Wing Tsun Wall

One of the beauties of Wing Tsun is the ability for the practitioner to develop an incredibly stable stance while being incredibly upright. That allows for us to throw heavy punches without having to really lower the centre of gravity by way of taking a really low and/or wide stance approach. We can stand normally, as if you're talking to a friend, and throw a punch that will move the guy off his feet and we, as the puncher, do not move off from our original position.

Try this experiment - standing in front of a punching bag (50lb, or whatever you wanna start with), stand normally, feet parallel as if you're about to knock on a door (as opposed to one foot in front of the other). Now throw a punch into the bag and see what happens. Does the bag move? Or do you move? or is it both? Ideally, only the bag moves.

How is this possible? Well, the term kinetic linking has been thrown around to describe the linking between the ground, through the various parts of our body to the tip of punch, which explains how a punch can be so powerful as all the energy built from each linkage is exerted out and into the target. When punching, many take a wider stance, with one foot in front of another, as this is more natural for kinetic linking to take place. But this is where wing tsun shines - it trains the body to develop the ability of kinetic linking with an upright stance.

How is this done? Chi sao. Over time, and when trained properly, the body starts to learn how to transfer force into the legs from the arms and from the legs into the arms in an upright stance...well because chi sao is trained in an upright stance. Your body just gets used to it after a while. You can stand up right, and when really good, knees LOCKED and still throw a powerful punch!

But does that mean this is the approach we should take when fighting? Absolutely not. It would be a shame to only throw punches with feet parallel or center of gravity high. But assuming you can throw a punch in a such an "awkward" position, just imagine the BOOM you would have in your punches should you take a lower stance or "one foot in front of the other" position!

This is where "function" comes in play. Once the kinetic linking abililty is discovered, you don't have to neccessarily abide to the "form" of WT...in terms of application.

Until then.