[QUOTE=couch;861308]I would love to discuss two different punching mechanics and if they are present in your WC.
For the most part, and what I have trained in Wing Chun in regards to how I punch is that I tend to leave the arm extended after a punch has been thrown. If the WC practitioner is punching a mitt, you see that they remain in contact with the mitt after the punch has been thrown. You can see this in Chi Sau a lot where the arms want to have their space and people leave them ‘out in the game.’
In a boxing environment, however, you never see anyone leave their arms extended. They are always brought back to protect the chin and flank.
What advantages / disadvantages do we see here? If you were to throw just one vertical punch, would it be brought back for protection or not? Maybe one ‘vertical jab’ wouldn’t be thrown on its own for you?
I’ve just been playing with this idea. I think that leaving the arm out there helps with the sensitivity part, but I worry about not bringing it back to protect my glass jaw!
Thoughts?[/QUOTE]
In training the SLT the Tan , Jum are the retracted positions for punches using either line . Ergo we retract back to a fresh striking position like fook sao . Fook sao trained as a ‘chi-sao’ event wont give you this thinking because your doing forward pressure ‘wristing’ thinking. The fooksao is our way of ‘Elbow position’ recovery back to the point of EITHER TAN OR JUM , NEUTRAL but retracted back to its ‘holding position’, not sticking to an arm thats raising it up et… but bringing back the elbow to take advantage of over extended arms 
In Dan chi-sao when we strike over the arm for jum development and bong use , after the jumming punch has extended and been defelected sideways , its obvious we cant leave our arm in this vulnerable position so we rtract the elbow back down while using the bong of the partner as a ‘marker’ not a resting spot for energy coming out the wrist.
By developing this at an early stage one always recovers at speed quickly to take a line offered by simply ‘holding’ our own without force or attempts to stick or follow and arm leading redundantly applied energy to stick and feel.
The concept of swapping the lead for the rear applies in all things .
The extended arm may come back doing a jut[jerking] action as it x’es over a punch arm, as asimilar recovery of elbow positions, from chi-sao development of this thinking , not sticking.
All actions require we recover the elbow to work our idea in a fight.
SLT is this isolation time for elbow angles to ‘spend time’ inwards and using the introduction of tan, fook, jum, vu etc… in a repetitive cycle along the line.
Dan chi sao for individual training of elbow / pec /shoulder girdle muscle group contractions to train the arm to hold its defensive line. This pectoralis use of elbow position /alignment in strikes means we dont offer energy out at the limb of the arm to ‘seek a platform to rest’ only to strike with the hand with a loose wrist, loose bicep/tricep …fook teaches recovery to an "I dont know what energy I need to hold what side of my punching arms line yet " floating / neutral elbow ..to much forwards pressure or a raised elbow lead to bad arm control when faced with an obstruction, the tendency of chi-saoers is to touch the others arm as a ‘bridge’ for contact so if I present an arm that they ‘think’ is requiring them to contact, by suddenly retracting the intended resting point of their energy focus they are moving in arcs and not striking in . coaching in chi-sao involves offering arms in strike line/angles, and suddenly removing them just to see if the focus of the attack is to go through my arm using angles and only stop if they have to..after all they havent made contact yet and shouldn’t seek it.
It usually takes 3-4 attempts to get a guy 2-3 feet away to simply hit you and not fight the arm …
1 punch tries to stick to my arm no punch focus
2 tries to punch but arm raises up ontop of my extended arm…no alignmnet control using elbow training
3 strike once again goes to push down arm AND hit , no force
4 focused mind strikes as it deflects…
sometimes it takes more tries , but it becomes obvious that the training of chi-sao becomes anything but trying to feel my arm
If I add sudden arm removal from a simple strike path it becomes evident they are anticipating making arm contact not ‘just hitting’ me and allowing the results to lead the next action…
The best way to describe this is when I taught guys to shoot handguns in the UK , I would put a blank round [snap cap] into a 38/357 revolver barrel, spin it like ‘russian roulette’ and hand the gun to learner shooter, they would shoot at the target 5 ft away while learning to NOT anticipate the bang [arm contact] and flinch off target, it was seen when they shot the ‘blank’ and no bang went off , and yet they moved the barrel down almost a foot missing the target alignment completely …simply an alignment tool. Like shooting we don’t use refined actions like using sights at close range , we point and shoot , so alignment is crucial to simply hit a target 4 ft away from you with an isosceles grip…similar triangulation to VT.
WSL used to get the 'idea ’ across…offer blanks in the form of extended arms that suddenly disappeared from the intended contact search.
sounds easy
This leads to the guy not stopping to ‘fight’ the arm , and punch through the arm and allow ‘whatever’ to simply happen and fill the next strike from vu-sao not enter into a clinch if it can be avoided .Because the focus is to strike ‘past’ the arms using available ‘angles’ in the 'space we move the strikes and recovery lines along from training. If we adopt a feel touchy because an arm happens to be before us …we go grab n clinch lop and waste time, become less efficient.
Imagine punching and the guy lifts his arm under yours and lifts your arm extended…do you react without thinking to bring it back ? that should be part of fighting training in close quarters to me.
Many good situations occur before us when we simply allow the opponents movement to open lines to us, because we trained to hold our arm space through training and not rely on another’s arm contact for functional delivery of ‘chi-sao’ world techniques…we never have to make arm contact , rather strike through the holes in the defense by arm angles trained to recover and hold ‘space’ not feel things ..or chase them.
