BENEFITING FROM OUTSIDE INFLUENCES.

 

In top level professional Elite Sports if a player can improve by as little as 1% they can earn many millions of dollars in extra prize money

In the last post I spoke of changing our thinking and approach to moving in Wing Chun, and how if we can connect to other skills from other places, such as sports, then we can dramatically increase our rate of improvement.

Previously I focused on throwing skills and how they relate and can improve our understanding and application of Biu Gee, today I want to revisit how Ice Hockey and Speed Skating can improve our understanding and application of Chum Kiu.

But firstly we need to accept that there is no internal power in Wing Chun, as hopeful and tempting as that may be, standing still moving our arms will give us nothing we were not born with, everything is physical, in fact everything is Physics.

I occasionally get outside students from other schools or friends of friends coming to see me to help them with Chum Kiu.

I ask them to show me what they know and then apply resistance against their movement, in fairness if they knew what to do properly they would not be seeing me so to be expected they fail to move correctly.

I ask them “where are you moving from”?

The most common answer is “my centre”.

This is wrong.

All movement comes from the ground, not the hips, not the centre, these are the initiators of the force but not where we are moving from, this is a subtle but enormous difference, once we understand this we can begin to understand the fundamental aspects of Chum Kiu.

Straight off the bat we can explore this with an office chair.

It is the interaction with the ground that makes all movement, when the waist turns it creates torsion that is transferred into movement.

Without that connection to the ground all we can do is wiggle our butt.

It is the torsion in the leg that creates the down force that coupled with dropping the weight creates instant movement as soon as we remove any brakes we may of put in place, such as our other leg, a common error made by students that think the Y.C.K.Y.M. is an actual working stance.

The Y.C.K.Y.M. introduces us to the idea of torsion, allows us to experience it, feel it, trust it, to get what I mean think of it as being two rear legs in Chum Kiu being trained at the same time, which of course is what it is.

The torsion in the leg can be created in numerous ways, but the most effective for dynamic application, and the most natural is by turning the chest.

If we understand Core Winding and allow the upper body separation that we can learn from Biu Gee the act of turning the chest creates torsion with the waist and passes it down the kinetic chain via weight dispersion into the foot, then the ground, Newtons third law then turns this into movement.

When I was a nipper and learning the fundamentals of Skating for Ice  Hokey the coach would say when you turn you go top down, turn with your head not your feet, this is the same thing, the head turns the Chest and so on down to the feet, the legs and feet themselves do nothing except keep us upright.

When we do Chum Kiu in the training hall we can get many things wrong and never really notice, on the ice even the smallest errors in balance, weight dispersal, weight shifting and postural alignment can and usually do result in kissing the ice.

An error many students that spend too much time in the Y.C.K.Y.M frequently make is trying to keep the feet flat on the ground, this interferes with the alignment of the reaction force from the planet, in our everyday life when we walk there is a certain amount of natural pronation that occurs, we really must free up the ankles to allow natural pronation to occur where and when it is needed, we do not deliberately pronate the foot, but neither do we prevent it from happening.

Allowing the natural weight shift to pronate my foot, even if I just lean into it creates and action that pushes the floor, the resulting reaction moves me forwards, if I use torsion to pronate it has the effect of magnifying that action / reaction.

 

OTHER INPUTS from WC INCa’s on Vimeo.

 

The big difference between being on the ice and being in the training hall is all about traction, in the training hall our feet create traction with the floor that prevent us from realising we are minimally out of balance and alignment, or that we are building negative or at least contrary tension or torsion in our body, on the ice the traction is so slight that these negatives instantly effect our direction and stability.  Having even just a slight understanding of what it takes to be balanced on a slippery surface is a huge advantage on a sound surface.

In top level professional Elite Sports if a player can improve by as little as 1% they can earn many millions of dollars in extra prize money, it makes sense to cross reference everything we think we know against modern sports science.

 

TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESS, WORK TO YOUR STRENGTH.