training with smaller women

[onthechin]

No,no and no? To qoute someone else on this forum..."

So, it's a young art for a kung fu style. (only about 200 years old)
It's been tested time and time again in the heat of battle.
It's been largely taught to only one or two students of a master at a time, until GM Yip Man who taught many.
Ex. Some say it came from a nun (or 5 monks, whatever)
she or they had One official student, Yim Wing Chun.
She taught only her husband.
He taught only like two people. and so on and so on until GM Yip Man. WC was largely passed down to only a very select few. Why? I don't know."

ATACX GYM, thank you for replying so comprehensively and explaining exactly what you're trying to achieve and how you're going about it. I understand it now and give you the respect that's due.
I'm not sure whether I'm 'all about RBSD' or not..who wouldnt be? I'm about reality based martial arts. I'm about lots of sparring and the teacher really trying to prepare his/her students for the real world whilst always having friendship at the core of the relationship.

 

[mook jong man]

Give the woman a bloody break , it's obvious to anybody that has taught Wing Chun that she is a beginner.
She's doing alright , shes' getting some decent conditioning on those forearms learning to take all the Pak sau's and arm clashes that are part and parcel of training and she's still going.
He is an instructor that has been training a long time so his arms are going to be very friggin hard indeed.

I've had teenage boys quit after one session because they couldn't handle the knocks on their arms.

But anyway I digress.
Fighterman she is doing well but may I suggest she sink her weight down and keep her back straight she is getting thrown around a bit .

Maybe you could try getting her to do Lap Sau instead so she can try using two hands against your one , I think that maybe what your getting her to do might be a tad advanced for her.
I'd probably get her to do some double sticking hands with no attacks but just start moving around vigorously a bit to get her to concentrate on her stance and staying sunk down , try and throw her around a bit.

She just doesn't have the stability in her stance yet to make the redirections work properly , also get her to pivot when she does make contact with you so that she can dissipate some of your incoming force so that she doesn't get rocked back in her stance .

Getting back to the takedowns , maybe just lose them altogether and get her to finish off with a hook kick.

Once she's a bit more solid in her stance then will be the time to start the process of ramping it up a bit and adding random elements with greater intensity , but she has to learn to walk first before she can run.
But your an instructor you already knew that didn't you , I am also guilty of pushing people along rather fast too.

 

[fighterman]

I like your videos. Keep the drills going man. As a smaller man at 5'7" 160lbs or less who also is a lifelong martial artist with multiple 5th dans, I think I can offer a couple of suggestions that might be helpful:

Change the head grab or insert a groin strike prior to the head grab takedown. The reason I would suggest that is because she's smaller and women tend to possess inferior upper body strength which could make a life and death or raped and not raped difference between themselves and a large male like yourselves attacking them. She should devastate targets that are closer to her, lower on her adversary and harder for him to defend. Testicle shots, inside ankle stomps, knee wheels, leg stomps, trips, liver and kidney blasts, sternum throat and eye blows etc etc [careful on the throat and eye shots like bil jee because the higher she reaches on her adversary the more disadvantaged she is and the easier it is for him to note the attack and thus defend it ] should all precede high percentage takedowns more amenable to her size and taking advantage of a woman's hip power like: single and double legs, kouchi kosoto harai and ogoshis, irimis [ not yet irimi nagas, just the irimis in conjunction with the strikes that you taught her to displace her attacker damage him and allow her to escape], and various trips and push offs that we can get from a combo of say wing chun's traps low line kicks and wrestling/judo/tai chi/aikido trips unbalances and displacements [inclusive of foot sweeps and foot stops].

Once you decide what blows you can teach her that can be aimed to say the groin and other more accessible but high percentage high pain targets, and once you decide upon the alternative to the head grab [ or the "takedown B" tech in case the head grab takedown doesn't work; you're the instructor, you know your client, and I am in no way trying to imose upon intercede in or superimpose my opinions and training model upon you ] you simply insert it into the drills that you are already doing. This way you get to keep that all important muscle memory up you've already built up in her, you just are functionalizing it even further. And then you start setting say 3 minute rounds wherein she has to defend your attacks and respond with the drill that you taught her and get say 45 reps done prior to the 3 minutes being up. That's about 1 full rep inclusive of the takedown every 4 seconds. You, sir, are gonna take alotta falls, so I recommend that you both pad up and alternate with say a heavy bag or B.O.B. because not only will that save you a pretty fair number of bumps and bruises, it allows you to step back and correct her technique, foot and hand placement, eliminate telegraps, etc etc.

