The Relative Value Of Chi Sau (Part 2)

There has been a lot of development in Martial Arts since the emergence of MMA and UFC.
Wing Chun must remain dynamic to ride that wave, not for adaptation to fight sport but as an expectation of common output that we have the greatest likelihood of encountering.

Chi Sau is a core vehicle for producing relaxation whilst adapting under pressure. It exists to foster practical spontaneous change. It also operates to manifest an individual’s expression of feeling based skill. It is a mechanism for building connotation of pressure, intention, and danger that does not exist solely on what the eyes perceive. This is advantage.

As a mechanism for skill enhancement, Chi Sau ensures we do not inhibit the gifted, or leave in our wake a school of cardboard cut-outs identical to their teacher and lacking in individuality.
If we lack coaching ability or care in leaving people to change during Chi Sau without the necessary experience to address their mistakes, then we should reassess our role as a teacher in providing guidance associated with fighting success.

Without discussing and practicing Chi Sau we remove a student’s ability to express Wing Chun freely, and diminish potential for success when using touch to assist in combat independently.

What could take Chi Sau’s place in providing students with the independence to experiment and build solid assertions on how to apply their Wing Chun effectively?  

Everybody is entitled to an opinion, but if I was ever to imply that my experience was so great that I could afford to remove Chi Sau from my syllabus and transmit an equivalent degree of skill to a new generation without it, I would have to be extremely confident in my training methodologies and the aptitude of my students, before removing such an intricate piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
Everybody makes mistakes, until the human race loses the propensity to make mistakes, Chi Sau remains appropriate to training.

I have never met a respect worthy exponent of Wing Chun that hadn’t absorbed themselves in some sort of Chi Sau practice as part of their development. A characteristic of each and every decent teacher I have come across is their uniqueness of output and the ability of that uniqueness to remain underpinned by the core concepts and principles of Wing Chun via Chi Sau.

Chi Sau could be viewed as a pipe that students pass through, every so often we hit a knot and between us, we work to untie those knots so free passage in the correct manner may continue.
It is the free unexpected nature of exchange, and the students’ reactive coping mechanisms therein that makes Chi Sau practice a progressive journey and a valuable time tested tool for self assessment.

As a measure of skill, students and teachers alike should factor how intelligent and successful their output is personally. Grounded in the commonalty of violence. Balanced against fight experience.

The problem we have is, Chi Sau is being used as a drill to build skill in avoiding injury. When we remove risk from Chi Sau, Wing Chun is removed completely from its domain. When you remove risk, people act on false opportunity. The probability associated to chance is skewed.

Attitude and change should be ingrained through risk and opportunity. Risk and opportunity in the form of aggression. When it is not, we are participating in a false reality. Without the head splitting honesty of consequence, we have only fight experience as balance and gauge.  Without adequate experience or tutelage, you are playing blindfold Chi Sau... without the blindfold.


Chi Sau should provide opportunity for honest reflection. (not at how well we fight, but at how well we sense and adapt to stimuli in the immediate). However, when two parties connect with poor skill, when two parties fail to acknowledge the damage associated with injury, when two parties are not examined by a competent, honest reflection is subdued by ‘what if’s’ and recognition hidden by non-contact.

Wing Chun is currently marred by a lack of respect. Bowing is usually sycophantic, (empty courtesy at best). Seldom an act of acknowledgement and respect.
Respect is recognition. Practicing fighting without the recognition of being struck, fosters very little respect and understanding between individuals. When we are enjoying ourselves, we don't tend to pay it much attention - because we are too busy....enjoying ourselves! When something unpleasant happens, we are inclined to stop and examine that thing, in the hope we can prevent 'it' happening again. I have hit a lot of people and have been hit repeatedly under controlled conditions. I bow or touch gloves before I do that. I bow after I hit them to convey my respect to them, and I bow at the end to convey appreciation for the opportunity to reflect on our interaction.

Outside the gym, when you hit people, some of them want to shake you by the hand – Same difference.

