How not to wibble-wobble when do

How not to wibble-wobble when doing Foot Flows

By Graham Barlow

There can’t be many Feng Sau students who haven’t wobbled more than a few times when performing Foot Flow patterns. Here’s some tips for making them smoother.

There are several factors to producing a smooth Foot Flow patterns in Feng Sau, and I’d like to cover a few here, based on my own (very limited) experiences. Hopefully some of them will resonate with you and you’ll find them useful, if not then don’t worry about it too much and cast them aside – one man’s food is another man’s poison as the old saying goes!

Let’s start at the top of the body with the head. If you look at the floor while doing Foot Flows you’ll lose your balance very easily, especially on spinning moves. Your head actually weighs quite a lot (somewhere between 4.5 and 5kg, which is roughly 8% of your body weight), and if it’s not seated correctly on the top of your body then to remain standing you’ll have to compensate for that offset weight in some way by activating various postural muscle groups somewhere in your torso. In contrast, with the head properly seated its weight can be transferred to the ground through your bone structure without any excess tension. So, the first rule is to keep your head up – making sure you’re always looking at your training partner is the obvious way to ensure you’re doing this. For optimum balance you should look to the far horizon (or imagine where it would be if you’re in a training hall).

Secondly, the spins. Foot Flow patterns contain a number of spinning kicks, and they’re not easy to do without at least a small wobble. The key to doing a good spin and not losing your balance is something that dancers call ‘spotting’. At the start of your spin spot a point with your eyes (the wall, or, more usefully your training partner), then when you turn get your head back around to look at that exact same spot as quickly as you can. It’s a simple technique, but it works. You’ll find that it’s much easier to keep your balance like this, and keeping your eyes on your opponent is a useful self-defence skill to develop in any case.

Thirdly, (and this is getting slightly more technical) is keeping your weight down. In Aikido they call this ‘Keep weight underside’. What it means is, don’t let your body weight rise upwards because of tension, but stay relaxed and let it sink downwards. As the Tao Te Ching says: “He who stands on tiptoes is easily unbalanced”. When we kick we have a natural tendency to want to straighten the standing leg too much, which makes us wobbly. With proper training (and the Tai Chi form is excellent for this) you can learn to overcome this tendency, and keep your supporting leg slightly bent, rooted and stable, maintaining your connection to the ground. It’s harder work, since you have to make more use of the thigh and calf muscles, but the benefit in terms of smoothness and power can’t be denied. As a rule of thumb try not to let your head bob up and down too much when you’re doing foot flows. If you can feel your head bobbing while you’re doing them then you’re probably rising up too much on the kicks.

The flip side to keeping the body weight ‘underside’ is of course to eliminate any excess tension in the upper body. It’s easy to observe beginners holding their hands and arms in a very rigid ‘On Guard’ positions when performing Foot Flows (I know I certainly did when I started). But think about it – if the whole body is connected together (which we learn about in the forms of the system and in the Kai Men exercises) then you can’t expect your hips and legs to function smoothly if you’re locking your arms into a fixed position. Feel free to let the shoulders, elbows and wrists bend and flex where appropriate. Loosen them up – they need to match your hips, knees and ankles. Your balance will thank you for it and the whole exercise will feel much more free flowing.

You’ll quickly learn that Foot Flows may seem to be all about your legs on the surface, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find that it’s as much a whole body exercise as any other part of the Lee family system.

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