Ian wrote:pingpong wrote:Ian wrote: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.
Andy_S wrote: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.
C.J.Wang wrote:dacheng wrote:
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=relatedAlso, 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.