 forms (I started the 3rd), butterfly knives drills, various sticking drills, wooden dummy and the basics to the pole. Everything was loose and relaxed & everyone was happy to show someone some moves and let them get on with practice. We also entered into kickboxing tournaments and sparred most classes.

Then the head of the school relocated and changed the program so that it took about 20 years to learn everything. Of the existing instructors the fighty ones didn't agree and most of them left to start their own schools or start training in something else. I stuck it out for another 4 years under the new more "internal" focused structure but was also cross training in other places because I wasn't happy with the change.

This seemed to happen across many places around the world and WC was not the same.



IMO WC methods can be learnt in 3 years & then refined & drilled forever. Better yet crossed trained.

That said I still never liked the parallel stance but it was realistic to know how to punch out from this position.
The guard would at times be too easy a target. The answer to arcing punches was always a worry. It lacked any real head movement or leaning evasions.
I felt the foot work was not dynamic enough & open to good takedowns. In competitions I just used more of a kickboxing stance.
WC lacked many great qinna moves and also did not cross over enough into wrestling.

But it still can be a useful style if practiced right.
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Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby MaartenSFS on Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:43 am

Thanks for your in-depth analysis. I haven't had time to reply, but I appreciate it. I agree that the art is good for the range that it addresses. It's quite unfortunate that your school became watered down like that. The way that my Master taught it was more free-form drilling and sparring. He added power-generating methods and techniques from other arts - quite practical.
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Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby johnwang on Mon Sep 21, 2020 1:26 pm

Did Ip Men teach "cross arm sticky hand"? I have met 3 of Ip Men's students. As far as I know, none of them had learned from Ip Men for this kind of training.

Your thought?



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Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby dspyrido on Mon Sep 21, 2020 3:03 pm

MaartenSFS wrote:It's quite unfortunate that your school became watered down like that.


Not at all! Because this happened it urged me to seek out other schools which resulted in me finding one of the earliest MT gyms & training with a MT legend, an early mma place that introduced me bare knuckle/pancrase fighting and finally XY/xylh/qinna. It's all about the journey.

MaartenSFS wrote:The way that my Master taught it was more free-form drilling and sparring. He added power-generating methods and techniques from other arts - quite practical.


That's the approach that I think works but purists might not agree. I would say 5 elements XY is the perfect fit for it along with shuai jiow.
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Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby dspyrido on Mon Sep 21, 2020 3:24 pm

johnwang wrote:Did Ip Men teach "cross arm sticky hand"? I have met 3 of Ip Men's students. As far as I know, none of them had learned from Ip Men for this kind of training.

Your thought?


Same schools? Different? Did they free spar & use kicks or was it just chi sao? Did they hit pads at all?

We definitely did these drills and early on and were ip man lineage related. Did they ever train a thing called lap sau that I posted above?

In the first month we would cover:

Step and punch
Step, cross arm trap and punch
Step, double arm trap and punch
Step, punch and kick to knee
Kick to the stomach, step in double punch
Kick, step, trap, punch
Etc

These were great starting drills done on people and pads. They played well into the self defence approach.

I will admit about 20 years later I went and checked out my old school. I was saddened by the level of "internal" discussion and that for 5 years they would do chi sau and not much more.

So yes it's probably true that they don't cross arm as much until years later.
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Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby johnwang on Mon Sep 21, 2020 3:33 pm

dspyrido wrote:Step, cross arm trap and punch ...

How many of this kind of drill that you have learned from that school?

I believe these kind of drills are the true CMA treasure that deserve to be preserved. I don't mind just train this kind of drills with my partner for 3 hours daily.

Last edited by johnwang on Mon Sep 21, 2020 3:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby MaartenSFS on Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:09 pm

dspyrido wrote:
MaartenSFS wrote:It's quite unfortunate that your school became watered down like that.


Not at all! Because this happened it urged me to seek out other schools which resulted in me finding one of the earliest MT gyms & training with a MT legend, an early mma place that introduced me bare knuckle/pancrase fighting and finally XY/xylh/qinna. It's all about the journey.

MaartenSFS wrote:The way that my Master taught it was more free-form drilling and sparring. He added power-generating methods and techniques from other arts - quite practical.


That's the approach that I think works but purists might not agree. I would say 5 elements XY is the perfect fit for it along with shuai jiow.

That's a great attitude! I think that Xingyi and Yongchun could really work. That would be an interesting combination! My Master is not a purist. He doesn't give a shit. As long as it works.
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Re: Yongchunquan - 咏春拳

Postby dspyrido on Tue Sep 22, 2020 7:46 pm

johnwang wrote:How many of this kind of drill that you have learned from that school?


Many drills. In the early stages there's about 10-20 basic drills which involve things like punching over/through, parrying, trapping, hooking, spear hands etc. Then it just grows to be many more. Some examples:



Have a look at the bruce lee video you posted and then look at the wooden dummy form:



Each time bruce does 2-3 moves and stops you can see that they are similar moves found in the wooden dummy form. The way the form is learnt is by practicing each of the drills first and then later on doing them as a form.

The same goes with the other forms.

Although most WCs have 3 main empty hand forms & many will claim they are important for internal and so and so development I think they are really only there to help continue training when there's no partner.

Just IMO the two person drills are way more important.

Combining drills and then going into sparring (break off distance and bridging) I would even put ahead of sticking hands/elbows/legs but many would consider that as blasphemy.
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