proper application of tan sau

[Vankuen]

I wanted to get peoples ideas on our "dispersing hand" or tan sau.

I was working with a friend on the various breakdowns of tan sau. He would attack with anything he wanted (as far as hand attacks are concerned) and I would only defend with tan sau.

I found that I had trouble applying the tan sau to the hoi mun when I start in nuetral(horse). For example if the opponent punches with his right and I deflect with a right tan sau to the outside gate of his attack (the outside of his arm) I found that my footwork wasnt fast enough to obtain the right angle to apply it without having to "push" at the very end of the movement.

What can I do to remedy this situation? If I use jaam sau on the same attack it works fine, is it just that tan sau would be better for a secondary application, say like after a pak sau or something? Id like to know other ways you guys apply tan sau as well! Thanks for the help!

"From one thing know ten thousand things" - Miyomato Musashi, Book of five rings

[vingtsunstudent]

i personally only ever apply tan to the inside of an attack & always with the other hand striking. tan should be able to be applied even to the inside of a wing chun straight punch if you know what you are doing, although this does require good knowledge of the tan & footwork.
i would use fook to the outside of anything that is coming reasonably straight & continue that into a punch.
this is just me but i never, unless it is unavoidable, use pak or bong as they require a second movement to hit the opponent.(before anyone starts- i know you can pak sao & strike at the same time but if you have time to do that, then i feel you have time to use an even more simple & direct technique such as fook/punch)
i know that this may not have answered your question but i feel that some of the ways you are using tan are not quite correct, although definetely not wrong you do have better options.
as to tan from the neutral stance, again i can quite easily tan to the inside of most of my training partners wing chun punches without having to move from this stance, it is only when they possess a better centre than me that i have to move ever so slightly to deal with it.
the answer to why you are having difficulty to me sounds like you need to stand in stance longer & to really concentrate on getting that elbow into centre more.
vts

[Vankuen]

I have no troubles tan sauing to the inner gate. My problem lies in tan sauing to the outer gate. I think of training every movement with every possibility, and the reasons are two fold. One to become familiar in using a particular tool in different instances and two to realize what works better where.

Ive found that using tan sau to the outside gate of a chung kuen is hard for me (in nuetral) unless I use an advancing turning stance (soy gok ma), which is sometimes too slow to get into position by the time the punch is delivered.

This is just something I found in a drill, that I wanted to get some thoughts on. Thanks for the input though.

"From one thing know ten thousand things" - Miyomato Musashi, Book of five rings

[Armin]

Hi!

To Vankuen: Did I get it right? he attacks with straight to your face with right hand and you get in contact with the right and try to change into Tan Sao?

Ok, here the WT-solution: form the contact change into the Tan Sao of the first set (the first movement with two hand => double Tan Sao, but use only one hand :) ). If he goes on and steps in, turn (facing to the left).

To vingtsunstudent: the Tan Sao on the center-line wouldn't work in this case, because the attacker gets easily into a better position and would just press away or, even easier, go around the Tan Sao.

That's a remarkable difference: In WT there are at least three differnt Tan Sao-positions (side, center-line, and "crossed"), while in VT there's "only" the one on the center-line. Or are there more?


Armin.

[tnwingtsun]

If your center to center why would you want to tan
his right punch with right tan on his outside gate?,maybe I'm not visualizing it right,I could see appling a right tan to his right if you were on his right side and you had center over him,I could see a right tan to his left punch or a left tan to the inside of his right arm.Were you only able to use you right tan sao?
Sounds like a good drill.
BTW,when are you going to get to a WT school?
As soon as I heal up I'll be back working out and hitting the southeast Boztepe Seminars.
Hope to meet ya some day :)

[This message was edited by tnwingtsun on 03-26-01 at 10:23 PM.]

[tnwingtsun]

"Ok, here the WT-solution: form the contact change into the Tan Sao of the first set (the first movement with two hand => double Tan Sao, but use only one hand ). If he goes on and steps in, turn (facing to the left)."

Armin,do you mean shifting clockwise if he steps in? As in giving you center for a tan dar?

[edward]

visually, it looks like you can just apply tan sau, from the situations you speak off... however, from our system that I've learned.. the reality of things is that tan sau really only works upon the touch.

hope that makes sense van

[vingtsunstudent]

hi arminin,
i think you missed the piont i was making, you should be able to tan a punch on the inside even if it is on centre.(if you doubt this i would suggest that the next time barry has a seminar in germany you make sure you attend & then ask him whether it is possible or not)
of course to put your tan in centre when their strike is circular in nature is going to get you hit. with tan it is always dictated by the apex of force as to the direction it travels & this is the reason also that i said that i would never use tan sao on the outside of an attack.
(just as a quick side note- i said i would use fook instead of tan but in reality we all know that the only difference is the position of the hand ie palm up as to palm side on with fook.my preference to the fook is simply the position of the hand is ready to make a fist more readily)
vts
whoops, almost forgot, the most important thing with tan is punching with the other hand.if you tan & punch simultaniously quite often the tan isn't even used(except as a kind of guard) as the punch will generally hit them before their strike is anywhere near complete.

[Armin]

Hi!

So many answers in that short time!

Of course, the Tan Sao is a kind of forward position that is formed by the pressure. So, imagine a guy stepping in with a punch and you bring (WT-ly) your hands forward first. It doesn't matter if you did something wrong or out-circled him - you get in contact with the outside of your right to the outside of his right (sh!t happens). Due to his punching to your face, he's pressing slightly sideways (to your right shoulder). You let your contact hand get formed into the Tan Sao-position (as I said, the first movement in the first WT-form (!)), so your right arm is "crossed" in front of your chest. Then you turn (to the right), right stays in this position, left punches.

