Pin Sun Wing Chun "Training Sampler"

Gulao Boxing Association USA 

Pin Sun Wing Chun "Training Sampler"

This video contains many different elements of our Pin Sun Gongfu system! Footwork, punching, partner training, sticking hands and of course free sparring. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKc1cQRTPo0

***

Fight Footage - BUF Fight Night (October 2013) "Boston, Chinatown"

GBA USA vs Nam Pai (Pin Sun Wing Chun vs Hung Gar)

Pin Sun Representative

1st Fight: Will (3 months experience)

2nd Fight: Dave (5 years experience)

3rd Fight: Dave (5 years experience)

***

Most if not all of this footage was shot on cell phones. Sorry for the low quality...

For more info:

Jim Roselando (Sifu)

www.apricotforesthall.com

web.mit.edu/qigong

mitqigong.blogspot.com
www.kungfuiowacity.com

Words of Wisdom passed on from Coach Jim Roselando

Qigong

One day I randomly stopped by coach Jim’s house to see if he wants to practice wing chun. His friend was visiting, and he lead a qigong session instead. That was the first time I’ve experienced energy. I went home and started my qigong journey. Dec 14, 2008… my second birthday.

Being a beginner at the time, I made many mistakes testing out different techniques, which ended up setting me back and causing injury. At one point, I practiced techniques to open my arm meridians, and I couldn’t shake hands with sick people without their sickness coming into me. My hand turned purple and my teacher spent the whole night fixing me.

Coach Jim sent me this from the Qigong bible to keep me on track:

Three extremely important key points for Qigong. one must not violate these, or else it is a disaster.

1. When the mind is quiet, the Spirit will be settled. When the Spirit is settled, the Qi will grow itself to full. When the Qi is full, the Blood circulation will be strong, thus both Qi and Blood will flow smoothly. This is how to grow the Qi.

2. Blood and Qi have their own natural path and flow smoothly. One must never interrupt the natural flow of Blood and Qi. What one can do is to help remove the obstructions and let the Blood and Qi naturally develop and expand. This is how to lead the free flow of Qi and Blood.

3. Goal and cultivation process of Qigong is to relax the physical body, quiet the mind, and let every dynamic flow be natural. Only pay attention to these three things.

Note: Any violation of the above three key points will certainly result in premature aging, weakness, disease, or internal injury.

Basic Qigong tips:

Practice everyday.
Stick to one style.
Don’t create or modify a technique.
Don’t learn qigong from a book or dvd.

Credit for this post goes to my gung fu brother and his blog: Shaking Leaf: Journey into the unknown 

Monday Night Qigong 3/11/13

*

***

*****

10min Gathering Qi

10min Leg Qi

10min Low Post

10min Natural Post

5min Low Post

5min Leg Qi

5min Ma Li Tang's Gathering Qi

Wash/Seal

*****

***

*

Practice makes perfect

by Kate Britton

Qi Magazine - Issue 90

Simply going outside every day to go through our forms is not necessarily going to have a marked impact on our skill level.  There is training and there is training.

Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes, but I am not entirely convinced that we can ever reach perfection.  That would imply that there comes a point when, no matter how much more we practise, we just cannot get any better.  I do not think that can be true.  I believe that if we continue to train, we will always keep improving.

There are three basic ways in which we can practise all the skills we have learned. The first I call ‘Maintenance’. This is when we simply run through the forms that we know so that we do not forget the sequences. This is necessary to some extent, especially when we are short on time. When we are learning a new form, for example, we concentrate a lot of our time on that one, which means that we have less to spend on everything else we know.  We may, then, have to just run through some of our forms quickly to keep them fresh in our mind.  Because, as an instructor, I know quite a few forms and it is impossible to practise them all every day, or even every two or three days.  But I like to make sure that I practise everything I know at least once a week.  If I leave something for two or three weeks, the detail starts to disappear, and the form begins to become blurry.  If I leave it longer than that, whole sequences begin to get lost.

The second way we can train is to practise for ‘Health’. This is extremely important, since the main reason we learn skills such as Qigong, Taijiquan and Chun Yuen Quan is so that we become healthier, stronger and more flexible. But when training for health, both our mind and our body must be relaxed. This means that we cannot be thinking too much about each move and how we might make it better. In fact, we need to empty our mind and let the movements heal our bodies.

