Many Wing Chun schools promote their content to be good for health. This is only partly true, i will explain why you would be better off with Qi Gong if you practice Wing Chun for Health reasons.
It is a fact that Wing Chun IS Healthy if practiced for a long time. BUT there are many risks involved which can damage your health instead. If you don’t want to use an assault rifle as a walking stick with the security switch off, take your time and read this post:
(This post does not want to insult any Wing Chun practitioners. Many Wing Chun students came to my classes and left this impressions on me. I won’t deny the value of Wing Chun as an highly effective internal martial arts, which can promote health and self protection)
The Stance
Let’s take a look at the basic stance:
The Wing Chun stance is basically a rooted Qi Gong Stance, the other stances left and right are common mistakes from Wing Chun beginners and will damage your spine.
- The left stance puts additional pressure on the lower spine and will damage the spinal discs.
- The right stance puts pressure on your lungs and will result to spinal curvature and muscular pain in long term.
- The middle stance is the correct stance, but most don’t know that the rooting must be practiced correctly too. The head and chin position is balancing your centered stance and should be taught by a knowledgeable master. If the stance is not taught correctly you learn a wrong spinal alignment which can still result in minor muscular and shoulder pains.
When you learn this stance make sure your master understands the Qi Gong principles! If not, a short class in Qi Gong is highly recommend and let a true Qi Gong master correct your stance!
Stretching
Wing Chun is often missing the internal stretching which is taught in Qi Gong.
Why would i need Qi Gong stretching for my health?
- Remove old blockades (cramps, pain, immobility)
- For relaxation in muscles and fascia
- For correcting the spine alignment
- Promoting blood circulation
- Improve function of inner organs
Stretching is especially important for people over 25 years to correct upcoming (or existing) health problems!
Strong Mind and Body
Wing Chun often focuses on small parts in our body. A lot of other parts remain less- or completely untrained. Wing Chun should be taught as a “whole” and not just on hand and upper body movements if you want to promote health.
The principle is that a strong upper body needs a equally (or stronger) strong lower body. If you plan on building a house, you must be sure to build a strong foundation first.
Most movements in Wing Chun require strong legs and lower body. If beginners lack the required power they have difficulties to align in a healthy posture. It also becomes harder to relax and maintain the correct breathing.
Unhealthy effects of imbalanced Wing Chun training:
(These things you should avoid and indicate results from wrong or one-sided Wing Chun training)
- Head and shoulder position falling too much forward in a normal posture. Can cause neck-, shoulder pain and upper spinal curvature.
- Used to flat (chest) breathing: becomes tired fast and puts additional stress on the heart.
- Static hip: most movements originate from the hip, but if Wing Chun is taught in an imbalanced way it can result in losing focus on hip movement, which can evolve in serious health problems later on.
- Wing Chun is taught to have a flexible posture like bamboo, but if the body is not properly trained it can result to the opposite. Hard muscles in legs and back are the first indicators.
Conclusion
Wing Chun is a good internal martial arts which can focus a lot on yourself and your inner well-being. However if Wing Chun is only taught for “effective” combat and not as an internal martial arts, a higher risk to injure yourself is involved. Additional Qi Gong training is recommend if this is the case. Feel free to leave your comments and impressions of your Wing Chun training experience!
Filed under: Knowledge Tagged: Health, Martial Arts, Ving Tsun, Wing Chun, Wing Tsun
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