The formation of the claw hand and a twisting grab—as if to tear flesh from the bones of an opponent—is a technique constantly found in all three empty-hand forms of the Wing Chun system. The self-defense techniques using the claw, which I shall detail in volume two, are extremely brutal and must only be used in life-or-death situations. These include: gouging out the eyes, ripping out the hair by the roots, dislocating the jaw, tearing the flesh of the nose, ears, and lips, crushing the throat, and twisting and ripping the testicles. Such clawing techniques are a very effective means of self-defense for women finding themselves in violent rape attacks.
There are four open-handed strikes in Wing Chun kung-fu. The chop is a strike delivered with the blade of the hand. It is delivered with a snap of the arm to generate impulse—the sudden release of force in a very short time interval. The palm strike is a short-range linear attack which uses the heel of the hand. Force is generated by exploding with the body weight behind the strike, using the arm much like a battering ram. The side palm strike is similar to the palm strike but the target is the opponent’s side. There is a slight curve in the path of the attacking hand which impacts again on the heel of the hand, the force however is generated by a snapping action of the wrist. The cutting side palm generates its force by snapping the wrist, like the side palm. However the surface of impact is smaller, being the small round bone on the heel of the hand. The striking angle is the same as the side palm but it can also be used as an overhead strike to the face.
The most important hand move in the opening of the Sil Lum Tao form is the vertical punch. This punch is designed for close range combat. The vertical fist-thrusting punch in the form is executed by sliding the forearm across the chest with the fist pointing across the body. The fist is then pointed toward an (imaginary) opponent and delivered so that any punching attack initiated by the opponent will meet the bridge arm (forearm) and be blocked. Even if the punch is not a successful strike, once contact with the opponent’s arm occurs, the sticky-hand fighting skills can be employed.
Wing Chun punches typically involve inch-force, or ging, an explosive shock-wave effect. There is a lot of mystical nonsense written about the one-inch punch that knowledge of physics readily dispels. The idea behind snap punching is to reduce the time in which the fist is in contact with the body. This increases the impulse (the product of the average magnitude of a force on a body and the time for which it acts.) The great old-time boxer Tommy Burns said that the most feared punch is not a big swing or a long straight drive out from the shoulder, but “one of those half-arm jabs, which only travel about a foot or at most 18 inches, and which have the full weight of the shoulder behind them” (T. Burns, Scientific Boxing and Self Defence, London: Athletic Publications Ltd., 1934, p. 31).
Wing Chun punching also is greatly aided by exploding one’s body weight behind a punch. Jack Dempsey in his Championship Fighting (Long Beach, CA: Centreline Press, 1978) described a method of power punching involving a falling step, where a punch is launched after putting your weight on the front foot and then stepping and punching so that gravity gives a great momentum to a punch. However, Dempsey’s falling step occurs quite naturally after either a back-foot or front-foot heel kick, because as the foot comes down, the body starts to fall. A coordinated punch delivered at this time can have knock-out power. Other ways of putting body weight behind a punch include springing or leaping forward to bridge the gap with a jab and surging upward, using the legs as springs to fire a lifting punch or upper cut.
The vertical fist has been criticized on the grounds that there is a lack of bone support for the fifth metacarpal bone. However, in Wing Chun, we don’t land blows on the little pinky knuckle, but on the bottom three knuckles, which do give solid bone-to-bone contact for the transmission of impact force. It may be of interest to note that the great Jack Dempsey favored a vertical punch (see Championship Fighting ibid.), as did other old-time boxing champions such as Robert Fitzsimmons (Physical Culture and Self-Defense, London: Gale and Polden, Ltd., 1902, Chap. 18) and Jim Driscoll (Text-Book of Boxing, London: Athletic Publications, n.d.).
THE FIRST SECTION OF THE SIL LUM TAO AND CHI KUNG TRAINING
The first section of the Sil Lum Tao is done very slowly for the purpose of Chi Kung (Pinyin: qigong) training as well as for isometric tension exercises for the wrist and forearm, to improve the strength of the taun sao and fook sao. The internal taun sao (finger-drop, palm-twisted taun sao, or asking hand) is a straight thrusting-hand move used to deflect punches. Wing Chun is a very economical style: hard blocking is not desirable because re-direction of force is safer, quicker, and less demanding on your health and energy. The internal taun sao is used in close-range fighting, much like a punch: it moves along the body and then outward to catch any punching attack and harmlessly redirect it. A correct taun sao has the elbow in the center of the body, at solar plexus height. The palm faces upward, fingers straight and piercing forward to the eyes, in the case of the conventional taun sao, or else the wrist is twisted and the index finger is straight with the other fingers raised. This latter taun sao is designed for sticky-hands, and thus it sticks better to an opponent’s forearm. In any case, a good taun sao has an angle slightly greater than 90 degrees between the biceps muscle and forearm. Any less and the taun sao is too weak; any more and punches will skate over the top of it.
The hand moves of the haun sao and jut sao and wu sao (defensive hand) techniques are discussed later. The fook sao hand movement, however, is quite often puzzling to students, so it is worthwhile to take a closer look at its meaning and use. The taun sao and fook sao techniques are two important hand moves of Wing Chun’s sticky-hand style, occurring in both single and double sticky-hands (chi sao). The fook sao, or hooking (lying-on-top) hand, consists of the hand bent at the wrist so that the fingers face in toward the median axis of the body. The shape of the fingers is dictated by the need of this hand move to lock up the taun sao in sticky-hands. Like the taun sao, a good fook sao consists of the elbow in the center-line and not merely the wrist, preventing the passage of the thrusting taun sao not by virtue of the wrist action, but because the forearm blocks its passage. The fook sao is typically used, along with pivoting and footwork, to redirect attacks. In particular the fook sao is a quasi-grappling hand. In many cases it is far too slow to attack an opponent by grasping an opponent’s arm. Instead, one may use the fook sao to hook down the guard and attack. Thus, while the fook sao is at first glance an unusual hand move, its usefulness is obvious.
There are two hand moves in the opening of the Sil Lum Tao that merit a brief comment before I discuss Chi Kung. These moves are the downward X-hand and the cross-hand movement. The former move is not identical to the X-block usually found in karate. In Wing Chun, we do not use two hands to do what one hand could do, because in the case of a double lower block, one’s head is now vulnerable to attack. Nor would we attempt to perform hard blocking against a kick—Wing Chun is a soft/hard form of kung-fu believing that defense should be soft, involving deflection and flowing with the attacking force, while offense should be hard, directing the hard attacking weapons of the body against the weak points of human anatomy. The X-hand is a classical hand move, merely used to judge the center-line of the body when in the parallel stance.
The cross-hand movements are performed immediately after the opening punch in the Sil Lum Tao, consisting of an upward, downward, leftward, and rightward movement of the wrist. This is done not only to train the flexibility of the wrist, but because it embodies an important technique that is fully utilized at the Bil Jee level. The fingertips in Bil fee fighting are often used to attack around a block or defense by being flicked around it. The cross-hand movement represents the various angles of a flicking finger attack; this movement, like all other offensive hand moves, should involve inch-force, or ging.
For traditional Chinese kung-fu and other internal arts, the union of physical energy, breath (chi), and spirit is the highest aim of training. When this is done the five elements—metal, earth, water, fire, and wood—are in balance. Chi Kung is a way of obtaining the inner harmony of the body and spirit. This is a vast topic that cannot be adequately addressed here. However, I will summarize here a Chi Kung exercise that is practiced in the Sil Lum Tao. Grip the ground strongly with your toes to unite yourself, according to tradition, with the earth. Relax the body, close your eyes and concentrate on the tan-t’ien (lower