However, if we only practise for health, and our movements are never checked, eventually your forms may become sloppy and lose definition. Finally, we need to practise for ‘Improvement’. When we do this we look at each move in detail to see how we can make our performance better. We can go over and over a short section of form to see if we can improve our posture and the framing. Practising to improve your skill is extremely important if you are an instructor. Once you start teaching you have to start running to stay ahead of your students. Just as you want to see them improve, they want to see you gaining more skill so that as the years pass you still have a lot to share with them.

So a combination of all three methods of training is necessary if we want to continue developing.

When people first join a class, there are usually some who do not practise at all between lessons, which seems a bit of a wasted opportunity to me.  We are given a very valuable gift that will help us stay healthy and mobile into old age.  Of course, if you do not practise from one week to the next, then you will have difficulty remembering what you learned the previous week. Repeatedly going backwards each time you attend class is demoralizing, especially when those who started at the same time begin to move ahead, leaving you behind. You will probably very quickly give up. But with a little effort in your spare time, even just for ten minutes a day, you can start moving forwards each week, and begin to reap the rewards to be had from these fascinating arts.

Qi Magazine: Walk this Way

By Julian Wilde
From Qi Magazine - Issue 90
Winter 2009

Among the many aspects of the wonderful Taijiquan of Chen Village that I noticed was the emphasis on vertical alignment. From the youngsters who practised every afternoon, through the teenagers who were training on the edges of the central courtyard most of the day, to the older guys who popped in a few times to go through their routines, everyone was very careful to keep upright, to keep the spine vertical as much as possible. Generally, their posture was superb. Though rooted and steady, the straightness of their posture made their stepping look very light and precise. I could have spent hours watching and making notes!

The vertical alignment of head, hip and heel is quite important in Taiji but there are times in our practice when we inadvertently let the posture slip. When we do, we lose Peng, ground connection, and we distort the body, thereby robbing it of maximum efficiency. One of the most usual times we sacrifice posture is when we step. If our legs aren’t strong enough, if we can’t relax and sink enough, we unconsciously lean the body, forwards, backwards or to the side when we extend the leg. You can check this for yourself with a variation on the Chen walk.

The Chen Walk is an exercise we use as part of the warm-up in all Taiji classes. It’s simple but such a versatile sequence that I feel it deserves a little more attention. Basically it consists of crossing the arms in front of the Dantian, sliding the heel diagonally forward, and then transferring the weight over. While we’re transferring the weight, we turn on the forward heel and then pick up the back foot. Also, as the weight transfers forward we let the arms “swim” open. Simple. But here are three ways to use the same exercise. No doubt you can think of others.

Firstly, working on the afore mentioned vertical alignment: - stand on your left leg, the toes of the right foot resting on the floor. You can keep your arms by your side or behind your back, it doesn’t matter. Sink the body as much as possible and extend the leg, heel first, to the side as if preparing to step. Feel any tension resulting from this movement and get a friend to check your posture to see if you’re leaning slightly. Adjust accordingly, which usually means coming up a bit or taking a slightly shorter step.

Shift the weight to the right leg, turning the toes of the right foot out as you transfer. Before you pick up the left foot, check your posture again. It‘s common to lean forward slightly to get the weight fully over, but this means again that your step was too wide for your ability. Now try and pick the left foot up cleanly. If you have to drag it a bit, your step was too wide for you or you’re not able to sink enough for the movement to be clean. Now try the whole sequence on the other side and see what happens. Often one side is stiffer than the other.

We tried this one in class, being really careful to lift the crown of the head, which automatically tucks the chin in slightly, and trying to lengthen through the whole spine. Everyone was reminded to try to put this into their 19 step form and were surprised how different it felt!

We can use the Chen walk to exercise other aspects of our Taiji. For instance, we can train diagonal energy by making sure we push from one foot to the opposite hand when we do the walk. Transfer the weight by pushing the back foot into the floor, using the energy to push the arms out. This will definitely result in a loss of good posture for some students but it’s still a great exercise! Step as wide as you like but make sure you push from the back heel rather than just sink onto the front foot.

We can also perform the Chen walk trying to keep the head at the same height throughout the exercise. This, as you will find out, definitely works the legs hard! It will also force you to adjust the width of your step. Most people tend to come up a bit when they move on to the forward foot and sink again when they step. Just as an exercise, try and keep your height constant.

And then, of course, you can try the above three exercises all over again, but this time stepping backwards. That’s another class over! Where does the time go?

We all want to learn the exciting forms, the Cannon Fists, the spear and broadsword etc, but if we can’t even step forward or backward without distorting the body and the basic principles of Taiji, it’s better to rein in our enthusiasm and pay attention to basics. Again!

