Wing Chun Vlog 2 - The Basics
August wing chun classes started out pretty good. It was still the summer so I fortunate enough to be able to go twice a week. There definitely seems to be a pattern to the beginning of class that I’m starting to get into the groove of. We start class with a couple of different warm ups that don’t seem to change to often, some kicks, some siu nim tao practice, and usually some conditioning.
I think that last one is particularly important. I personally feel that martial artists and martial arts schools often don’t put nearly enough focus on conditioning as they should. Martial arts are a physical discipline where you’re often hitting and being hit. Even if you’re doing something without a lot of hitting, like many kinds of tai chi, there’s still plenty of moving, stances, forms, and things like that. All of these are going to be easier if you’re strong and/or flexible enough.
The way that siu nim tao is practiced in class is cool but I feel like early on it can be a little rough. They way it works is that everyone practices the part of the form (or forms if anybody has learned the second or third forms) that they know on their own and the instructor walks around helping and correcting people. Maybe if it’s time for you to learn the next part you’ll get shown it. On the one hand it’s cool because you can practice at your own pace. You don’t need to go fast or keep up with anyone or stop when you don’t know any more moves. You can do slow if you want. You can focus on a certain move if you want. It gives you some freedom. It’s not so great because this wing chun school teaches siu nim tao VERY slow. So early on you may only know 2 moves of the form and might spend 10 minutes doing those same 2 moves.
In this class we also started doing some drills that I’ve seen a lot since. I’ve enjoyed them. They’re pak da, tan da, and gang da. Each is done with a step into the punch and then you step back into the original ma bu (horse stance) to switch sides. I’ve enjoyed them because they gave a sense of continuity through the early classes. I could look at them as something I was learning over multiple classes and improving on as I practiced more. I like the sense of progression.
In the next class I saw an interesting difference between wing chun and tang soo do. We were doing wrist grab self defenses, which seem to be early self defenses in both tang soo do and wing chun, and I noticed the hand is moved differently to break the grab. In tang soo do the hand is usually pulled away from other person against the thumb, which is the weakest part of the grab. In wing chun the hand was pushed against the fleshy part of the hand between the thumb and index finger. The idea is similar but not quite the same.
Wing chun is still going well and I’ve really enjoyed getting back into it. I feel like the class is really finding it’s stride after this week with some good repeatable early techniques and some cool differences with tang soo do.
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