Stance Drill For Lap Sau Exercise

 

How is your footwork really?

 

As we all should know, Lap Sau exercise is an important drill, but only when trained properly.

 

Every time my Sifu (GM Ip Chun) would visit my schools to give seminars, I would ask him afterwards;

 

“What do you think the students need to work on?”

 

To which his answer was always the same;

 

“Lap Sau exercise”

 

Not because we were al s**t at this drill, but simply because of its importance.

 

Now there are many things I could discuss within this drill, but for now I only want to address the stance, or the lack of it, as this is the most common element to go wrong for most people, mainly because you are being tricked by your eyes, only focussing on what is right in front of you, the Lap and the Bong.

The start of this drill is always fine, as is the first turning stance, but where things start to go wrong is when the student squares back up again, often the feet are all over the place.

 

In the clip below, taken during one of my classes, I share a little exercise which is a real bonus in improving your understanding of this footwork, not where we are going to, but where we are going from.

 

If you decide to spend some time drilling your turning stance, great, this is always a good idea, however, if you trained 500 turns, using Garns, Kwun’s, Bongs, Tan-Da and so on, 499 of those will be compatible with their true applications, because every turn was going from one side to the other, one extreme to the other, when in fact only the first turning technique had real importance and application.

 

Therefore, the drill you are about to see, is a great way of confirming (to yourself), that every time you turn, it will be correct, not only in its finish, but in where it set off from.

 

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the clip.