WCI Review - Phil Romero - Breaking Structure
The beginnings of most Wing Chun practitioners begin with the introduction of fundamental concepts and constructs. Of those fundamentals, structure (one's understanding, alignment and employment of) is an essential one that the individual continues to work on, pressure test and improve upon employing as one of the principal resources of the system. Sifu Phil Romero builds up and breaks down one's—and the would-be opponent's—structures in a quick and to the point 37-minute submission exploring combative applications.
Romero, a student of the late Sifu Hawkins Cheung, and now a teacher in his own right, prefaces the live-off-the-school-floor training video with a short intro and the wisdom of experience, imparting, "Many have this impression that (you) don't get hit but that's incorrect", before mixing it up on the mat. He cites the core fundamental hands of Taan, Bong, Fook and Wu Sau to engage and destabilise your training partner before transferring to the street. The subsequent live, non-sequential and non-premeditated attacks from the demonstration partner find the individual repeatedly grounded with effective efficiency.
Embodying the true nature of the system, Sifu Romero lets his actions not his words do most of the talking throughout this video. Romero follows up the demo by breaking down what was shown, what was used and how to use it, in the segment titled Off Balancing the Attacker, Press and Pin Bridging. "The idea is to learn how to spin the energy, angle it and then crush it." He follows with a fresh demonstration partner who towers over him in height and physique. Grunts and groans affirm the structural discomfort the volunteer is suffering from the aforementioned consistent result.
"Never try to fight an opponent at his height. You always try to fight your opponent at a lower variation to bring him down to your size." The offering of this combat concept is inapplicable without the corresponding special, and opponent management, need that one's integrity of structure is required with stable and dynamic footwork to support, diffuse and counteract the advances of the opponent, in a further segment titled Breaking Structures: Sparring Applications.
For most of the video, Sifu Romero removes traditional Taan Da, Paak Da, or other hand combinations and punching, to heighten the impact, to both the viewer and the in-house student, of engaging, managing and deconstructing another person's faculties—evolving and reviewing the skill-sets being shared in engaging with an oncoming force of attack from a variety of angles, body types and aggressions.
The finale introduces the system's under-utilised weapons—the kicks. With its best feet forward, a diverse serving of counterattacking, blocking and disabling kicks are shown, to give the practitioner the final leg-up in adding this expanded skill-set to one's arsenal. A sound offering, from head to toe, in expanding one's fundamentals, while exploiting another's, to pound to the ground. A solid floor out of five grunts.
Phil Romero - Breaking Structure
Language: English
Running Time: Approx. 37 min.
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