Without dishing out a bit of danger and pain once in a while, we should not expect respect from others, because we have not created a snag in their subjective reality. Neither should we expect a conditioned emotional response to violence and pain, if we have not experienced it with some regularity. Fighters understand this, they can sniff the uninitiated out in a second. Bottom line - individuals who do not grasp the actual and consequential are a danger to themselves. They are unaware.
Sometimes, you have to burst a lip to burst a bubble. This is natural, behaviour adapts, a handshake extends...

Emotional processing of shock and pain, and emotional competence therein is actually more important in building competent individuals than the physical mode of exchange. Without this process, behaviour will not adjust to cope.

The development of Kung Fu has always involved pressure, conflict, and affliction.
Suffering will always catalyse development. From the beginning of history we can track invention next to suffering to either alleviate or accelerate just that. Suffering and survival are inexplicably linked. We need only glance at nature to confirm this. Suffering and survival accompany evolution.

There have been two standout events in my training that led to great change.
The first was falling five and a half feet onto solid concrete at sixteen, smashing my back during a training session in my garage. This took me out of my regular training regime for the best part of two years.
The second was during my Level Two training with Sifu Gary, where over-training with the Dragon Pole led to open cuts becoming infected. This in turn led to me being placed on an intravenous drip and two minor surgeries. I was about 24 hours away from septicemia.
On my return to the UK I was cut open again to remove more infected tissue and it took the best part of eight weeks for it to grow back to skin level and a further twelve weeks to recover from the massive hit I experienced after two months of consecutive antibiotic treatment.


From experience, when you train with resolve through pain and discomfort you access a certain faculty. When you train everyday for long periods of time, you build a certain energy that has to be used up. When you are forced to stop, that component remains active, it keeps going. In both episodes, when that energy could not be used for any more physical practice, it rerouted its self to do something entirely different instead. Something unexpected and useful. I am using this as an example to relay a message. Vitality is cumulative and stimulated by suffering. Suffering is natural, inevitable. Suffering in combat is probable. Fear of suffering is a block. Embracing suffering is a skill. Practicing suffering is depth. It can be a stepping stone to an upgraded state.

Teaching fighting with a zero contact policy that extends across all activities, can do more harm than good. Chi Sau is essential, but it is useful to balance it with some actual.

If we take the experience of being struck and damaged occasionally as microcosmic episodes of suffering, we may begin to examine the propensity for accelerated change produced via mind/body stabilisation (healing, calibration, change). Suffering can be a powerful accelerator in building strength. What do you think Shaolin was doing? There is a lot to be lost, if training bypasses the risk of (potential) suffering. In doing so, you make yourself unavailable to this process of transformation. To eat suffering with all its trials and tribulations is a natural process. Without a little suffering, arguably, we have not demonstrated Kung Fu.
Suffering can enhance and empower you, make you stronger than you were by unlocking abilities you may not have realised.

By participating in fear, judgment, feeling and injury, whilst practicing Kung Fu, we are chipping into this stuff on a daily basis. You can’t escape suffering, but you may well benefit from it. Become acquainted with it, adapt with it, and recognise opportunity in the change relating to it. You can season yourself in the unpleasant on a’ little and often’ basis, or you can wait for something truly traumatic to occur and take the hit all at once. With respect to the latter, a process of change will ensue, but the results may not be identical.

Chi Sau should be balanced with other activities so a mentality and physicality can emerge to be injected back into Chi Sau play. Striking without the limbs in touch, engagement, pressure testing, and the collection of rotational force are, in my opinion, things that should be trained on a supplementary basis to Chi Sau. Being clipped occasionally, hitting bags, holding bags, and being thrown into mats are all very important in the scheme of attribute.

Activity devoid of potential suffering or suffering itself, cannot adequately instil qualities and comprehension born from the nature of violence. Fright, pain, and injury, can have a lasting effect on psychological and physical states (both good and bad, depending on the accumulation of resilience). Respect and understanding are born out of shared honesty. Courage and strength through repeated experience. There is an internal component to competence built through the recognition of, or actuality within - unpleasant experience.  Chi Sau prepares you for modification, but it is not an all encompassing mechanism for fight competence with risk removed. Beware.


