Nov 2005

One thing you don’t catch right away, when you see Sifu chi sao, is his stance.  When he locks his structure, you can never push him back. He literally just stays in place and the only time he’ll ever have to move if he’s force to close the gap because of something that you did.   Once you’ve got a center like Sifu, then you literally see how powerful structure is compared to anything else.

Sifu is extremely quick in the timing sense of making sure his triangle is never exposed.  When you watch the video Alain on the right is trying to blaze attacks through, but if you watch Sifu his blocks are almost in slow motion, and some how some way he’s right on time.  Allot of times, people end up taking attack lines without fully having the line, or controlling the point, and more often then not, these attacks have no chance of connecting.

Not sure what the fascination with 1 inch power.  Its probably the easiest thing to develop, as far as exploding your ability.  But, people often ask how do you develop this, and you do that literally on day one with learning the proper motion of the punch.  Punch, done correctly is based off motion, when that’s achieved, you can then develop the stretch to achieve the release.  Once your at that stage you can then explode any of your attacks no matter what your doing.

This was a demonstration that shows, you literally just have to stick your hands out in triangle formation in order to block any incoming attacks that are directed towards you.  If you can understand that concept and dominate the line, then you’ll be able to intercept attacks when its time to block, or if takeover an attack if you choose to do so.  Understanding the use of the triangle is one of the most important lessons a Wing Chun kung person must learn.

Here Sifu is playing around with Phil in chi sao.  He’s almost machine like in motion when he does his roll.  People often misinterpret relaxed in the roll and just flail their arms, and think this is how chi sao should look.  But it’s a balance of using just the right amount to hold the structure, and just the right amount of being relaxed in order to develop the right motion for anything that you do.