Posts Tagged ‘coordination’

Stance and Handedness

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

lemur-boxing Lots of people get bit confused when they first start learning Wing Chun. Knowing the moves is one thing, coordinating them is another. They are often puzzled as to why they are having trouble with what should be, and is in principle, a simple idea. But fear not, all it takes is a little practice. In my experience people surprise themselves with how quickly they can pick things up, despite initial frustrations.

What is interesting is the number of people that can just do it off the bat are pretty rare. I’ve met about two, and I’m not one of them.

People are used to doing things sequentially rather than concurrently. Furthermore, seasoned martial artists and boxers, are often the ones that have it toughest. Some need to get used to simultaneous control and attack, which can be quite alien. They are also used fighting a certain way such as orthodox or southpaw, and ask which is the lead hand, etc.

What may surprise people, is we train both side equally. We don’t promote bias, so a weak side should be equalised as much as possible. Of course there might be a natural tendency always, but that doesn’t mean that it dictates how you fight to a large degree. The sides and stance don’t determine fixed roles of particular limbs.

Some people swear by the idea that a particular stance and lead give and advantage, and not doing that will be a disadvantage. We don’t subscribe to that at all. First of all, training the areas that are difficult, if anything in the long term improves your overall awareness, and ability. So it is definitely worth doing. Secondly being typecast and lacking adaptability, doesn’t always bode well.

In terms of stance, we talk of the neutral “goat” (Sil Lim Tao) stance and also the turning stance, and different types of foot work like arrow, triangle, circular, jamming, etc. But really it is just one universal stance footwork and the principles are consistent throughout. I hope to discuss this in more detail at some point.

What can be done on one side, can be done on the other.

The important thing is we don’t judge, everyone get the coaching that is require to get them up to speed.

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Reflex

Monday, March 7th, 2011

Motor reflex is reacting to stimulus without thinking, such as incepting a punch (which would also be combined with an attack). The more you practice, the faster your reflexes are. As coordination improves, you are able to use that to respond faster.

There are couple of ways of improving motor reflex: Repetitive and spontaneous.

With repetitive training one or many techniques are practiced over and over again in a stereotyped way. This type of training enables you to develop and refine techniques, but can prove to be ineffective in the real world, as repetitions are scenario based. Since no two situation are ever the same, scenario based training is limited.

In Wing Chun, training has a different emphasis, cultivating the use of energy through Fan Sau. This demands both a high degree of coordination and quickened motor reflex, so requires a more effective approach for improving the reflexes, which lies in the practice of unpredictable, unchoreographed partnership training. More random freestyle sparing are encouraged through the framework of Chi Sau, and are countered by the reflex action of techniques in muscle memory.

Chi Sau is a varied method of attack and defense training, providing fertile ground for the development of reflexes, to deal with what cannot be predicted. It is through this, that reflexes improve not only in quick delivery, but also responding to shifts in an opponent’s ‘energy’, regarding any subtle or not so subtle changes changes such as push, pull, raising an a arm, loss of contact, etc.

Relaxation is a prerequisite to good reactions, because tense muscles simply do not respond well, and they also make it very difficult to be sensitive to changes in the opponents energy.

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Coordination

Monday, February 28th, 2011

Once techniques have been committed to muscle memory, coordination then kicks in. Coordination allows you to carry out synchronous and simultaneous movements smoothly, with good timing and ultimately without thinking. Coordination provides the building blocks for putting techniques together in a more autonomous fashion. As coordination improves so does timing and awareness in space, and therefore it will perfect your techniques. The better coordination you develop the easier to becomes to learn new applications.

During Chi Sau, practice a high degree of coordination is developed. The awkwardness of the combined rolling seems a strange and somewhat of benign activity at first, but its significance must not be underestimated, as it provides the foundation on which to improve. With Chi Sau, coordination is developed not only using individual moves but also double and triple combinations carried out at the same time. Wing Chun can require coordination of both arm and legs, so you could be using three limbs in concurrent motion.

It is this concurrent coordination that new students find most difficult to get their head round in the beginning. Some may become despondent, but through perseverance and practice, as the body commits many an action to muscle memory, it becomes accustomed to moves a high degree of coordination. To the point that it is second nature.

Through Chi Sau training Fan Sau is cultivated. This is where coordination is taken out of the realm of repetitive sequences, to a level where synchronous actions are independent of choreographed moves, and instead rely on pure coordinated reaction at a specific moment in time. Where you handle what is present using your autopilot.

Coordination is not only about being synchronous, it is also about awareness. The more you practice a technique the more familiar you become with it. You have confidence in its versatility. As you become more accustomed to a technique, that sets the wheel in motion improvement in reflex speed and accuracy overall.

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Muscle Memory

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

What is muscle memory? The human body, with its brain, is like a super-computer that stores information, from which it recalls to process and make decisions. That much is obvious. Of course, when you are taught something or experience an event you remember it, and though through time, sickness or injury the memory can fade. Nevertheless through repetition that memory becomes more deeply ingrained. So when you need to recall it becomes much less a conscious process and much more automatic.

This especially applies to movement. When you teach your body to do something over time the body and brain work together as a whole and become adept to the action. From this coordination, and spacial awareness are developed. With this applied learning your body effectively stores these prototype actions into “muscle memory”.

To commit a technique to muscle memory requires many hours of repetitions, either in a specific manner or by improvised actions. Two examples of committing to muscle memory are learning to ride a bike and swimming. Once you know how to do these you don’t forget even if you refrain from doing these for some time. Your stamina and fitness levels may fall, but you won’t forget how to do these entirely. It is the same in Wing Chun, once you have committed actions through Chi Sau to muscle memory these will remain with you for the rest of your life.

With time it becomes easier to store techniques into muscle memory, the body becomes more skillful at learning new moves faster and with greater skill and coordination. Physiologically and neurologically you body will change to suit how it is being used. However the rate at which this happens varies so don’t feel bad if it is not all smooth sailing, that in itself will help you body learn, you just have to keep trying.

Wing Chun demands a high degree of repetition of techniques not only in a fixed method but also more spontaneous and improvised. After all, what is shown one way can be used in many other ways. In Wing Chun, this concept enhances a student’s ability to commit actions to muscle memory and adapt to use these in many different ways and combinations. Muscle memory forms the basis for “auto-pilot” responses, which is a characteristic of Wing Chun advancement.

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Principles of Chi Sau Part 2 (Evolution of Progress)

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

It has taken me quite some time to put together this rather complex topic and finally, after much deliberation, I have decided to explain my thoughts on the typical evolution of progress through Chi Sau training. Ultimately all elements correlate to advance, not just an individual’s Chi Sau skills, but in fact their Wing Chun as a whole.

These elements are progressively developed, where each represent a level of attainment that are constantly improving through practice. Elements highly are interrelated.  Consider for example muscle memory relies on technique. Through repetition of a technique, in time the action becomes embedded in muscle memory.

The following diagram is a guide of how elements are associated with each other. The combinations are not a golden rule rather a way of gauging progress, where the solid arrows are typical of higher attainment and the dotted are common development routes which contribute  help to reach that higher level along the way.

evolution1

Right now I am focusing mostly on the “concrete” external aspects and will be covering each. I also plan to cover the “abstract” internal path later, which is just as important and interrelated, but it is very much a personal journey.

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