Martial Arts Footwork

[silverfox]

Hello everyone,

I was curious what others are doing to improve their footwork for Kung Fu or other styles. The Chinese Martial Arts are famous for their excellent stances and footwork traditionally, but I don't hear this emphasized too much in the West as much as it is in the East.

I like to practice all of my sequences (empty hand and weapon) forwards and backwards, put all my Crane footwork together in a shadowboxing scenario, practice tan tuis blended together without hands as well. I also tend tend to blend my kicks with stances together in an exploratory form. I try to train all of these without using my hands so as to really focus on the lower body.

I have many other ways to train, but I am curious to hear how other stylists emphasize their footwork, which in my opinion is the most important aspect of all the Martial Arts. I always tell my Wing Tsun students that the hands are the basic training, but the real power lies in the mastery of the footwork. If the footwork is good you won't need your hands. I have been training this idea extensively and have seen great potential for improvement in myself and my students.

I great appreciate your comments

Thanks,

Scott Tarbell

[kung fu fighter]

Hello Scott,

The secret to footwork lies in weapons fight training! the baat gua stepping (8 directions) are used to evade while counter attacking at the same time. The patterns can be trained on the mui fa jong.

Sparring against western boxing or K1 style fighters will definately improve your footwork because their footwork is dynamic and they adjust quickly and use lots of angles which forces you to do the same, making your footwork more fluid and alive instead of a series of static fixed positions which are predictable causing you to become a sitting duck.

Try your WT footwork on a boxer who sticks and moves ( muhamed Ali style), who is jabbing and circling away from your chain punching straight line footwork and see how difficult it is to adjust to his angles, as well as how open one becomes with that approach to angular punches.

This drill will definately cause you to rethink the chain punching straight line footwork approach!

PS Any word yet on the Pin sun Promo tape?


Navin

[silverfox]

Hey Navin and everyone,

In Wing Tsun we actually have a great deal of slide and drop step footwork that focuses on all angles of directional change and some of our footwork is trained specifically for defense against boxers. This can be seen in the first four student grades of our system.

Also, intermediate and advanced levels of Wing Tsun do not just go forward in a straight line chain punching which is a very basic way to use Wing Tsun. High levels of Wing Tsun actually moves the practioneer away from chain punching and more into Biu Jee fighting concepts.

The footwork for the higher levels of Wing Tsun as seen in Biu Jee and the Mook Jong are the advanced areas of our footwork, but even before a student reaches this level the footwork is already very good for chasing people down in all directions using advancing steps, passing steps, chum kiu steps, etc..

All of my students constantly train various drills on angular directionality while chain punching and using other hand strikes in a non stop forward flow.

Wing Tsun is similar to other WC systems in some areas, but on a whole the approach and concepts are quite different due to the fact the Grandmaster Leung Ting trains us to use our Wing Tsun in a fighting context. The first four student grades deal with boxers, grapplers, kickboxers, and other strong kung fu techniques, which he saw as powerful systems that needed to be addressed in modern Wing Tsun for use in the street and the ring.

I definately agree with you about boxing, mma, etc. footwork. Thanks for the weapons training info, interesting stuff.

I still don't have a copy of the promo, sorry.

Thanks for your comments,

Scott Tarbell

[charp choi]

When I learn new sets/forms I am in the habit of learning the footwork first. One I have that down I learn the hand techniques.
I find it helps me better this way.

[kung fu fighter]

Hi,

I really like the white crane evasive stepping.
What are some concepts and partner drills in white crane to train footwork?

What is the concept of going to the 4th door?

[SunTzu]

What I always teach is this:

0. Fitness exercises and stretching exercises.

1. Stances + power training with (heavy) weights in the hands to improve power and root.

2. Kuen (form) training with or without the use of hand techniques (you can use the weights from step 1 here also).

3. step 2, but with heavy weights around the ankles (skip the kicking techniques in the beginning, and later on just low and slow to prevent injuries) to increase stepping speed.

4. "Attack take over" it's like real life fighting, but with rules for the defender, not the attacker. The attacker advances in a way he pleases (1 or 2 attacks though; using layman's attacks is allowed ie. techniques not from your system), the defender must adapt to it using only the system he practices. So the defender can't know in what way to respond in advance. You can set rules for the defender, for example, one hand behind back; only qinna; only kicking etc. etc. Here you learn to apply techniques you've learned in the context of a real fight in the streets.

5. 1-step sparring (either party gives 1 attack at a time; the other responds) and 2-step sparring (just like 1-step, but with a double attack)

6. full contact sparring; anything goes but killing/injuring your mate.


In many of these exercises one learns to stand where one should, and to avoid standing where it hurts
Experience is your teacher in this, if you act wrong it hurts.

ps kicks and punches, we also train separate on pads (or a bag) from the kuen (form) to increase power and accuracy