FistsOfFury

Mother of God! You got the wrong end of the stick! Were not turning into dancing faggots! All we have done is just incorporate some of the spin and falls, were just experimenting. How does this reflect on our martial arts skills? Is it such a crime to experiment? When we fight, we don't start dancing, we still adhere to the WC core, we just introduced some spin and falls for laffs. You people need to chill a little.

I want to talk about grappling and dance! On the old argument of that Wing Chun doesn't have any grappling. A lot of schools don't teach grappling and if you ask why not/what if you get into a headlock, the simple reply is "you should never get into that situation in the first place". I didn;t think this was an appropriate response, whilst I do not think that arts such as ju-jitsu are very effective, especially their contention that "95% of fights end up on the ground", i do find some things they have are good. I cross trained with a jujitsu instructor and covered some of the syllabus, mainly forward/backward rolls, how to fall if thrown. These have proven very useful. A Wing Chun artist cannot go around thinking that they will never be thrown down, or maybe they might need to escape with a back roll. I have practiced these rolls and falls to be in line with the centre line principle and find them to be effective in suprising people! On dance, I watched breakdancers and was impressed by their moves. Recently we have taken this to heart and tried to incorporate breakdancing with Wing Chun. So far it is kind of working! IF someone throwns a punch, we can simply appear to collapse to the ground and swivel and sweep the person from their feet with a low kick! It takes everyone by suprise. I would love to hear of peoples modifications and new weird stuff to try!

In all honest, much of the one inch punch is urban legend and trickery. It is true that if you are an experienced Wing Chung practitioner, punching at one-inch might be painful to your opponent, but not as painful as Bruce Lee made it out as. You will see many videos and demonstrations of people apparently reeling back in pain from a supposed one-inch punch. It is all a mind trick. It is the same as those magicians who convince someone they can push them with out touching them, as crazy as it may sound, but these people convince the other person that they will fall. Similarely when those TV evangelicalists convince wheelchair bound people to stand, they never tell you for one that the person is wheelchair bound from injury and was not actually born parapalegic. The wheelchair bound person conivinces their body to stand up and think it is "The Lord Jesus Saviours Power". With the one-inch punch, the person performing it convinces the lemons that they will feel great pain and will be thrown back several feet. I do not doubt that an experienced person can cause some damage at a one inch, but its about as good as the one-mile punch.

The most important thing is form and skill, unlike other martial arts, Wing Chun at least doesn't need a supreme level of fitness as a prerequsite. As long as you can stand up and move your arms, your pretty much there! Standing in the classic Wing Chun stance will develop your body power and to some extent tone some of your body. If you've not been physically active before this and intend on going to Kung Fu soon, at least stretch daily, after a few days of vigourous stretching, you will feel so different, plus it will help you enormousely in Wing Chun.

The most important thing is form and skill, unlike other martial arts, Wing Chun at least doesn't need a supreme level of fitness as a prerequsite. As long as you can stand up and move your arms, your pretty much there! Standing in the classic Wing Chun stance will develop your body power and to some extent tone some of your body. If you've not been physically active before this and intend on going to Kung Fu soon, at least stretch daily, after a few days of vigourous stretching, you will feel so different, plus it will help you enormousely in Wing Chun

Firstly practice Sil Lim Tao daily infront of the mirror and if you have advanced to other forms, practice them as well. One of the other gentlemen who posted here mentioned using a Wing Chung dummy, this is good (the dummies were developed from people practicing at home in cramped Hong Kong apartments), but if you have only just started out, perhaps you should invest in one later on rather than now. The most important thing is form, but don't try to copy your instructors form exactly. The most important thing is to develope your own form, or to find what your body does naturally. Another postee mentioned using the bean bags, these are good, but spend a good half hour daily and try using water punching as well. For this fill up a bucket of cold water and punch the waters surface and try not to enter the water, this develops the concept of using force in the punch at the moment of contact. Try using a speed punching bag, whilst your Sifu might say you can only punch in the one style, try sticking to stance but punching in a western boxing style. Hope this helps

Asides from other things, from a biomechanics point of view, the three bottom knucles are used because in a properly executed punch, they will be in line with the radius and ulna bones of the lower arm. Since the elbow is the instigator of the punch (in Wing Chun the elbow drives rather than the shoulder, as in boxing), the force of the punch will be in a straight line endibng up in those three bottom knuckles. The other two knucles are hence useless. In regards to whether they would break, is probably only possible if the stirke is performed incorrectly- i.e not in line with elbow .