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The Relative Value Of Chi Sau (Part 1)

Chi Sau is a tricky topic because it means so many different things to so many different people. Prior to the 1950’s there were not so many people involved. Now masters and teachers in this discipline are numerous, and so a multitude of individual experiences and interpretations are spewed out for the masses, each differing in its focus and practicality.

For this reason, Chi Sau practice is practically impossible to quantify as the permutations of posture, strategy of teacher, fight experience and physiology of teacher and student, bear down heavily on output before we even begin to bring a ‘state of mind’ into the equation.

If we draw into consideration the personal experience of individuals, there are a variety of circumstances that would begin to dictate how functional Chi Sau practice might be in the development of skill for use whilst fighting.

We could ask ourselves,

• Do I possess prior experience of fight behaviour and contact?
• Can I recognise body mechanics and a relationship to gravity?
• Was I engaging, and discussing with senior grades and teachers with a fighting background?
• Have I experienced other exponent’s hands and methods outside of one school or lineage?
• Was there transmission of experience and dedicated passing of plays to address change?
• Do I comprehend when I am struck, and the availability to strike safely from a variety of positions?
• Am I humble? Am I patient? Have I donated sufficient time with superiors to the practice of Chi Sau?

There is so much to consider, so many variables, so many good and bad circumstances and predicaments, it is not surprising that so many approaches co-exist.

But a couple of things remain constant.

The above list dictates to some degree, skill, perspective, experience and honesty.
For successful transfer to fighting, the above list is not optional. For practical transfer from teacher to student, a list like this should operate as a prerequisite for improving fight competency from one generation to the next.

If, as a tick list you are incapable of ‘ticking’ the boxes above, there is a blind spot in perspective, a blind spot that you might wish to address, and a blind spot that might leave martial artists and  potential students with an opinion that Chi Sau is non functional in the development of fighting. More importantly it could leave you with your teeth in your hand.

Wing Chun development needs to be checked against real time eventualities on a contextual basis. If you do not posses a battle checked model for Chi Sau, teaching and training is dangerous. If your understanding and experience cannot adequately pull apart an exchange within striking distance to encompass attack methods familiar and unfamiliar to Wing Chun combat form, then necessarily it is time that you speak with a teacher, or examine other types of fighting in preparedness to meet that and cope accordingly.



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Top 5 Healing Products

I have spent half my life with a bag of peas on something. Luckily I’m still in on piece. 

Injury is a pain - literally! But the plus side to pain is that you generally learn to make fewer mistakes, and forge a body that is accustomed to fixing itself. 

Fighting and fixing go hand in hand, they are like locks and keys. The more you damage, the more you understand how to fix (and vice versa). 

The most important point on this matter is, Kung Fu was developed for the health and maintenance of the human being – not to smash the vessel to the extent whereby the damage becomes irreversible. 

Most people suffer with something, and quite honestly, most people suffer unnecessarily through misinformation, malpractice or laziness. The most important thing to administer when healing is – self belief! 

If you do not believe you are getting better, chances are, you won’t. Along with self belief we sometimes require practical advice so that we may speed our recovery and resume training and activity as quickly as possible.

The following list is my personal top five healing products. I keep all of them in my house and have used all these things regularly with enough success to confidently recommend them to my training partners, friends, and family over the years. – They all work – all of them. 

They are not a substitute for RICE, but work well in combination with the Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation routine AND STRETCHING – the most neglected regime in most peoples healing endeavours. 

I am not advising anybody to buy and use these products, I am relaying personal experience, but you have a choice, and if you asked me which products I associate to successful healing, this would be my definitive list. 

I am not a doctor, and I am not trying to be one, but I have experimented with my body and sought advice from Physiotherapists, Osteopaths, Homeopaths, and Doctors of Chinese medicine to come across a couple of products that work for me.

