Master Tse’s Wing Chun Notes #7

Do not Kick Unless You are Sure

Many people like to kick when they are fighting because they have seen so many martial arts movies and they think it is very cool. But in reality, it is not the same thing. If you kick in the wrong way you will get hurt or hurt very badly, so we should not kick until the right moment. Therefore, it is actually not easy to kick during a fight. Why is this? Firstly whenever we kick we only have one leg on the floor, which means we are in weak position if the opponent decides to run into towards us. The impact will make us lose our balance and this will give our opponent the chance to attack us and we will definitely lose the fight.

Wing Chun KickingWhen I began to study Wing Chun with my Sifu, Grandmaster Ip Chun, in the 80’s, there was one senior student, whose nickname was Big Head Boy (In Cantonese society Big Head does not mean as like western meaning “VAIN”. It is just a person who really has a bigger size head. It is not insulting to somebody to be called this and is a very common nickname as well). He had a lot of friends who studied martial arts and they would often meet up and train together.

One of his friends was a Thai Boxer who was very good at kicking. When they faced each other Big Head Boy would not move and would just look at him. When his friend started to kick, he would just as suddenly withdraw his kicking in the middle of the kick and straight away put his leg down. This went on for a while and so neither of them did anything. Then the Thai Boxer said, “You are going to kick my standing leg aren’t you?” To which Big Head Boy replied, “Yes, if you are going to try kicking me.” His friend knew that kicking in that position was too dangerous and that Big Head Boy would take the chance even if he got kicked on the way in and that he would win in the end.

Therefore, we should not kick until we are sure it is safe and at the correct moment.

Michael Tse

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