| Wing Chun is a wonderfully fluid martial art with | | | | techniques I've learned are strokes, throws, feints |
| practices and techniques that flow nicely from form | | | | and combinations of them - and, when I'd injured my |
| to form, with locks, throws and strikes. However, | | | | feet earlier, I could practice at home without gimping |
| they all take practice, and if you go to a martial arts | | | | around the martial arts school. |
| school, you'll find that school time is best devoted to | | | | Now, I know - this is Yoshi telling you about yet |
| lessons with hands on help and sparring, so you can | | | | another form of "sit on the couch and learn martial |
| see how those techniques match up when faced | | | | arts". No amount of watching a video will give you |
| against a real person. Wooden dummy techniques are | | | | the techniques if you don't actually work out with a |
| a good way to practice them when you're not in | | | | wooden dummy. Most of the dummies you can get |
| class. | | | | will be just fine; you might want to ask your wife |
| So there's a premium spent on practicing the forms | | | | first before setting one up in the living room. (My |
| outside of the school, so that you're ready for the | | | | wife makes me do my martial arts practice |
| next lesson - just like going to class in high school | | | | downstairs in the basement. In her words, "If it's |
| takes homework, so does martial arts practice. Now, | | | | going to smell like a gym, I want it some place where |
| you can get a lot of benefit from a wooden dummy | | | | I don't have to look at it."). So, be sure to go through |
| - the bits that extend out make a good brace point | | | | the techniques slowly and carefully at first. One step |
| for practicing grapples and throws, and give you | | | | at a time, so you don't injure yourself, and so you |
| practice in slamming your forearms into something | | | | understand everything you're seeing. Then, pick up |
| hard so that you won't flinch when you do your | | | | the pace and work through the drills. |
| blocks. | | | | So, I can absolutely recommend these. While a |
| One of the best techniques I've found is to follow | | | | dummy won't teach you how to throw a block |
| along with a DVD. DVD players are cheap, you can | | | | against an incoming strike, it absolutely will let you |
| pause the action and repeat the motion on the | | | | practice your forms so that everything you do is |
| screen a couple of times before you run your hands | | | | fluid, and on the level of muscle memory, rather than |
| into the practice dummy, and you can analyze what | | | | something you think about, step by step by step. |
| you're doing. Some of the Wing Chun dummy | | | | |