Wang XiangZhai Combat Science

Notes from Master Wang XiangZhai

While learning martial art, you should think about why you are learning it. If you are clear about this, it is easy to achieve results. In most cases it is about health and self defense. Health is basis for all activities of human beings. So you shouldn't neglect the issue of cultivating health. When you learn in proper way, benefits are great, but if methods are wrong, it could even cause death. Among those whose training is based on fierce movements not many achieve longevity. There are numerous cases of people who became cripple because of improper training. Such martial art is cause for laugh and for sadness at the same time. Practice for health and practice for self defense are one thing and should not be separated. If one part is lost, it will create deviations and lead astray. 


First you should start from mind training, to reveal and develop natural human ability of using nervous system and body. First step in learning martial art is mind training as basis, experiencing subtle movements of body. Second step is shi li - testing force and shi sheng - testing voice. Third step is self defense. 

1. Basic training

You should start from zhuangfa - postural exercises. You can fit them freely into everyday life, practicing anywhere and anytime, standing, walking, sitting or lying on bed. You should assume the posture, body should be straight, there should not be any distracting thoughts, in the state of non-movement and calmness nervous system is positively stimulated, breath becomes even and calm, muscles are mildly stimulated, each cell is naturally taking part in movement, force is everywhere inside and outside. In this way, although you don't use typical form of training, bones and muscles are trained, mind is trained naturally too. You only need to observe all the subtle changes. If you practice for longer time, this seemingly simple standing will bring incredible results and satisfaction. If you want to learn essence of combat science, you should start from zhan zhuang.

2. Testing force and testing voice

After you practice basic exercises for some time, your natural potential develops. Very often, because illusory thinking, practice changes into something opposite to what I'm talking about. Pulling sprouts up will not make the plant grow faster. But you should understand the state of force in movement. Only then you can move further. If talking about introduction to combat science, shi li is most important method. Ability of using force is developed thanks to shi li. By testing you get to know force. Thanks to knowing you can efficiently use it. First you should make sure that the feeling of force is even in whole body, that your body feels agile, bones are supporting posture. This way you can use mutually related contractions and stretches, relax and tension. Force from inside is issued outside. In shi li there, shouldn't be partial, superficial force, especially there shouldn't be unbalanced one directional force. You should observe if the whole body force is round, full or not, if it is possible issuing force at any moment, if there is feeling of mutual reaction between body and surrounding air. Intention shouldn't be broken, spirit shouldn't be dispersed. Light and heavy are ready to be used. If one moves, whole body follows it. Force should be unified, swift and solid at the same time, round and full. There shouldn't be anything forgotten or lost on any side. Summarizing, if someone has not achieved satisfactory state of comfortable force, we don't call it combat science.

3. Self defense

Self defense is combat skills. You should know that big movement is not as good as small movement, small movement is not as good as non-movement. You should know that in nonmovement the never ceasing movement is born. Movement which has obvious form is expression of lack of proper force. The wonderfulness of using it is in using mind, intention leading, elastic use of joints working, stretching and contracting, strong point of support, spiral force, movement around pivot, moving center of weight in stable way, using elastic force of breathing. If someone can use it, he has basis for combat. What I'm saying sounds abstractive. But there are many things which it is difficult to express with words. If someone practices diligently, he will achieve understanding. Differentiating between big and small movement is actually depending on mastering basics, whether you achieved practical perception of various kinds of force. If you master basics of using force of whole body, movement can be big or small, it doesn't matter if it is big or small. When basics are not mastered, everything is wrong. Summarizing, dachengquan is not based on beauty of outside form, but on using mind. Shortly, when there is form, this is something not ripe. Only when technique achieves level of unconscious using, miraculous appears. This is what I'm talking about.

Wang Xiangzhai on Basic Training

In daily life, in order to gain results from training all the time, while walking, standing, sitting, and reclining, one must start the training from the pile standing (zhan zhuang) method. Arrange the posture of the whole body properly, keep the body upright, have no thoughts, strengthen the nerves in stillness, adjust the breath, warm up and nourish the muscles, let every cell activate naturally. The strength comes from the inside and reaches the outside smoothly in the whole body. Thus, one does not train the bones and the muscles, yet they get trained by themselves, one does not nourish the nerves but they get nourished by themselves, one should especially experience and observe their barely perceptible movement and activity. When one has done it for long enough time, one will know that standing brings many inexhaustible wonders. One who wants to achieve wonders in his boxing skills, should first dedicate his time to pile standing.