Sparring With Karate 2
On Sunday I again got together with the two Karate, one Tae Kwon Do and (just now) one Preying Mantis Kung-Fu practitioner for a technique exchange followed by a light open spar.
This time I felt much better. Over the course of the week I put in the physical and mental time so that I could patiently play an outside game and wait for my opportunity to enter. I wore my cup, mouthguard and MMA gloves.
I stuffed more kicks with my legs and again I was more patient which allowed me to use my bread and butter: close range techniques. I also clinched a bit more with the half-neck tie (present in the dummy form) so that my opponents couldn’t run away to play their outside game. While I still found the forceful limb-hitting awkward to deal with vs. the Karate folk, I felt that my Wing Chun had been well matched with the Mantis Kung-Fu.
Because (in my opinion) my WC has only forward, backward, upward and downward motions – the Mantis this gentleman performed seemed quite similar. Therefore, I felt like I was just playing a bit of Goh Sau with another WC exponent and I was able to make my Chun work extremely well.
Everyone had a smile on their face and was puffing for air when we were done.
