More on the subject of following-up

The situation in WT is that – in contrast to most other styles – our intelligently conceived positioning means that we are hardly susceptible to being struck by an opponent at the same moment when we strike him. Our successful hit almost completely precludes his, which is not true for other styles. This means that delivering hits ourselves is the best protection we have. If you are inactive, you will be hit. So when the teacher has hit the student, the student is able to hit the teacher back if the latter stops attacking. Moreover, the attack must be pretty hard to fulfil this protective function. Harder than one would want to inflict on a student. It follows from this that in normal, friendly Chi-Sao, a student will always be able to follow up successfully, but he has no right to be proud of any blow he lands as a result. The only hit of which we can be truly proud is the one we manage to deliver without any particular strength and without any particular speed, quickly exploiting a situation or detecting a gap in the other's defence, or – as if unintentionally – provoking such a gap and penetrating it with perfect timing and equally perfect coordination – if possible also ensuring that for that moment, the arms of the opponent are immobilised. We can only pat ourselves on the back if criteria such as these are met.

The difficulty of being the "winner" in Chi-Sao in the eyes of spectators

Being the obvious winner for spectators in "friendly" Chi-Sao is difficult. As we know, Chi-Sao is not about winning but about practicing. Nonetheless, there may sometimes be reasons for wanting to show one's superiority.

After a playful Chi-Sao session an insensitive partner with little awareness may even imagine himself the winner, although he was only ever able to strike in second place by following up after being hit. And only because his superior partner was too nice to deliver harder attacks.
So without being brutal, how do we make it unmistakably clear to our partner or any spectators that we are superior?
My Si-Fu has developed the habit of giggling whenever the situation is not quite clear, as anybody who laughs must be the superior party.
Many years ago I had precisely this problem somewhere abroad, when a "Wing Tsun master" from another style attended one of my Chi-Sao seminars – together with a group of his students who greatly admired him. At that time I naturally made sure I was at my most "formidable" during my demonstrations, therefore I was amazed when this visitor nonetheless had the temerity to challenge me to Chi-Sao in front of his and my students after I had finished teaching.

This was an awkward situation from which I had nothing to gain, for …

• if I won, he would lose the respect of his students and I would lose a friendly colleague or potential student
• if I allowed him to follow up, I would damage my reputation
• if I hit him so hard that he was physically unable to follow up, I would look like a brutal thug to my students.

So I wisely decided on one of the two "neck-pulls" from the 1st set of the wooden dummy form. From Poon-Sao I grabbed him in a flash and had him in a choke-hold that gave him no escape and no air. He had no chance, none at all. When I released him out of professional courtesy, so that things would not get drastic or too embarrassing for him, he turned to his students and said: "He did that rather well, just as I always show you," and to me: "Could you do that again please?"

I was somewhat alarmed by this second challenge. Did he perhaps have an answer up his sleeve with which he might mount a defence? After all, he now knew how I would attack. Against my better judgement, I agreed to repeat the same attack.
Once again he was unable to escape, and I was either too fast or he was too slow for the slightest counter-measure on his part.
One again he asked me to repeat it. With the same result.

And once again he praised me. After the 10th time I saw what he was up to: he realised that he had no chance against me, but cunningly positioned himself as my teacher and delivered praise as if I were his student. And his trick actually worked with the students he had brought with him, as they did not register how desperately and uselessly their master was fighting against my hold. He appeared to them to be submitting to it voluntarily, and pretended that he was examining me (!). Once I had realised this, I took a little revenge: I left him in the choke-hold until he would have fallen over if I suddenly released him. Even then I could not overdo things, as this would have been an act of brutality towards someone who was (voluntarily?) helpless. This encounter, which is amusing with hindsight, showed me that Chi-Sao is completely unsuitable for purposes of comparison or to show who is better, i.e. for competitions.

But of course we already knew that, right? And for other reasons?

Lack of communication

Normally a Chi-Sao class is dedicated to a particular topic, e.g. practicing a sensitive Jam-Sao. One mistake we might make is to press the teacher's attack downward with our Jam-Sao hand. Chi-Sao lessons are usually fairly silent affairs, not because every teacher is by nature taciturn, but rather so that the student learns from his mistakes without being distracted by talk. Many teachers have adopted the first few words of the "Tao-Te-King" as a maxim: "The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao", and in the spirit of Zen-Buddhism they are proud of giving no comments and no explanations. Perhaps they even say to themselves: "The one who knows does not say so, and the one who talks does not know". Though of course the apparent profundity of this statement cannot conceal the fact that the person who has stated it must therefore not know either. Anyway, some teachers feel that the moment when they talk about something, e.g. the Bong-Sao – which "actually" does not exist, just as there should be no preplanned technique outside my WingTsun BlitzDefence programme – they fail in their objective. Accordingly they only want to create situations when teaching that help the student reach his own conclusions.

So instead of repeatedly saying: "Don't press my hand down", the teacher bypasses the heavy-handed Jam-Sao with a "circling hand" (Huen-Sao) to deliver a close punch over the Jam-Sao. Now if the student does not stop pressing down with his Jam-Sao, and therefore fails to rectify his mistake, but rather seeks to defend against the punch that is intended to teach him the consequences, then the teacher might gain the impression that the student is ignoring his instruction and prefers to block the punch to show the teacher that it is not a mistake to press downwards with the Jam-Sao. If the teacher feels that the student is suffering from the affliction of being a "know-all", he might think that he is doing what is best for him if he accelerates the punch until the student becomes physically convinced that resistance and pressing down with the Jam-Sao is not good WingTsun.

On this point I also have an amusing incident to recount that happened to me and my Si-Hing, the (unfortunately now deceased) Leung Tuen, in the late 1970s: we were both practicing "inside Pak-Dar", i.e. he was giving me "Pak-Sao with inside punch" and I defended with a "Pak-Sao and inside punch" of my own. The whole thing happens at very high speed, otherwise you are hit. Although I was working hard, my Kung-Fu brother "punished" my obviously too weak striking technique with a hard punch. So I upped the power until I was almost at my maximum. But Leung Tuen was still not satisfied, and in turn increased his power to keep me under pressure. Eventually we had both increased our punching power to bone-jarring proportions, but neither of us would give up.

It was only years later, after my Si-Hing Leung Tuen had learned a little rudimentary English, that we spoke about this incident and realised that we had both suffered a misunderstanding. What I did not know at the time, and nobody told me, was that the important aspect of this exercise is the Pak-Sao: the punch itself should be delivered with a slightly opened fist, and in a very controlled manner! In the way I was accustomed from the hard styles, I was probably punching with a "heavy", clenched fist and a "flying" elbow. In this case the power comes only from the arm and shoulder, rather than from the entire body. My first punch had already been too hard, so my Si-Hing wanted to correct me, but as he spoke no English, he simply gave me an equally hard punch to the chest. This led me to conclude that he increased the power to show me that my own punch was too "weak". So we both gradually increased our punching power without either of us calling it quits, and it was a wonder that neither of us suffered a fractured sternum. Sometimes communication is also very useful in Chi-Sao.

This is a further extract from my book "Fightlogic 3!" published by EWTO-Verlag in June 2011, which is now available in its 2nd, extended edition with 441 pages.

Your SiFu/SiGung
Keith R. Kernspecht