135 degrees of 'bon sau' seperation.

[mtod1]

Hi all.

I've been recently shown (told) by one of my instructors that a technically correct bon sau, tan sau etc can be determined by the 135 degree rule (ie your arm should be at an angle of 135),other factors already taken into account. Is anyone else aware of this? And, if not, how does your school/Sifu instruct in the proper construction of the bon sau, tan sau etc...

Hope this makes sense.
Seeya

[Marky]

Hiya,


"Is anyone else aware of this?" mtod1

Yes. Yes I am.

[kj]

It's 120. I can't believe you guys would fall for 135. ;)
- kj

[Grendel]

Originally posted by kj
It's 120. I can't believe you guys would fall for 135. ;)
- kj
Are you using Fahrenheit or Celcius? 135 Degrees sounds too hot. Whatever happened to 98.6? :p

[Marky]

"It's 120. I can't believe you guys would fall for 135." KJ

no, No, NO! That's using the metric system! Geez!! :)

[Marky]

:mad:

[yuanfen]

empty cup sez-
bong sau sucks
go tan sau!!!

-------------------------
Beware:
They are friends- one no good without competence in the other.

[yylee]

didn't have high enough marks to study Engineering back then, so had to switch to computer science.

need a protractor to study Bong Sau?

or a stop-watch to time your form?

don't need them.....

[yuanfen]

Empty cup asks:
well how's fook sau for you?

-----------------------------------------------------
Its there betweena good bong and a good tan!!!

[Wingman]

Originally posted by mtod1
Hi all.

I've been recently shown (told) by one of my instructors that a technically correct bon sau, tan sau etc can be determined by the 135 degree rule (ie your arm should be at an angle of 135),other factors already taken into account. Is anyone else aware of this? And, if not, how does your school/Sifu instruct in the proper construction of the bon sau, tan sau etc...

Hope this makes sense.
Seeya

Hi mtod1,

I can see that you have been the butt of jokes lately:D

Seriously, and back to the topic of the thread. I think your teacher is trying to tell you about the unbendable elbow. I don't think that there is an exact angle in degrees for a tan, bong, or fook sao. It depends on the situation but I'm sure it's more than 90 degrees.

The idea behind the unbendable elbow is the angle of the elbow when executing tan, bong, or fook sao does not "collapse" when encountering an outside force coming from your opponent. If the outside force is too much for your tan, bong, or fook sao; you have to maintain the angle by stepping to the side, turning, shifting your weight, etc. If the angle must "collapse"; then you have to change the tan, bong, fook sao into another technique. For example: from tan sao to bong sao; from bong sao to tan sao; from bong sao to an elbow strike, etc.

Hope that helps.:)

[Stevo]

1. Rope a giant protractor onto your shoulder and elbow.
(disadvantage: makes changing the bong sau into another technique a bit slow).

2. Thread your arm into a piece af angled drainpipe.
(additional advantage: acts as a conduit for sweat during frenzied training sessions).

3. Have your elbows permanently fused at 135 degrees.
(disadvantage: makes you look a bit like a cowboy about to draw with both sixshooters).

[Marky]

Hi all,

135 degrees isn't pulled out of thin air. That is the point at which structure and effectiveness are optimized. At an angle less than 135, while your block coveres more area (because your forearm is more and more perpendicular to the attack, assuming both arms lie in the centerplane between the opponents), you begin to lose structure because it's easier to push your arm in. Conversely, by making the angle greater than 135 degrees, you will be able to keep the structure better against an opposing force, but the block area is too narrow as your forearm comes closer and closer to being parallel to your opponent's attack (at which point, you CANNOT block because you CANNOT intersect two parallel lines that exist on the same plane. Two parallel lines in DIFFERENT planes can intersect... that's one instance where jut sao comes in...).

Bong and tan both follow this principle (as does fok sao, naturally) because in each case your wrist is equidistant from your center, your wrist is on your centerline, and your upper and lower arm maintain the same length. Each block forms a triangle, which happens to occupy a different space than the last. The excellent structure of this traingle can be realized by an understanding of sines and cosines, since the values of these at 135 degrees will be equal, hence the term "optimized". This information is not an end in itself, but can be used to gather the component forces of your arm, the dot and cross products, which doesn't need to be spoken of here.

On a side note, the "mother angle" of 135 degrees is 45 degrees, which has been shifted from the first quadrant of a plane into the second. This angle is often utilized in optimization procedures, such as maximizing artillery range.

Trigonometry and geometry are two major keys to the structure of wing chun, although you can gather wing chun understanding by "instinct" even if you've never taken a math course in your life. I'm just being anal.

Are you sorry you asked yet, Mtod1?

:D

"i don't think people got the joke" EC

Oh, I got it, you tan fiend

:D

[aelward]

Actually, your tricep is at it's optimum position when your elbow is bent at 90 degrees. Less, and it is harder to resist forward force, more, and it is harder to push out further (though we might not necessarily want to do this in WC). Consequently, the tricep's agonist, the bicept, is also at it's optimum position when the elbow is bent at 90 degrees.

However, I, too, was taught to keep bong sao and tan sao at 135. For the bong, it puts most people's wrists right off center (as it can be used to redirect force off center when already in contact).

Further, we (that is, at my school) try to maintain a springiness in our arm so that their is a little give between 135 and 120. That is to say, we don't want to be rigid, because that allows our partner to feel our center of gravity. At the same time, we don't want to be floppy, because we don't want our structure to collapse.

Of course, all this is fine and dandy, and since we don't have giant protractors, it is hard to measure exact angles. Thank god for forms to give us a fairly accurate idea :p

[Marky]

Hiya Aelward,

Totally in agreement from a power standpoint. But when your arm is bent at a 90 degree angle, it no longer has the ability to drill inward (it reminds me of a tae kwon do block, personally), and you have to go across the centerline to make it work as a block (unless prior contact has been attained, in which case I guess it would be a jut sao). The hook and uppercut use a 90 degree angle for that same reason; the uppercut goes up and only up (at 90 degrees) and a hook goes across and only across. But when looking at power generation, I agree with you 100%. Trying to PUNCH with the elbow at a 135 degree angle is the single LEAST damaging way to punch. Makes me wonder why so many people do it naturally!

[aelward]

Hi Marky, I'm in total agreement with you all around, it seems.

I realized that my post was not exactly clear. When I say the tricep and bicep are at their optimum positions at 90 degrees, I was speaking from a physiological point of view (that is, where they are strongest), not from a Wing Chun structural point of view. And I also reread your post, where you specifically said:

> That is the point at which structure and effectiveness are
> optimized.

So forgive my interjection. It seems that we have very similar views on the subject.