Wen Hsiu Quan

Hello, everyone and welcome back. Last week I have posted some basic techniques in the form of warm-up evercises that can be practiced over and over. Those exercises are done standing in one place with only one exercise that has some shifting back and forth- with one foot. Sticking the blade into the other guy is simple when the other guy is within range and standing still. You will not necessarily want to start fighting from within range, though. Once you realise that you are in the kind of fight where not stabbing first means that you might not get to stab at all, starting from out of the opponent's reach and closing the gap between you when you have your chance to stab becomes an important skill to have. Fencing with a partner will of course help, but you have to first prepare your body for the job that it has to do. The first drill is actually a good way of getting into Wudang Kung Fu's footwork. You might recognise the cat/ tiger stance that I use in this video. ...

So- I follow this Wing Chun group on Facebook and every now and then I get some really weird posts from them. By now I am used to the MMA type videos where people have added long range kicks and grappling to make Wing Chun more suitable for tournament fighting- or for fighting martial artists from other styles... This particular video you see above was particularly weird, though. This is not even Wing Chun. The person who posted the video says that this particular technique comes from a Chinese martial art called Wu Shan. Apparently, this strange footwork technique is called "Riding the Dragon" and it seems to have been meant to take you to your opponent over a space of 21 feet or 6.4 metres in our measuring standard. First thing that came to my mind when I saw the video was the stepping punch (oi zuki) of Japanese Karate's Tatsuya Naka. Not only was this punch used in demonstrations, but also been in 2 movies. Youtube has these two clips of him that I was able ...

Today's footwork technique is found in Karate and Kungfu. I have originally found it in Taijiquan in a sequence of steps called "Push Four Corners". Long before that, however, I have found it in some of Karate's katas. The function of this step is to throw your weight into the punch you deliver. It throws body weight as far forward as possible with as much momentum as possible. The difficult part of this movement is that you end up having only one foot to stop this forward charge from going too far. Judoka can easily exploit the situation of having your weight on your lead foot, so you will most likely find that teachers of Japanese Karate will discourage you from using this step in a fight. Nonetheless- it is a better way to close the gap between your opponent and you than bending your body to reach over to him (or her- I swear I mean either gender whenever I say "him"!)    In my Taijiquan forms I start off with this back-legged stance...

Hello, everyone. I hope you are all well. My Saturday has started off pretty well with what WAS in this bowl! Yep. Life is just wonderful if there is a lovely Chinese woman in your life who makes dumplings for you... :D Besides making dumplings disappear I want to talk to you about one of the techniques the Ninjas use to make them disappear: The Vanishing Step! I play a lot of video games- and this move actually featured in games like Tekken (used by Kunimitsu), Soul Blade (Taki) and Street Fighter EX2 (Doctrine Dark). I actually wanted a sample of Taki or Kunimistu, but ended up finding this Street Fighter sample. https://youtu.be/HSg_p5us7-4 That looks a lot more realistic than what we have seen Goku do in fights like this: https://youtu.be/0w-kOKioMhE Well- the first time I have learnt about this move was from a very short kata called the "Mi Lu" (Lost Track) kata. I am not even 100% sure whether its origins are Chinese or Japanese (because I have nev...

I still believe that we have Bruce Lee to thank for the footwork we see in sports karate today. He, as we know, started out with traditional kungfu, but also had a lot of admiration for the late Mohammed Ali. Now his Tao of Jeet Kune Do shows that he has taken a lot from boxing. Where with styles like Western Fencing, Boxing and Sports Karate we see that a springy movement mainly on the balls of the feet are preferred we may believe that this is how we also defend ourselves. If you have read Sensei Iain's article from last week, however, you'd know that this is not the mark of  traditional karate. The footwork I use in the photos above are from Xingyiquan and is a sample of the footwork I use in Wenhsiuquan as well. Taijiquan is also known for using it. With forward movement Shaolin Kungfu and Karate seem to prefer landing on the ball of the foot with every step first before settling weight onto the stepping foot. In my experience it actually makes t...

For the light, mobile fighting stance which is mainly on the balls of the feet we can thank Western Boxing and Bruce Lee.   This may not be the popular fighting stance in your dojo, but Chinese fighters did very well using it. And we have teachers saying that you can't move fast enough from this stance... I remember my days as a white belt (and even up to Brown Belt) obsessing over my footwork. Like many karateka we were taught a fighting stance that did not feature in any of our kata. Legs were kept bent and ready to spring forward, but we never leapt towards or opponents- or maybe we did, but very very low above the floor... At the time I made a point of retreating very quickly, but when the time came to counter-attack I was not so quick at reaching my target. Also- I often got hit on my way to attack. By the time my fighting improved, however, my opponents found themselves getting hit while they have not yet even finished attacking. They found...