Wing Chun Progression
December 03, 2009
I’ve recently thought about my wing chun progression over the past couple of years and I’ve come up with my own personal progression path. I came up with this by myself based on my own experience with the art so don’t take this for more than what it is.
- Relaxation
- Technique Mastery
- Movement and Energy flow
- ???
1. Relaxation
For most newcomers to wing chun, the most difficult thing seems to be relaxing yourself during training. The “secret” of wing chun is the sensitivity built and used during chi sao. When your body is tense and when you use brute muscular strength, the sensitivity cannot be developed. Without this sensitivity, your wing chun is non-existent. Therefore, the first step is learning how to use the soft to defend against the strong, using the opponent’s force against him, and learning to relax yourself to a level to be able to take in all the information about your opponent’s movements through physical contact – the download, if you will.
2. Technique Mastery
I feel that once the student learns how to truly relax and use the download automatically, the next step is to be able to use the wing chun techniques confidently and with focus and intention. This requires a lot of nitpicking and trying to perfect every single technique from the tan sau, pak sau, and bong sau, and every other block, parry, and attack. This is where an experienced teacher and fellow kung fu brothers and sisters need to give you feedback. Also, you must also monitor your movements yourself. For me, I remember just looking at my tan sau every single time and actually stopping whatever I was doing to examine if my angle was correct, my distance and range were adequate, whether or not the motion was both forward and angled slightly, etc. to a point where I felt my tan sau was near perfect. I did this for every technique. I don’t claim that my movements are perfect, but I do trust my techniques to do what they’re meant to, each and every time.
3. Movement and Energy flow
This is something that I’m just getting the hang of. This is learning how to move with attacks to minimize your energy use and maximize your attack and defense. This is not resisting through strength but flowing with different movements naturally and smoothly. This really makes your opponent work twice as hard as it’s like you’re warping around – your opponent is forced to recalculate and redirect the attack if he wants to hit you. This also helps you set yourself up at better angles to attack. I still catch myself standing ground and resisting, instead of stepping to the side. I’m getting better at it but I haven’t quite mastered this yet.
4. ???
Not sure what to expect next. Once I feel I’ve mastered step 3, maybe I’ll discover what step 4 is. I hope to be able to fill this in soon.
January 24th, 2010 at 00:45
[...] about what I felt were the progressive steps that a Wing Chun student needs to go through. You can read my original post here. Just a basic [...]