Sunday, February 11, 2007

Wing Chun Hand Strikes



Here is a short clip of a Wing Chun Teacher named Gary Lam demonstrating some trapping and striking techniques.
The way I see it, the old cowboy drunken roundhouse punch may be powerful if it connects, but you can see it coming a mile away. Boxing jabs and crosses are much more direct and hard to defend against. Most Wing Chun operates with straight punches, and you gotta love the hand trapping. The hitting is very efficiant, and Wing Chun tends to "Peck people to death" with repeated rapid strikes, rather than use power punching. They also tend to close in and finish with a powerful elbow strike to the head. Also, consider this about the "pushing" techniques: when you take someones center and really "push" them, every table, chair, stairway or sharp corner in the room becomes your weapon.
I see many similarities to certain techniques in the "Backyard Kenpo" post in the dojorat archives, as far as the flow in striking, although Wing Chun remains centerline to centerline and Kenpo does not.