breaking, moving, and isolating structure
I recently posted a few of my ideas on a different thread about those who mix wing chun with other stuff. I shared some of my ideas and read what others posted. The biggest thing I learned from cross training seriously in a different martial art is the wing chun structure, and how it will fail if you are a robot. You must be fluid, you must have motion, you must have a dynamic outlook of what your body can do. Dogmatic views and over obcessing about how the perfect tan sao should be in your structure limits you right there.
This is why Chi Sao was invented. It makes wing chun a fluid living art. Lately, I have been pondering with the ideas to break my structure. Mainly in really close clench situations, or when my opponet traps me. Resetting to wing chun structure IME, is not the best idea. Instead listen to what your opponet does, and learn how to isolate and break your structure. For example, you and your opponet square up and you toss him a right vertical punch which he (we'll assume its two guys fighting) blocks it with a wu sao and then controls your arm trying to trap it down to your body. Now, you know whats coming next so you isolate your structure, but break your structure with your right arm, you give it to him, and make him comit to his movement. Now you can use that against him.
Here is a video I am sure some of you have seen with a famous break dancer in it. This guy has infinite knowledge of energy release and structure, and watch how he breaks it down and isolates it to accomplish certain tasks.
http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/13782/
The part where he forward break falls and then just effortlessly pops right back up the same way he fell, is pretty impressive IMO.
Which brings me up to my next point about wing chun structure. You don't train a tan sao to be a tan sao. You are training an idea, a concept, and building an energy. You are not training to perfect structure to fight with in the SLT, you are building attributes. You learn to apply these ideas in chi sao using the movements you know from the forms. Its not always going to be the same like in the form and a lot of people on this forum will argue with each other over centerline, application, history, harmony, whatever. However, the form is just a guideline and when your structure adjusts to the situation and if you freeze frame and and drop back to the YJKYM and SLT position you can check to see if the idea was what it should be. Of course I assume all of you know this.
Broken structure....
On the ground your structure is not the same, but wing chun theory can still exist. your centerline changes, your bridges change, your movements change. Same thing with long distance. You must learn to break out of your structure when the element changes. However, the theory of the structure is still there, its just when the game changes the idea changes. Which is why I love wing chun. Now, obviously some things will not transfer to other mediums and some things will be similiar at best, but somethings will just plain make sense to you. Maybe our monkey brains cannot comprehend it until we train it. Every now and then I will learn something I already knew because I was never in that situation or in that range with that technique. Or I will mess up and then think about it and realize what I should have really done, and what would have been a better decision.
Motion is another thing I think that plays into this. In the end all you are controlling is energy in motion. Your structure is controlled by your energies, and your motions. Whoever has the better control of the energy and motion has a better chance of winning a fight. You train to toss your hip into your punches and kicks but after developing that attribute for a while you can put your whole body behind a punch with barely moving your hips.
I also do taiji on a regular basis, yang family. I know the short form, the sword form, and practice push hands. now in tui sao (push hands) isolating is a big part of it. You relax and maintain your structure and when someone tries to control you with your own arm and they are actually doing it, you relax and isolate it from the structure and use it against them. I have been doing this for a few years now and I have been told by sifu over and over again this basic concept but only recently have I truly began to scratch the surface on it. Someone attacks me in push hands by using my arm as a lever to my spine to control my body I let them have my arm and when their motion is going one way I attack the yin side of them and use it against them. I mean you can really toss people around doing that. Of course I will admit that this type of stuff does not work that well with people my level or greater (well push hands is much like chi sao, when someone is better than you its obvious). So I go back to basics and do things there.
I combine the structures and energies too, I use a huen sao a lot in push hands, and a fook sao as well. I even use just saos along with a huen sao to control the yin and yang sides of my opponet.
So really IMHO, all you need is lots of hard work and to be serious and open minded about your wing chun and it can take you to levels beyond of what you know from the forms or from what a book tells you, or from what your lineage even says. Its an art thats made to be advanced by its practitioners. Dogmatic thinking about zen, lineage, history, proper application of techniques, etc is not going to get your wing chun to a real level. I respect those things, and I at one point was really into kung fu history in general and read a lot of mythical stories about lots of different lineages of different styles. Very interesting reading but a lot of it had nothing to back it up as far as proof goes.
Oh well I am pretty tired from class tonight and I got beat up a bit so I am going off to bed, good luck to everyone in their training, and please feel free to criticize, comit, bash, congratulate, or ignore my post.
