黐手與過手 Chi Sao and Gor Sao

 
我的學生練習詠春過手（自由對打）的影片。My students practicing Wing Chun Gor Sao (free sparring).

 我始終深信「黐手是詠春拳的靈魂。」這句話。葉問宗師曾表示套路打得再好或木人樁打得再好都沒有黐手練得好來得重要。我的師父，林文學 (Gary Lam)，曾直言不諱地說：「如果你不想做黐手，那就不要練詠春拳。」對詠春不熟悉的人經常會問類似這樣的一個問題-「你們練詠春的人總是手黏著轉來轉去的(意指黐手中盤手的動作)，實戰時誰會跟你這樣做？」答案很簡單 -在實戰我們不會也不應該這樣做。在實戰，我們只會找最直接與最快捷的方式打倒敵人。黐手是我們訓練詠春拳功夫一個最主要方法，但是這並不意味著我們要與我們的對手手黏著轉來轉去。 當學生在黐手上有紮實的基礎，我們會讓他/她進入過手訓練。詠春過手就像是其他武術所謂的自由對打。有些詠春系統，如梅逸系，稱它為「埋身樁」。在過手開始時我們手不再接觸對手的手並且和對手的距離比黐手時更遠，因此過手比黐手更接近實戰。一些詠春拳初學者想證明自己能用他所學或者他「很能打」，所以他們在尚未有很好的黐手底子便心急地就做過手。對我來說，這是一個很大的錯誤。有些人即使沒有學習過武術也「很能打」。能不能打不能是判斷一個人的詠春拳能力唯一衡量的標準或代表這個人能用詠春拳。當我們學習詠春拳，我們就應該打得像一個詠春拳練習者，而不是像拳擊或者泰拳。。如果一個人太早做過手，他們可能無法完全應用詠春的理論也不能本能得使用詠春拳所有手法。如果他們繼續這樣做過手，他們很可能會形成一種很難糾正的壞習慣。學習武術應該有耐心得循序漸進。畢竟「功夫就是時間。」，常常是欲速則不達。

 I’ve always believed this saying – “Chi Sao is the soul of Wing Chun.” The grandmaster Ip Man indicated that doing the empty hand forms very well or doing the wooden dummy form very well is as not important as doing the Chi Sao well. My sifu, Gary Lam, once said bluntly: ”If you don’t want to do Chi Sao, then don’t learn Wing Chun.” People who are not familiar with Wing Chun often ask a question like this one - “You Wing Chun people always stick and roll your hands up and down, but in the real fights who is going to roll hands with you?” The answer is simple – we don’t nor should we. In a real fight, we would just find the most direct, quickest and most appropriate way to eliminate the threat. Chi Sao is a way to train our Wing Chun skills, but it doesn’t mean we are going to fight with arms sticking and rolling with our opponent. After one has a solid grounding in Chi Sao, we would advance him/her to Gor Sao training. Wing Chun Gor Sao is like free sparring in other styles. Unlike Chi Sao, in Gor Sao we don’t stick our arms and we step further apart from our partner, thus make Gor Sao closer to a real fighting situation. Some Wing Chun beginners are very eager to prove their fighting ability or to demonstrate he could use his Wing Chun, so they start to do Gor Sao before they become proficient in Chi Sao. To me, this is a big mistake. Many people can fight even without learning any martial arts. It can't be the only yardstick to judge one's proficiency in Wing Chun. When you learn Wing Chun, you want to fight like a Wing Chun practitioner. If one does Gor Sao too early, they might not be able to utilize all the Wing Chun principles nor can they use the Wing Chun techniques instinctively. If they keep doing Gor Sao this way, they very likely will form a bad habit. One needs to have patience to go through the proper steps in learning martial art. After all, "Kung Fu means putting in the time (to get skill)," it can't be rushed.