Saturday, July 28, 2007

On A Wing Chun Kick Again


Wing Chun Infighting

Wing Chun On The Street

Partick at Mokuren Dojo recomended several Blogs this week, one of which is "Fist Of The Red Rebel", a Wing Chun site by Adam Williss. Red Rebel has lengthy and deep analysis of all aspects of Wing Chun Kung Fu, and the site hooked me back into thinking about Wing Chun training drills.
The first video is with Sifu Emin Boztepe and assistant Michael Casey demonstrating Chi Sao, or "sticky hands".
Honestly, I see my arts approaching a fusion state; I began as a high-school wrestler, went through 2nd Dan Black belt in Tae Kwon Do (1980's), 3d Dan in Kenpo, two years Aikido, twelve years Tai Chi and countless Small-Circle Jujitsu drills via Wally and Leon Jay. The Wing Chun we learned was from Ron Ogi, the top student of James DeMile, who was Bruce Lee's student and friend.
The excellent Chi Sao demonstrated above is a piece of my personal puzzle, waiting to be inserted in it's proper place. If you review some of our video's of San-Shou, Push-Hands, lock flow and hitting drills, and imagine them all flowing into one, that's where I want to go. Due to the current popularity of ground-grappling (BJJ etc.) we've reviewed some matwork lately, but the last place I want to end up is on my back in a guard in the parking lot of a rowdy bar. Better to fight upright and get quickly back to your feet if knocked down.
The second video appears to be some kind of skinhead brawl. Notice the fighter in the black shirt takes a classical Wing Chun stance, leads with a kick and is bear-hugged by his much larger opponent. In textbook Wing Chun self-defense, he uses a elbow smash followed by a neck-crank for takedown - along with a few stomps. I don't know the source of this video, but it shows how effective a few good techniques can be against a much larger opponent.
--So I hope all you fellow Dojo Rats out there don't mind, but we may go for a bit of a Wing Chun ride here...

4 comments:

JoseFreitas said...

Ha! You thought I had left! No way, just a little vacation with the family down at the beach for a week or so.

Emin is pretty much the bad guy of Wing Tsun in Europe. I did a bunch of seminars with him back in the days, in Spain. He is very good, with a little bit of an attitude. By the way, I liked the video of the locks you posted.

I also generally admire Hapkido schools (the good ones) for their thouroughness in teaching locks together with all the rest. I have a friend, Alain Burrese, who is a GENIUS at locking, you should check out his tapes - even for knowledgeable types you'll find pretty good stuff there. I wish I had more partners to play with. I can do a lot of the stuff but mostly in the context of either a) push hands (pretty tame) or b) some really cool qinna two person sets my teacher taught me, but it's hard to make the transition to a more spontaneuous kind of game. That's why I liked the lock flows you show. I've been playing at them already with my karate teacher, so we're on our way!

Dave Chesser said...

I sometimes miss wing chun, too. Honestly, I thought it was very limited compared to the other southern styles I did after I left wing chun, like choylifut. I saw wingchun as too limited after CLF.

But the great thing about wing chun is the fact that it is limited to some extent. It doesn't try to be everything under the sun. It doesn't have a thousand forms and weapons. It also contains some of the best drills and punching I ever did.

I often wonder about the PH skills I've gained since doing wing chun and how it would affect my chi sao.

Thing is, wing chun is the type of art you can still pick up fairly quickly and it isn't hard to find.

Formosa Neijia

Mia said...

The che sau video isn't good at all. If you study it closely there is no sticking going on or arm control, just a student being led by a sifu showing off attacks to a camera. A more proficient Wing Chun practitioner would slow his arms down in the initial rolling not allowing for speed to be built up in order to confuse then attack. If you look on YouTube at Ip Ching doing che sau you will see exactly what I mean. It is all controlled and the idea is to stick and learn to feel, not to beat your opponent. This is truly a misconception of western wing chun interpretation - studying in the East has taught me this.

Great site, thanks.

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