The Relative Value Of Chi Sau (Part 3)

I’d like my students to develop confidence through tried and tested output not regular praise.

Personally, I want to improve constantly and know that my choices and output refine each time I use the Chi Sau mechanism for assistance.

To keep a student operating within fixed drills, or allowing students to experiment within Chi Sau without regular guidance would be akin to keeping water in a bucket.

The water is fixed and remains under my complete control.
Unless I put my hand in the bucket, or tip that bucket, nothing will change. People would never be in a position to experience the truth of their flow against the outpouring of others.

If we view the water in the bucket as human energy requiring expression, what happens when it is somebody unfamiliar ‘tipping that bucket’? If I tip in unexpected direction, that water might well splash about all over the ground.
 

The point is, until people transfer technical play to experience with consequence – nobody knows what will happen.
You can modify drills, and assume people will behave a certain way - until the bucket is tipped unexpectedly, you just don’t know!

At least water from a pipe has movement, flow and direction, a concentrated point for output and focused pressure to get it where we want it. Lat Sau Jik Chung.

I can’t presume that without Chi Sau, my students could work to an equal capacity in building skill.
I remember how I climbed up a mountain. I wouldn’t advise my students to walk round the side - I know what can be seen from the top. I wouldn’t want them to miss the view.

In passing on Chi Sau, I am digging a channel and pouring people in. They have free flowing movement and the benefit of experimentation – the same way I did. I have guidelines and suggestions based on experience to assist them in experimenting and working things out for themselves. I would much rather that, than to be sat at the bottom of a bucket as my teachers little experiment. You have to be your own experiment!

As discussed, there are some things missing from Chi Sau, useful things, but as a bridge for the emergence of touch based skill, I don’t see how you could be without it.

You cannot replace Chi Sau with sparring in a traditional context and expect better results. As a competent Kick boxer, when I first viewed Chi Sau – that was a pull – I knew I couldn’t do it! That’s why I learnt how to do it.
And as somebody who spent the best part of eight years, not dabbling, but cross training rigorously in Wing Chun and Thai Boxing side by side, I have built solid assertions on the correlative value of each, what is the same, what is different, what may permeate from one to the other, and what for that matter cannot.

My teacher Sifu Gary Lam is no different – that’s why he is my Sifu.

I stem from what is now Tai T’sung Kung Fu, an organisation that was built through blood and sweat with the emergence of Wu Shu Kwan in 1960’s England. There was, and still is, a heavy focus on producing caliber martial practitioners capable of dominance when facing, Thai Boxers, Kickboxers, Chinese, Japanese and Korean stylists. That code was burnt into my identity a long time ago. It forces me to remain pragmatic about my training methods as someone who’s roots were embedded in that culture. They remain exceptional fighters in their own right and are still producing International champions capable of beating the Americans, Russians, and Chinese across a variety of disciplines.

Between 2003 and 2009, there was some exceptional talent on the mat at Dave Jacksons Warrington Muay Thai, at that time you could just rock up and access European, Commonwealth and World Championship fighters, people like Asa Zamany, Homer Mohammed, Abdul Arif, Shaun Johnson, Brain Austin (Daywalkers) all people who helped me implicitly in providing perspective and refining my skill.

Do you think then, with all this knowledge and experience at my disposal, I would have persevered with Chi Sau if I didn’t value it as a constructive activity?

Chi Sau is doing its own thing. If there comes a time when I want to openly express my dissatisfaction for it, I would naturally assume that first and foremost, it was time for me to apply a little additional thought, focus, and patience in formulating a training regime that produces the type of output I desire. Adapting emotional response through supplementary work involving contact has a beneficial effect on Wing Chun output - Chi Sau can remain experimental, but the attitude we bring to it will be better tuned when balanced with contact activities.

When coached with direction and understanding, Chi Sau can be used to produce a unique ability for strike range fighting that cannot be gained from static drill work and cannot be gained from hitting and being hit back. This is because independent interpretation of stimuli (feeling), is a base requirement when holding fast at our range. With this in mind then, how else exactly could we acquire the skill of timing, whilst using random pressure as guide?

Fixed form/fixed drill is the production of attribute.
Chi Sau should operate to test and measure the efficiency of those attributes, and the ability to deploy those attributes at the right time repeatedly, or again we risk landing in territory of the assumed.

There is no substitute for building sensitivity to the unknown. Drill work can be played reactively, but it will always remain highly predictable. After a drill is absorbed, it rarely emulates the timing displayed in live encounters.

