Chum Kiu and Balance

A Small Thing About Chum Kiu

I’ve been training the second form of Wing Chun, Chum Kiu (searching for the bridge / sinking the bridge) every day since June of this year.

But, I’ve always had problems with my balance.

You see, there’s a lot of turning in this form. And I lost balance while doing most of them, especially during the first section of the form.

Whenever I didn’t lose balance, I found out that my body wasn’t really turned 90 degrees, just my hands while doing the double lan sao. The body was always a bit less turned, at about 80-85 degrees max. I have no idea how many. Just not 90.

But then, one day, as I was training with friends, it hit me.

Of course my hands turned correctly, but not the rest of the body! Because I used my arms and shoulders to turn, and not my hips!

But SiFu has said it again and again. Chum Kiu is all about the hips/elbows joint movement. So why on earth did I use my shoulders to turn?

I tried to use my hips as the main reference point while turning. And, surprise surprise, I finally turned 90 degrees. The whole body.

Dang. The hips again.

I’m starting to see that most of my problems lie in not paying attention to those hips.

It’s time they got the attention they deserved.

My left foot

So now I was turning my body like it should (or, at least, more like it should. At this point, I’ve made peace with the fact that I don’t do anything 100% correctly).

But I still had balance issues. What now?!

So, since I always turn to the left first, I had to deal with that left foot not giving me the balance I’d love to have.

So, while fully concentrating on the hips and elbows while turning, trying as much as I can to form a stable building block out of my body, that moved as one piece, I started moving my left foot a bit more to the left as I turned.

The result was that after I turned left, my feet were still parallel but my front foot, the left foot, was a bit more to the left than usual.

This helped me finally balance that turn, once and for all.

Until the next time I don’t balance.

Lesson of the day: when doing Chum Kiu, use your hips as reference point when turning. Not the shoulders.