General Wooden Dummy Question

[KingMonkey]

Guys,

Assuming that you have plenty of live partners to practice with. What do you think are the primary aspects trained by a WC wooden dummy ?
What if any are the potential dangers of starting too early ?

[yuanfen]

The key is whether you get started with good guidance.

[PaulH]

You can refine your hand/leg techniques further with the dummy as you have to fight more narrow and focused than with live partners. Many different energies can be developed - Guiding, explosive, sticking power, etc... While it is true that lot of its wooden techniques are designed as mistake corrections, the dummy is what you make of it. It can move very lively and feed your hands in endless energies and patterns.

Regards,

[old jong]

The Mok Jong is a training device witch use is to train proper alignment in defense and offense and power delivery.Your Sifu will introduce you to it's practice when you will be ready to find benefits in it. It is not necessary to learn the form to work on it. Many useful exercices are possible with the basic motions on the Jong.
Now,some schools may present it as the "deep ultra secrets only reserved for closed door and well paying devot disciples thing"!....But it's not!...;)

[IronFist]

You can hit it as hard as you want since it's not a human.

IronFist

[Wingman]

Unlike a live partner, the wooden dummy is very unforgiving. The dummy will immediately let you know that you have made a mistake. One good lesson you can learn from the dummy is keeping your elbows in. If you don't keep your elbows in, you cannot hit the dummy via the centerline. Instead, your elbow will hit the dummy's arms before you can hit the dummy's center. Now, that could be a painful experience!

I think it is not wise to start with the dummy at a very early stage. Because of the beginner's limited knowledge of WC principles, he might interpret the dummy form/techniques incorrectly. It is very common for beginners to bang their arms against the dummy's arms. Aside from being painful, the direction of ther force is wrong. When you bang against the dummy's arms, the direction is sideways instead of forward. This could develop into a bad habit.

[old jong]

Sometimes when a beginner student has a really hard time with a motion's line or force direction,I find that teaching him on the Jong is a lot easier. He is not distracted by having to deal with a live partner and ,as you said"The dummy is unforgiving"...It makes you feel when the angle or whatever is wrong.
Just to give an example: It works wonder in correcting a "pushing to the side" tan sau. It takes no time to see the student perform the motion with a good forward angle.