u/East-Vegetable-2900

Once the guys get familiar with the structure the roll and are starting to get familiar with the three basic Lap Sau Attacks and Counters, we start to look at what can happen during the "mess" of the "standard" actions.

I say "mess" because while the standard attacks do between them vary, they remain fixed actions. What does happen though, is that as they get train, one person will naturally get better at doing their part, which naturally changes each engagement and each time is going to be different with different opportunities revealing themselves.

i.e things are no longer "guaranteed" to happen in the same way the basic actions are.

The two things I like to introduce are:

- if you can beat/cheat the timing, you can strike

- the basic Gor Sau idea of when the centre is crossed, you occupy.

In this case, I first take advantage of the set counter strike, to clear myself to allow myself to strike at the same time. This is a good chance for them to understand multiple ideas such as freeing the occupied hand, two actions one sound, acting on the cover not the strike etc.

The second instance is when go a step further and make them recover across the centre to allow a shorter strike, from a more covered position. What I like about these two in particular is that they strike at different "beats", and allows the student to get a feel for those half beat moments.

The trick in both instances is to not force it to happen but to recognise when it happens and is available.

And this is where our version will start to converge with other formats because once we're taking angles, we also start to add footwork, which is where this starts to overlap into Gor Sau type movements.

We're still working on this in the class with this group so I cut this out from an off-mat session that shows where apply the Lap Sau to facilitate the three basic strikes.

It essentially boils down to three effects on the "defender" :

- no effect on their structure

- drop their shoulder

- rotate their spine

What this means is that the attacker gets to practice three different Lap Sau and the defender gets to learn to recognise and respond to those three effects on their structure.

The actual striking then is actually a secondary element and almost just there to facilitate the defender learning how to deal with break of structure and to feel where likely attacks can come from. If you over-do the striking, you are being a bad partner and not letting them train their side if the exercise.

In other words, the point of the drill isn't really to just to learn how to attack. If this isn't pointed out to you, it'd be very easy to think that it is about the attack when the reality is that there are two sides of the exercise, both of equal importance and together they allow you to develop ​the skill to keep the engagement going under constant pressure. I describe it being a dialogue and your goal, to begin with, is to be able to hold long conversations.

This isn't the only way or the right way to use the exercise; it is just our way.

Was cutting some longer footage of one of our mini-seminars and thought this intro talk might be interesting for those looking in from the outside, at the training methods of Wing Chun. These seminar classes we run gives newer students a chance to look at what is to come but also gives other members of the school that don't do the Wing Chun, to get an idea of how we train and where they can get some exposure to where skills overlap.

There's nothing here's that really secret or mystical but if you haven't actually been taught this, you might not be exposed to some of the details.
All too often, when you see some random person posting questionable things on social media, a giveaway that they're making things up, especially on the dummy, is that the movements they perform, don't seem to portray any consistency of context.

What usually happens is that the make up sequences as if the arms are literally representing left arm and right arm sticking straight out of the dummy body.

The other giveaway is that whatever sequence they've made up doesn't deal with any of the actual skills the dummy is giving you the opportunity to practice. Instead, it's just random pointless "combos".

If you even only occasionally look at Facebook, you'll probably have an idea of who/what I'm talking about.

So, following from a previous post of some of our Lok Sau, I figured it'd be useful to show an explanation of what is happening during the rolling exchange.

As I say in the clip, in the roll, what we are focusing on, are the two points of contact; when they touch my attacking hand, or when my covering hand receives contact.

The first action we train from the basic established roll, is when they touch my attacking hand. What I didn't explain in the clip, is what these two points of contact are trying to represent.

When they are touching my attacking hand, it is essentially as if my attack has been stopped, or is otherwise being cleared.

When my covering hand receives contact, it is as if I've been attacked.

In other words, the basic rolling is constantly flipping you between an attacking position and a covering position. The points of contact then can be used as reference points for you to play with different responses, depending on how you're picturing that particular moment. In our training, we start of with fixed attacking patterns that then help you develop a feel for where attacks can cone from, during these fixed attacks, which transfers to other drills. Because we do this drill square on, a "correct" Lap Sau with correct stance turn is clearly different to a simple line covering drop, which we find helps the student better distinguish the difference between only having the arm cleared and actually having stance/frame/facing messed with.

We also then use this as an opportunity to give the student 3 different examples of a Lap Sau, at 3 different positions, with 3 different effects so that they can practice the timings (and footwork) for Wu Sau, Pak Sau and Gan Sau, which I have another clip for later...

But circling back to the last post I made, when are proficient at the roll and our standard attacks, it is just a starting point for some free play.

An old clip of me and the other chap having a gentle roll outside of class.

What a lot of people who don't actually train wing chun often fail to realise, is that the drills you see, are *just* tools.

In early stages, it gives the student a context for why those actions.

The drills themselves having a degree of resistance then helps them understand how the actions work and what feedback you are looking for during contact.

When you are familiar with the format, the drill can then used as reflex training, whether it is purely to do with hand - speed - reaction, or jumping from roll to attack (or defence), or even when you feel change in the hands but react with your feet.

The roll itself is just a reference framework for you to use as you need/want. Are there set actions that are part of the standard format of the roll? Absolutely but the goal isn't to get good at the roll, it is to get good at the skills and attributes that the roll allows you to train.

Improve those skills and the roll improves.

Then, when you are fully into training, you will start to naturally break out of the roll because the contact/situation dictates it but when you establish a contact that matches the roll, you go back into the roll. The roll then, is there so you have a consistent and replicable pattern where deviations naturally occur. Sometimes you are waiting for the deviations, sometimes you see if you can force them to make that deviation (error).

What this does, is it at tunes your brain to detecting things that are deviating from that "standard" because that's what Wing Chun is really about. It shows you a bunch of strong frames and the limits of those frames so that you learn to "feel" when you are not optimal and you move accordingly to re-establish a strong frame, in the correct direction, facing the other guy.

And something more Traditional.

We started to go over the Fundemental Drills to prepare some of the students for a grading so I collected a series of Instagram Posts for them to review the basic initial set of variations into attacks. We start by focusing on identifying the two points of contact with the primary focus being the touch on the striking position; the "Lap Sau" or otherwise.

From here, we change position or (counter) attack and then, as you get better, you see where that takes you.

After a lot of nagging and persuading, I've finally given in and decided to post some videos of things we do in and out of class.

Mostly, we film things for students to have a record of things we go over in class but inevitably, we do also get videos of us messing around.

Another thing is that we've all seen videos of the traditional drills, which remains a large part of the training, especially for the newer students who are still just learning but as you progress, we want to leave the drills behind because, to steal a phrase from a different teacher:

You apply the Skill, not the Drill.

As one of our students recently said, rote memorisation isn't the entirety of learning or understanding.

With that in mind, I figured it might be interesting to show what we get up to, in and out of class, and what variations we do to train certain things.​

***Note:

This remains my personal channel of my clips from videos I made, so not 100% affiliated with the school and its official channels but that might change in the future...