Hopefully this information is useful to some people and works to alleviate some pain and help you to train stress free and to a greater extent than you would have done otherwise, some of these products are capable of alleviating ailments that have been stuck in a body for a long period of time.

Obviously, some contraindications will always apply based on your body, age, gender, and standard of health. I would advise that you research these products thoroughly, prior to experimenting with them, but if you are (in the most part) young, fit, healthy and in good shape, not pregnant, and not taking prescription medication, you should have no problem with them at all. Remember that although I am mentioning products that are anti inflammatory, in cases of serious injury, allowing the area to swell is generally the best way forward and part of the natural healing process.

Here’s to wishing you a happier healthier lifestyle and regime in 2013!

5. Wood Lock – disregard the name – even though it sounds and smells like something you would treat a garden fence with! 

This is a decent analgesic and also carries anti-inflammatory properties. 

I’m yet to find something I prefer in terms of quick relief probably due to the concentration of camphor, menthol, and Methyl Salicylate, which is greater than most other similar products like your tiger balms, Thai oil, Si Chi, and other deep heat preparations. 

This is great for forgetting about something and getting on with the job at hand. Strains, swellings, mild bruising, and any discomfort experienced through knocks or over exertion are reduced by massaging this preparation into the skin. 

I connotate the Wood Lock sensation as cool rather than hot. I also think that my mind is so accustomed to the smell and sensation of Woodlock that it works to remind my body that there is a problem in a specific area which requires attention; I believe this contributes to accelerate healing. 

I apply this balm during training when I am conscious of an ache, massaging down the growth line. Use your fingertips and be vigorous with rubbing. It is great for shoulders, backs, ankles and elbows, lower lumbar buttocks, hips, and hairline fractures. My knuckles also ache in cold wet weather or after bare knuckle bag work, this product takes the pinch right out. 

You can apply this during training, for best results, I find that if I apply after a hot bath and go straight to bed, when I wake, I am in a much better place. 

DO NOT apply this prior to having a hot bath/shower or before entering a Sauna!!! Wash your hands TWICE before going to the bathroom and all will be well.

4. Yunnan BaiYao Sports Spray – this is also an analgesic. I have better results with this product when there is visible discolouration associated to injury. Different things work for different people. 

If an injury is just a pain with no visible swelling or bruising, I use Woodlock. If however I am treating bright red swelling, dark coloured bruising, black fingers/toes, haematoma, I use this instead. It is very effective in the realms of pain relief (for me), I have applied this to black toes and forgotten all about them! I put some of this on Sifu John Smiths elbow once, and he seemed to forget about that too! This is also great on sprained ankles. My students like this for anything and everything. They often use it on their shoulders after long periods rolling. I find myself replacing this quicker than anything else – more than the Woodlock.

3. Welda Rhus Tox Ointment – this is a great little cream for joints and damage to connective tissues, ligaments and tendons. I used this preparation in combination with stretching when repairing damage to my fingers. I have gained back complete natural motion in both. Whilst an Arnica gel will get in deep to help strained muscle, this seems work better on tissue with a weaker blood supply. It reduces pain and stiffness in cold wet weather, and is great on the lower back after weighted sit-ups or dead lifting if you indulge in that type of thing. Also good I find for painful elbows, hyper-extension and repeated sprains. If you have pain in a joint or on an injury site that is evident when you wake in the morning, but subsides throughout the day or during exercise, if the injury feels like bruising, long after complete healing should have occurred, if you ache when it is cold and damp  – this is a useful cream.

2. Yunnan BaiYao Capsule – I don’t really like oral preparations, but this one is clever. 

This is a haemostatic agent – it stops bleeding. It subsides bleeding internally and externally – fact. 

If you have been fighting and injured, this will work quickly to accelerate the healing process by helping blood to clot and repairing blood vessels. 

