For today’s video lesson we will focus on developing the speed for executing 6-NGK-3A.

Below are the notes to accompany the video :-

Exercise 1 – this 2-opening, 2-closing arm exercise comes from the long sequence we practiced for learn the applications of 5 Tigers Descending Mountain in SKD 2.0. If you have been keeping up with the training for this then Exercise 2 is a walk in the park.

Exercise 2 – this can be considered a variation of Exercise 1, however, we now have one arm opening and one arm closing at the same time. You might recognize this coordination as similar to the opening two movements in 6-ES-1.

Exercise 3 – this is also a variation of Exercise 1 except we now have an opening movement that is similar to the downward smashing technique of 6-NGK-3A.

Exercise 4 – once you are familiar with Exercise 3 you change the opening movement to that of the downward smashing technique of 6-NGK-3A. By now you should have built up a steady tempo and continuity of movement between the left side and right side for Exercise 3 which you can apply to Exercise 4.

Don’t worry too much about form first. Instead, work on keeping the flow. Pay attention to the closing hand and where it is positioned.

Exercise 5 – if you have a handle on Exercise 4 then add in the linear dragon fist punch that follows the downward smashing strike.

If you are confident in your timing you can do the exercise while moving forward and backward in a zigzag manner. With more practice you can throw in extra follow up strikes from the other training sequences.

Keep practicing until you can keep up a good flow. Then increase the speed. Once you can do it fast, slow down and work on proper form. When the form is proper, work on power.

Finally, work on both speed and power. If you have a training partner check your learning by working on application.

The first technique in 6-NGK-1 for the bottom hand is a rolling block.

The last technique in 6-LH-6 and 3-WS-6 is the same technique which is an open palm block.

Both techniques train a sudden, shocking force that inflicts the opponent with an F.O.G. feeling with your rolling block or open palm block when your block makes contact with their forearm.

A Wing Chun practitioner, Philip, once wanted to try Grandmaster Loong Poh’s NGK. The old master invited him to attack and he charged in with a punch. GM promptly blocked Philip’s forearm and he jumped back in pain as if a jolt of electricity has hit him.

Seeing his disbelieving look, GM invited him to try again. Philip couldn’t get his attack through and became a student of GM.

This disbelieving, scared, open-eye look on the face of people who first encountered this type of blocking is what I termed the fear of God (F.O.G.) look.

The easiest way to get a handle on this type of blocking is to practice the 6-LH-5 to 6-LH-6 sequence as follows :-

a) From 6-LH-5 position pull your striking hand to the position of 6-LH-6.

b) In 6-LH-5 your leading hand (we’ll use the right hand) is assuming a hook hand strike. Open up the right hand fingers as you whip the hand to the position of 6-LH-6. Imagine you are holding a marble between your fingers which you toss behind you as your right hand is moving to 6-LH-6.

c) You use a small waist turning to the right motion to whip the right hand to the position of 6-LH-6. This causes your entire upper body to get involved in the whipping motion.

d) The moment your right hand reaches 6-LH-6 stop moving your entire body at once.

The movements of (a) to (d) is what gives your right arm the power and solidity to dish out the F.O.G. feel.

These movements also lay the groundwork for the left hand strike which you deliver as you block as well as the follow up strike by the right palm.

In this post I will mention some points to take note of when practicing 6-NGK-3.

a) When doing 6-NGK-3-A Exercise No. 1 (ii) to (iii), turn your body slightly to the left when doing (ii), then turn back to the right when doing (iii) as this helps with the neutralizing and entering the opponent’s space.

Once you are nearing the end of the turn in (iii) you are poised to execute the right arm drop. Turn a bit more to face the opponent, and smash down and into opponent. Let gravity do its job even as you whip your right arm down.

Using the right dragon fist can help to focus your power.

b) When performing the right arm vertical smashing strike stop the right arm when it reaches the right side of your body and the dragon fist tip is pointing to the ground.

c) 6-NGK-3-B Exercise No. 2 (iii) – the right dropping arm acts like a trigger and mechanism to propel your left strike forward.

d) The stopping of the right arm mentioned in (b) acts to inject sudden power into the left punch.

e) Try doing the left punch with a normal fist as well as using a dragon fist. You should feel that the dragon fist helps to focus the power better in your left arm.

Yes, actually using a dragon fist to hit can be scary in that you may hurt your hand. It does take practice before you find how to use it while minimizing the risk of injury.

Another way is to learn how to focus and concentrate the power when using the dragon fist. Take the lessons from here and implement into the use of a normal fist. It can be done but need some thinking and experimentation to figure it out. That’s what practice is for.