Some people still diminish Chi Sau on the basis that it has not been picked up by MMA/UFC camps. If you are looking at Chi Sau as the refinement of feeling and adaptation, they are practicing this all the time. The expression is channeled in the most part through BJJ, wrestling and clinch work. Like Chi Sau, this training is alive, but their choices remain different.

As someone who has had the privilege of watching people like Michael Bisping fluctuate in and out of his gym I can tell you that with respect to the diligence of their training regimes, time essential for cardio and development of split disciplines, it would be entirely impractical for them to begin engaging in Chi Sau once fight training, difficult to find a good teacher who could adequately integrate Wing Chun adaptation into their game, and a nightmare in removing all the open palm,
‘soft spot’ striking that would result in disqualification should it be used. What a headache.

As Bruce Lee is hailed as the father of modern MMA I think we can say that something went horribly wrong, or terribly right!

I think we can be unduly concerned with the opinion and practice of other people when comparing Chi Sau.
Everybody is different, and some by the grace of aptitude, hard work, and experience are accustomed to learning and embodying more in Wing Chun than others.
Wing Chun is so inherently linked to our nature that it begins to exemplify the character and intellect of each of us in turn. 
Ultimately it is so balanced within Yin and Yang that it operates as its own self sorting mechanism. People gravitate here, people gravitate there… some have longevity in Wing Chun development, whilst others plateau, or disappear to do something different.
Attachment to ideas, control, and habit is not the bendy rattan. A stubborn lump of wood stays sunken in one spot, whilst another shatters itself by virtue of its fixation.
When something is inflexible, we say ‘it’s got no give’, and until this realisation manifests in the individual, there is no change.
After a time, development is firmly fastened within a disposition.

Feeling should be balanced with striking, so we may adapt to circumstance with surety. This way we pull the maximum out of experience, and the maximum out of ourselves. I write about intuitive qualities capable of taking command, but to rely solely on that, would produce somebody reliant on responding to movement without the nature to proactively take the fight to the opponent. I develop Wing Chun as two tier, with no time to think I try to respond naturally and instinctively, otherwise, strategy is imposed to solve the problem regardless.

These two qualities proactive/reactive - strategy/response, provide choice.
Training only to react would always leave me on the back foot, it would inhibit my choice to be affirmative in adapting circumstance. It would not be in keeping with ending violence in shortest possible time-frame.
To consider Wing Chun as the balance of Yin and Yang necessarily there are two quite separate characters requiring development.

An inability to strike willfully stems from an inability to recognise opportunity.
If you wish to bridge before every attack, you are predictable.
With no proactive strategy, you are one dimensional.
Without experiencing impact, you are ill-prepared in both receiving impact, and in causing malicious damage to an adversary.

Whilst fighting, to be in a position to cause damage and fail through lack of experience or confidence is incompetence. Training has to be balanced within the truth of eventuality or you will not be working to the aim.

When we view the success of popular martial arts in a fixed environment, there are usually rules attached. Attached to rules is etiquette, and in light of a victory, that individual will meet applause from the crowd. If however somebody is using cruelty and intent to full capacity, they would not and could not, be applauded for their actions.

As an exponent of Wing Chun, to compete with sportsmen and let the time on the clock dictate your behaviour or supersede an intention to finish the opponent immediately, would mean Wing Chun is not being used in the context of the design.
In contrast, Chi Sau / Gwoh Sau, opens play to engineer position, striking and finish, and closes as we would if taking someone captive or rendering them unconscious with no exception to tool or target. This is a much closer match for Wing Chun output than any other sport based training can provide.
Concepts and principles provide the guideline, not the rules of the ring, not the time on the clock.
Ironically, the contact and injury both sustained and delivered whilst involved in sport based martial arts, has been a powerful component in forging my approach to Chi Sau, and my attitude to engagement on a great many levels.

Currently, I believe there is a lot of positive activity, with people looking introspectively at the function and premise of Wing Chun training.

We can only hope that it leads to us being more open, honest, and balanced about what we choose to spend time on as a collective. Hopefully this opinion might help us to consider what stands to be gained or lost from Chi Sau practice as something that cannot be detached from Wing Chun development or identity. Hopefully we operate with clarity and defined goals that address the chaos of unpredictable violence, and retain processes that may aid us in transforming effective training into effective engagement to produce competent individuals who can cope in the thick of it, or we are most definitely wasting our time.

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