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Seminar Observations by Ed Torres
The Dec. 4th Sifu Grados Wing Chun Seminar
With the sounds of Paul Mc Cartney's "Venus and Mars" gently playing in the background in a west side brown stone you get the strong sense that Sifu Grados is ,as always, very relaxed in everything he does weather it be teaching ,giving a seminar, or even in combat. This seems to create a very comfortable environment all around him for the 40 some odd students (beginner and advanced) who braved the cold to catch a few pearls of wisdom from this generous Wing Chun teacher.
"Today's main theme", as Sifu Grados begins to explain, "is The Stance and maintaining it's Structure and Balance." For anyone who has ever seen or met Sifu Grados the incredible thing about him is the fact that he has the most incredible balance. No matter what kind of movements or techniques or kicks he's just executed, he always lands in the most balanced stance that is ready to strike again if necessary.
The first thing he begins to explain is "The Horse". He demonstrated how the spine and the trunk and the legs should be properly aligned for optimum balance. Then he made everyone pair off and check the balance of their partners stance by pushing against their partners chest.
Now from the same stance he demonstrated how to punch correctly. He carefully and clearly made the 2 points of telling everyone that the angle of the punch was like you were holding a saw in your hand and were sawing a piece of wood as well as telling everyone that the fist should be lined up so that you can make contact with the top three knuckles of the fist. Next after numerous punches were thrown from the stance he made everyone freeze in the punching position and checked everyone's stance by again pushing against the chest. He said this was to make sure that your stance's structure was not compromised during punching. Needless to say when he pushed against a few people they fell over.
Next he made everyone take the same stance and rotate it 45 degrees and recheck the balance of the structure after rotating it to make sure that even when you turn the stance you must maintain proper balance and structure with both legs with a 50/50 weight distribution.
The next thing that the Sifu taught concerning the Stance is something that is seen mainly in his lineage of Wing Chun and that concept is, Turning incoming energy or force outward by the torquing or turning of the stance to deflect the energy outward instead of developing the bad habit of backing up. Instead, he says, it's better to use a back bracing stance and illustrated how by turning the energy outward by turning the stance. He also informed us that you're doing something as equally important as well and that is that you were regaining the line on the opponent and it took the opponent off his line.
The last thing that the Sifu taught that we'll discuss was a 2 person drill to practice deflecting powerful incoming energy. Both people faced each other in a front stance. Both partners touched their forward hands. As one person thrusted his punch forward, the other countered with Tan Sao and swiveled the stance at the same time to redirect the energy and then without hesitation or breaking hand contact with the partner's fist, the Tan Sao was turned into a fist and thrusted back at the partner who now deflected that incoming energy with the Tan Sao and swiveled his stance to redirect the force. This drill was done for about 5 minutes on each side. (left and right)
Of course Sifu Grados covered more but it would be too much to list at this time! These are just some of pearls of Wing Chun wisdom he was kind enough to share with us.
It is definitely worth noting that everyone in attendance left with something very valuable to every aspiring fighter and that is the ability to stay on your feet and at the very least , an appreciation for the music of Sir Paul McCartney!
Ed Torres
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