After a hour or two of this kind of training, you increase the intensity of your resistance to her. You attack from different angles. You attack her from the back. You start her reacting defensively from a rear bear hug attack which she must defeat using the same drills that you taught her just modified for this situation. Then do it again from her back. And then once she's comfy there? Link the new positions to her original position. Perhaps you attack her from the side and in the process of dealing with the scramble you two wind up face to face like you did when you first showed her the tech or perhaps you tackle her to the ground, she fights you off using the same drills you taught her just modified for the ground and then as you two scramble to your feet she repeats the drill standing against you. Maybe you sneak her from the side and press a wooden knife against her. She uses her drill modified for this situation, disarms you,engages you standing up as you two scramble and jockey for position,she does the original drill again and then she escapes. Etc etc. You get the idea you can take it from here.

I realize that what I recommend is for some people alot of work, but it will pay off immensely and quicky. I am not kidding when I say that 3 hours of this training will yield a giant difference in your client's physical fitness and technical ability. I recommend that you have her put in no more than 7-10 rounds at 3 minutes apiece when you train, and have her rep it out on her own when you're not with her directly. I do this all the time with my clients and I get results that are night and day in less than 8 hours of such training every single time. No matter what they want to achieve. You will too. I also tend to start my newbs out with 4 rounds of this tops. The physical energies expended are quite significant at first, and she will definitely feel it the next day. But as her body adjusts [ usually about 4 training sessions, and recommend that she take Glutamine the natural amino acid which will vastly accelerate her recovery rate] to the new stress levels, her techs and her physical fitness will skyrocket to new levels.

Good luck and please tell me how it goes if you decide to employ any of the suggestions above.

hi thanks,
i usually try tom listen to all opinions so i will be givibg it a go, theres always more than one view to reality

 

[noob]

Looks good to me but I'm a noob! It seems much better than the lessons I was taking and I went there for three months did sweet fa.

 

[WC_lun]

Gotta drill to make the body mechanics natural. That takes a lot of repitition. The danger of that is you start training to the drill, either trying to defeat the drill or cheating movements out of the drill. This is one of the areas a good teacher and a good training partner are VERY important. When the drill is becoming something else, then apply some pressure, to snap it back to the original training focus. As the student becomes better you apply more pressure.

Drills are to get basic movements into body memory and basic concepts into a student's awareness. Once this happens, the techniques themselves become not important, because the student will react as they need to based upon thier training. That takes a while.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Not a Wing Chun practitioner, but I'll add my two cents as someone who has worked with partners with significant size differentials.

I like the fact that as a obvious beginner she's enthusiastic about working with someone much larger. That bodes well for her future training.

I assume you're working with her to improve her structure and balance so she won't just get immediately bowled over by someone much larger who comes at her harder than you're currently doing in these drills. I would really make a high priority of helping her understand the Wing Chun structure for putting the full body behind the punches. Right now she's punching strictly with her arms and her punches would have just about zero effect on someone your size. (From what I've seen I think that's probably a common problem with beginners in Wing Chun, since the connection between the body and the punches is more subtle than in boxing where you can see the whole body pivoting into a punch. The point is that at her size she can't get away with arm punching if she's going to have a chance against the big guys.)

I can't tell for sure, because the camera angle was only covering the top half of your bodies, but on the first drill with the elbow strikes it looked like she was having to compromise her structure in order to reach up to your head with her elbows. If her height won't allow her to reach that high without losing her good form I would have her save that technique for shorter opponents and come up with something different for the tall guys.

Regarding the takedown, once again the camera doesn't show the lower body so I may be missing something. If I'm understanding the technique properly, I don't think there's much chance that she'll be able to use that takedown against someone of your height and weight for a long, long, long time, if ever. Admittedly, getting a takedown against someone twice your weight is going to be hard no matter what technique you use unless you're really good. Even so, I think that particular takedown is going to be problematic for her given the size differential and it's going to leave her in a vulnerable place when she tries it and it doesn't work.

Overall, I liked the way you were working with her. You give her enough pressure to stretch her comfort zone but not so much that she gets flustered and forgets the technique she's working on. I assume that as she develops you'll ramp up the intensity accordingly. Thanks for sharing. Now I'm going to check out some of your other videos.