This is good for anything strained or injured especially deep internal bleeding. It also supports liver function and has antiseptic qualities. This is great for cuts, excessive bruising and swelling, or as a tonic once or twice a year. It is also good post surgery. If you smashed your body up pretty bad, this is good to take whilst you rest. Two packs are sufficient. I dose two tablets three times daily with food and water, until they are gone. Don’t take this and lie down or on an empty stomach. This needs to dissolve in your stomach not your oesophagus. 

There is a small microdot coloured red in each packet – don’t take this one – you don’t need it unless you are bleeding excessively. This is an excellent, natural medicine. One I hold in high regard.
If you are on blood thinners, or have a history of blood clots, heart conditions, or strokes, I would not recommend that you ingest this. You should not ingest this if you are pregnant.

1. Serrapeptase – This thing is amazing. Serrapeptase is a proteolytic enzyme first discovered in Silk worms which allows them to hatch from a cocoon without melting themselves. Now it is produced in the lab, and works to dissolve non living organic protein – Fibrin, scar tissue, cysts, arterial plaque are all non living organic proteins existent in our bodies to a greater or lesser extent. Scar tissue is our friend whilst healing, but after the body has finished its job, scar tissue may remain which in turn inhibits the natural glide of muscle tissue. This is a common cause or reoccurring pain after injury or surgery. 

Serra has the power to dissolve scar tissue adhesion's that restrict natural movement. After two and a half years attempting to heal a smashed foot that had healed in the wrong position, I took the 80,000 iu – two tablets three times daily on an empty stomach in combination with a stretching regime and a medicated Yunnan Baiyao analgesic patch on the ankle and instep of the damaged foot. Two and a half weeks in, whilst stretching, I actually felt what I imagine was an adhesion give way in the foot, the pain I had experienced for two years when lifting out of compression vanished completely (and so did a problem in my shoulder that I was not treating). I finished the bottle. This is also anti-inflammatory. I would give an injury a good eight/twelve weeks to heal before consuming this, but, if after serious injury or surgery you still experience pain during exertion, a bottle of this may work to bring you more freedom of movement and reduce pain indefinitely during sporting activity. If you are undergoing rehabilitation post surgery, and using stretches designed to break up scar tissue – I would advise that you invest in a bottle of this. I wouldn’t use this and Yunnan Baiyao oral preparation at the same time. If I have been ingesting Yunnan Baiyao, I would take a break of 14 days before introducing Serrapeptase to my system.

I would always rest, ice, stretch, massage, and give the injury minimum eight weeks healing time before attempting to reduce scar tissue with this product. I would not begin taking Serrapeptase until swelling had subsided. It might be wise to make a list of all old/re-occurring injuries whilst taking this and seeing what else disappears.

A couple of general things - You must ice, you must stretch, you must massage, you must continue to move as naturally as you did prior to injury  - you must believe you are fixing and rest appropriately (sleep) to ensure your body can do its housework and mend in good time. 

Always remember, that your body has a miraculous capacity to fix its self and trust it to do a good job. 

With this in mind, we are what we eat. When healing, it is important to alkalize your body through diet. You can research this on the web and look at what foods contribute to an alkaline or acidic state of being. 

Oral pain killers mask pain. I don’t do this, if my body hurts, it is hurting for a reason and I want to know about it especially whilst I examine what and when I am hurting, (especially during training). 

Don’t be afraid to sit in a pain. Find an injury and play, get to know it intimately and work with it to remove it. 

Be gentle with yourself! Over-zealous rubbing, pressing and flexing can be counter productive, remember some injuries may be layered, an old unfixed injury may be the underlying root of a more recent complaint, as one vanishes, you may open something else you had forgotten about – don’t worry, be patient and persevere to get to the root of the affliction. Trust you instincts whilst healing, remember, nobody knows your body better than you.

Believe – believe you are mending AND YOU WILL!

A good doctor of Chinese Medicine can tell you more about the properties of Woodlock and Yunnan Baiyao.

A good Homeopath can talk you through Rhus Tox.

There are dozens of testimonials on the effectivity of Serrapeptase, research thoroughly. 

Good Luck and happy training.

Sifu John



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Way of the Warrior

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