To vingtsunstudent: you had to bring it up, that I missed the "Barry Lee weekend", don't you??? :) That's not nice of you and one day I'll be there and set a drugged Koala on you!!! :D

Ok, if I take the situation you described (right hand contact at enemy's left from outside) then it'll work, definitely. But, no, there's no "but"; nevertheless (hehehe) the center-line Tan Sao (without step!!!) will only work against wing chun-pracitioners, and if you turn you have to controle the other hand of the attacker with our punch.

Could work, but it needn't work. See? That's my point of critic. In a fighting situation (that's what we train for) there should be only techniques/movements/whatever that really work every time (whoa), or better: that protect you in the best way. And an inside Tan Sao on the center-line is IMHO not the best way (I guess it's a question of being used to it, like stepping in against roundhouse-kicks or circular punches, and I'm not).

On the next Barry Lee-seminar, I'll ask him.


Armin.

[tnwingtsun]

VT student,if I were a laywer I would say
that Armin didn't miss your point,he was referring to the situation put forth by VanKuen,but I'm not a laywer and I don't want to offend anyone for speaking up in their place
but Armin being an overseas Si-hing so to speak
let me toss this one around because I'm learning a great deal on this forum while I'm waiting on at least four operations from a job-related accident.(hate not being able to work out!)
The inside is a given with tan dar
VT,by the same token,I belive I see you point also,are you shifting on the outside gate?if you are I belive you and Armin might be saying the same thing,of course VanKuen stated that he was only training his "Tan Sao" which would limit him
to just the varibles of Tan Sao in this drill,myself being a "baby" to this art and my limited knowledge I agree with with you on the Fok Sao response but then again this is a limited drill.
One thing you lost me on VTstudent is when you said....

" in reality we all know that the only difference is the position of the hand ie palm up as to palm side on with fook.my preference to the fook is simply the position of the hand is ready to make a fist more readily"

Are you saying that fook and tan are only different in the hand??
Am I missing out or was I taught wrong that Tan and Fook are different not just in hand but in elbow very much,as in alive elbow,neutral,downshift into fook(heavy elbow) but tan having more positions where fook is limited in that since,hell,am I making any since?
Just here too learn.
BTW VTstudent,I hear good things about your Sifu.


:)

[tnwingtsun]

"nevertheless (hehehe) the center-line Tan Sao (without step!!!) will only work against wing chun-pracitioners, and if you turn you have to controle the other hand of the attacker with our punch."

You're right,this is hard to do against Bai Mei/Bak Mei styles.
I'm sure others also

[mun hung]

I am in agreement with VTS on this one. Sounds like an interesting exercise, but not a practical one. You can use tan sau on the outside gate - but why would you when there are so many other things that you could do? Fook sau is definitely a better alternative in my book.

[Vankuen]

I think this is best thread Ive ever had on here!! Im sooo happy! haha! You guys are a big help. Keep it going!

Yes Tnwingchun, this drill is something I made up to help me to really understand the usage and pros and cons of the different hand forms. I dont really have a name for the drill yet, but basically I will pick a motion, say tan or fok, bong, pak etc...and only use that (along with a da or strike) as the counter. This particular instance was tan sau, I may have a question one day about pak or fak or fook?! who knows! Depends on what happens the next time I do it.

Once more keep it going, I think this will help everyone to better understand all of our forms.

"From one thing know ten thousand things" - Miyomato Musashi, Book of five rings

[Vankuen]

I also wanted to make note that I understand that there are easier and better alternatives to this attack than using tan sau to the hoi mun, but thats the ultimate point of the drill in the end. You end up seeing the strong and weak points of the motions first hand.

I did notice that the tan sau wasnt exactly the best movement for that attack, which is why I asked.

Now that you mention it, in the beginning of the muk yan jong form set, there is a movement where you sip ma (three angle step) the left outer gate of the dummy performing tan da (right tan with a left joong lo wang jeong). This would be tan sau to the outer gate would it not?

"From one thing know ten thousand things" - Miyomato Musashi, Book of five rings

[vingtsunstudent]

hi guys,
tnwingtsun-this is what vankue wrote at the end of his first post & i was answering this with some of my options.
'What can I do to remedy this situation? If I use jaam sau on the same attack it works fine, is it just that tan sau would be better for a secondary application, say like after a pak sau or something? Id like to know other ways you guys apply tan sau as well!'
also we odviously do fook & tan differently to you as we have no downward pressure in our fook, i was aprobably a little incorect as to how closely in some cases they are related.(this again is a need to see to understand situation)
as to armin missing my piont, well i still think he did but maybe i also did miss his in some way, it can sometimes be quite difficult to read exactly what someone is saying.
to armin-i wasn't saying that that is a technique i would use myself but i have seen barry do it & the reason would basically be becuase if you tan the inside of a punch that is so straight you have more options of better targets available through the centre, barry will also tell you that you must be good & have great comfidence in your ability to do this, i personally like the outside where i am limiting their weapons but then again i am not barry.
there are many other reasons that you would practice tan sao to the inside of a vt straight punch but basically it is a good thing to practice incase you are caught in a position that it may become applicable, as you may or may not know i have mentioned in other posts that i was a bouncer for several years & i base my vt on nothing but the practical side of the art.
by the way just to make you feel a little better on the 7th & 8th of april we are having a workshop with barry in newcastle & we will hopefully cover evrything up to the end of the dummy.
vts