APL76
Blue Belt
Geezer asked me if I would mind talking about a difference between Yip Man style wing chun and Yuen Kay San style of wing chun that makes it hard to do them both together. So, to that end I have made this thread so we might discuss these sorts of things a bit.
Before I get into it however, I’ll just give a bit of background information about the wing chun I do.
I have learned both Yip Man (YM) wing chun and Yuen Kay San (YKS) wing chun from my Sifu, who learned them from Yip Chun and Sum Nung respectively. The YM wing chun my sifu taught in his class (he has retired) he altered slightly in light of some of the wing chun he saw in Fat San from YM’s descendants there, but the overall format of the system he didn’t really change. The YKS wing chun he has never altered from what he learned from Sum Nung; he tells us that Sum Nung told him “NEVER CHANGE A THING!!!” and he has done his best to not change the wing chun at all.
In terms of learning the stuff we were told to always keep the two systems completely separate.
So, differences. Probably the biggest difference that comes to mind is the way power is generated. I’ll just stick to the punch for the sake of brevity.
The YM wing chun we do we power the punch with the elbow (yes, I know the elbow is a joint and can’t power a punch, but you kinda need to think about the punch like it does). So, we think like the elbow is throwing our punch forward, and when the arm comes back the wrist throws it back. To help students get the idea I get them to pull the arm back into their “resting arm” position (what I think a lot of people call having their arm “chambered”) try to relax as much as they can, then I use my hand to fling their punch forward by pushing their elbow.
I get students to train their punches like this a lot, punch out with the elbow, arm back with the wrist. This sets up the way their arms will move for everything else. Everything else, blocks, deflections, so on, are all done with the same way of generating power. What this means is that, if all those movements are done with the same sort of power generation, and done within their correct structure, they will work without the need for people to rely on strength, or muscular tension, to make them work.
Now, when we get to YKS wing chun, the overall principle is the same: That the same power generation in the punch also powers the various techniques. What’s different is the actual method of generating power, and the structures of the techniques themselves. I won’t go into the details of just what the difference in the power generation is, but suffice to say that it is substantially different to YM wing chun. And in addition to that the actual structure of the techniques (punch, tan sao, bong sao etc.) is very different.
This raises two problems in terms of doing the wing chun 1) when you are training at it you actually have to think about how your arms are moving, you have to imagine the force concentrated and emanating from particular parts of the arm. 2) because you need to make it all automatic you need to train it to a point of operation beyond consciousness, so you can’t be trying to think about which power generation or which structure you will use at any given time. It should just happen.
So…… now I have never tried to mix the two styles of wing chun together because I was expressly forbidden from doing that. But given what I see of the two systems I think it would be difficult to do anyway, and certainly when I was in the earlier stages of learning YKS style my previous YM style kept getting in the way.
It would be hard to train at power generation if you had two methods of doing it that are quite different from one another, and it would be next to impossible (in my opinion) to make them automatic, particularly given the different structural arrangements the techniques have. You end up needing to chose one or the other. I chose YKS style, though I do still teach YM style for the majority of the time.
That’s what I think anyway; what do others think/what have others experienced?
Before I get into it however, I’ll just give a bit of background information about the wing chun I do.
I have learned both Yip Man (YM) wing chun and Yuen Kay San (YKS) wing chun from my Sifu, who learned them from Yip Chun and Sum Nung respectively. The YM wing chun my sifu taught in his class (he has retired) he altered slightly in light of some of the wing chun he saw in Fat San from YM’s descendants there, but the overall format of the system he didn’t really change. The YKS wing chun he has never altered from what he learned from Sum Nung; he tells us that Sum Nung told him “NEVER CHANGE A THING!!!” and he has done his best to not change the wing chun at all.
In terms of learning the stuff we were told to always keep the two systems completely separate.
So, differences. Probably the biggest difference that comes to mind is the way power is generated. I’ll just stick to the punch for the sake of brevity.
The YM wing chun we do we power the punch with the elbow (yes, I know the elbow is a joint and can’t power a punch, but you kinda need to think about the punch like it does). So, we think like the elbow is throwing our punch forward, and when the arm comes back the wrist throws it back. To help students get the idea I get them to pull the arm back into their “resting arm” position (what I think a lot of people call having their arm “chambered”) try to relax as much as they can, then I use my hand to fling their punch forward by pushing their elbow.
I get students to train their punches like this a lot, punch out with the elbow, arm back with the wrist. This sets up the way their arms will move for everything else. Everything else, blocks, deflections, so on, are all done with the same way of generating power. What this means is that, if all those movements are done with the same sort of power generation, and done within their correct structure, they will work without the need for people to rely on strength, or muscular tension, to make them work.
Now, when we get to YKS wing chun, the overall principle is the same: That the same power generation in the punch also powers the various techniques. What’s different is the actual method of generating power, and the structures of the techniques themselves. I won’t go into the details of just what the difference in the power generation is, but suffice to say that it is substantially different to YM wing chun. And in addition to that the actual structure of the techniques (punch, tan sao, bong sao etc.) is very different.
This raises two problems in terms of doing the wing chun 1) when you are training at it you actually have to think about how your arms are moving, you have to imagine the force concentrated and emanating from particular parts of the arm. 2) because you need to make it all automatic you need to train it to a point of operation beyond consciousness, so you can’t be trying to think about which power generation or which structure you will use at any given time. It should just happen.
So…… now I have never tried to mix the two styles of wing chun together because I was expressly forbidden from doing that. But given what I see of the two systems I think it would be difficult to do anyway, and certainly when I was in the earlier stages of learning YKS style my previous YM style kept getting in the way.
It would be hard to train at power generation if you had two methods of doing it that are quite different from one another, and it would be next to impossible (in my opinion) to make them automatic, particularly given the different structural arrangements the techniques have. You end up needing to chose one or the other. I chose YKS style, though I do still teach YM style for the majority of the time.
That’s what I think anyway; what do others think/what have others experienced?