For the next part, we move on to 6-NGK-3-B. This is the technique that NGK is famous for.

6-NGK-3-B Exercise No. 1

i) Imagine a strike at the centre of your chest. As you visualize the strike coming, step off the line of attack to your right, turning your body to the left as you do so and use your right index finger to help you to move to avoid the strike.

ii) As your right index finger does its work, stretch your right arm further up. This will cause your body to turn a bit more to the left, leaving your chest to be near parallel to the line of attack.

iii) Once your chest is near parallel to the line of attack, drop your right arm down, drawing an arc from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock, ending with the palm of your right fist facing upwards.

iv) As you drop your right arm, relax your legs so that you will sit down into a horse stance.

Note – did you notice that this is the same block as 6-Blks-3? If yes, now you know how 6-Blks-3 is really performed. In fact, the above (i) to (iv) is basically the movement of 6-Blks-2 to 6-Blks-3.

6-NGK-3-B Exercise No. 2

In the first exercise we worked on the defending arm because it is the most important part of the technique.

You will get an interesting expression on your partner’s face when you apply this block properly.

After getting the hang of the block then we can add the punch.

i) Perform (i) to (iii) from 6-NGK-3-B Exercise No. 1.

ii) Now, as you move into the blocking motion of (iv) from 6-NGK-3-B Exercise No. 1, add the punch.

My teachers in NGK liken the movement of blocking and punching to that of turning a steering wheel. So as your blocking right arm moves to 6 o’clock, your left punching arm moves clockwise up to 12 o’clock as you punch forward.

For the next few days let’s put to practice 6-NGK-3.

For ease of reference we will breakdown 6-NGK-3 into the following :-

a) 6-NGK-3-A for the 1st technique
b) 6-NGK-3-B for the 2nd technique

We can divide the movements of 6-NGK-3-A as follows :-

Right posture
i) Right arm vertical smashing strike
ii) Left dragon fist linear punch

To make a quick breakthrough in understanding the mechanics and function of 6-NGK-3-A we will exaggerate the movements. We first examine the vertical smashing strike.

6-NGK-3-A Exercise No. 1

i) To help ease into the understanding of how to apply it confidently, we begin with a left parry (refer to the video on how to use the index finger when practicing the basic two-shift stepping).

ii) As the left parry begins, bring up the right forearm.

iii) The moment the left parry passes the right forearm mark, quickly straighten and raise the right fist up high vertically.

iv) Relax your right shoulder and let the entire right arm drop. Feel gravity do its work to let your arm fall. Don’t try to force your arm to drop.

v) Repeat for the left side.

6-NGK-3-A Exercise No. 2

Once you get the hang of 6-NGK-3-A Exercise No. 1, we move on to the second exercise.

i) Begin with the right side. You do the same movements in the first exercise to bring the right arm up.

ii) As your right arm drops observe the moment your right arm passes your shoulder level. Feel how the falling arm affects the right side of your body the moment it passes your shoulder level.

iii) Once you have observed and felt (ii) now you can add in the left dragon fist linear strike. You execute the left dragon fist punch the moment your right arm passes the shoulder level. Let the falling right arm help you to shoot the left punch out.

6-NGK-3-A Exercise No. 3

If you have grasped the feeling of using gravity to assist in mobilizing and powering both arms, you can next add in the body movement and use of legs.

Nowadays I rarely write about the internal side of combative movements. Instead, I write about things that can be practiced because I feel that it is pointless to talk about things that are not easy to learn, much less master and leads to too much talk instead of actual practice.

This does not mean the internal aspects are absent. They are still there, however, I eschew talking about them in favor of actual practice to discover what they are.

For example, the principles of the Ancient Bell Body in the practice of Grandmaster Wei Shuren’s Tai Chi is fascinating. However, if we fail to bridge the gap between theory and practical then we are wasting our time.

To master the Ancient Bell Body takes not just a lot of practice but persistent practice over a long period of time and constant investigation of the practice. Only then will you understand what the Ancient Bell Body is for and from there be able to use it.

As far as self-defense goes, taking this long to learn how to use a practical art defeats the purpose of learning it. If you already have a base mastery then taking the time to cultivate it is fine.

However, what if there is a faster way to breakthrough the understanding of what the practice of the Ancient Bell Body is about, wouldn’t this make more sense in today’s time starved society?

This is one of the objectives of practicing the 6-Blocks. On the surface it just looks like a blocking practice but beneath the practice is this hidden aspect of cultivating the principles of the Ancient Bell Body without knowing one iota of what it is about. Its the results that matter, not the means of getting there!

Once the basic habits of doing the 6-Blocks are acquired, one should practice them in various ways with a training partner. Use the learning experience to further refine the solo practice. From there its a short hop over to the internal side.

Does it take years to get there? I don’t think so. Maybe months?

It is the same with the other solo sequences. At a certain point in the practice, there is an internal aspect. But we should not worry about this. Instead, we just need to do the practice daily. Practice what is needed to keep moving forward.

For example, the practice of the long pole can help us to move better. If you keep doing it you will find that you have picked up fajing ability without ever learning it. After this you can make all the theories to explain it.

There is an old saying that maxim does not leave the mouth, fist (practice) does not leave the hand that basically means to do the physical practice.

Here’s the movements of the Wing Chun Left Handed Long Pole :-

Ready posture with pole held behind the back in left hand

Right hand perform 15-sequence solo hand movements

Bring pole from behind to the front, move into defensive posture with pole tip in front; left hand and left leg leading.

Step back to parallel, perform Tan Gwun, then step forward and execute Cheung Gwun.

Step back to parallel, perform Fook Gwun, followed by stepping forward to do Cheung Gwun.

Left leg assume hanging horse, execute Pau Gwun, Hau Gwun, then Tup Gwun consecutively.

Complete the sequence by stepping forward to do Kat Gwun.

Right foot step off line to diagonal right rear, carry out Fei Gwun.

Left foot step back forward and perform Hung Gwun, then Cheung Gwun.

Right foot take half step back and do Gwot Gwun. Continue by stepping back forward to do Kat Gwun.

Drop into a lowered stance with weight on right leg and do Ze Gwun.

From Ze Gwun quickly drop the pole tip down to carry out Dim Gwun with palm down and followed by a second Dim Gwun with palm up.

Stand up, step forward and perform Tiu Gwun.

Bring back pole to body and end.

From reading the above, the left handed pole seems to have a lot of movements. Once you are familiar with it you will find that you can complete all the movements before you even finish reading half of this post.

If you practice this pole a lot you will improve in your ability to issue inch power due to practicing the short, sudden, striking movements of the pole.

Paul mentioned to me that he tried to practice the long pole on the left side too.

Normally, we only practice the pole on one side. However, there is nothing wrong if you want to practice on both sides.

All the long pole forms I have learned lead with the right. The exception is this Wing Chun pole from an old master that leads with the left.

The left handed pole form is made up of 18 movements out of which 16 are full techniques and 2 are half techniques.

If we want to practice the pole on the left side we would do the left handed long pole. You can practice it on the right side too but when you try to apply it that’s when you understand why it leads with the left hand.

So let’s move to learning the left handed Wing Chun long pole once you have managed to build a foundation in Master Leong’s Shaolin 6 1/2 point pole. This would be an incentive to practice more, practice harder and master the basics before picking up the left handed long pole.

Up to date we have the following training for SKD 3.0 :-

a) 2-Shift Footwork Sequence
b) 6-Major Strikes
c) 6-Blocks
d) 6-LinkingHands
e) 3-WhippingStrikes
f) 3-NeckSlashes
g) 6-NGK Series
h) 6-Elbow Strikes
i) Long Pole Sequence

(a) and (b) can be practiced as one learning group as the five of the 6-MS use the footwork of (a).

(c) to (f) can be grouped together as they are solo hand techniques though they can also be practiced as two hands techniques.

(g) is made up of six individual techniques that goes into how to use body shape, techniques for the centre gate, sudden hard power, deceptive techniques.

(h) is practiced as a flowing sequence that covers how to move from mid to short range will using elbow strikes or locks. Use it as a template to mix in techniques from (c) to (g).

(i) can be a practice on its own though in this instance we use it to assist and enhance our learning of the emptyhand techniques.

All the above are means to an end. Learn them, mix them up, use them, absorb their lessons and be free of their constraints. Add, subtract or change them as you move ahead. Begin with (b), close the range and use anything from (c) to (h). Move in, move out, adapt, add in other techniques not listed here.

All the groups have something in common, yet are different when it comes to usage and strategy. Same but not the same.

The 5 Major Strikes training sequence has been updated to six movements so it becomes 6-MS.

The 6th exercise is White Snake Spits Poison which acts as a bridge between the five strikes to the medium and short strikes of 6-LH, 3-WS, 3-NS, 6-ES and 6-NGK.