Siu Lim Tao - Part 2

Have you ever found yourself having to stand around somewhere, probably waiting for something or someone, with nowhere to sit down? After standing for a while, you find yourself getting a little uncomfortable, so you begin to shuffle your weight from one foot to another. Or maybe you begin to slouch a bit to take pressure off on side of your body. You might even have got to the point where you need to lean against something, or just give up and crouch down to rest your legs. Standing isn’t that strenuous, so why do we get tired and uncomfortable when we have to do it for a long time.

The answer to this is also why we need to train Siu Lim Tao as much as we can. Our skeleton and our muscles are designed to perfectly support our weight. Despite this due to bad posture, injury and genetics, that structure starts to fail over time and we start to carry our weight in places that we shouldn’t. Tense shoulders, back pains, stiff hips and those small aches when we’re standing are all examples of our bodies showing the strain. So how do we work on this? We stand correctly.

Training Siu Lim Tao puts us back into our correct structure (with some help from your Sifu). Once you have this position and then hold it for a long time, you start to feel a different type of strain. Now you are feeling the areas that have become weaker due to bad posture. The longer you practice Siu Lim Tao ,the stronger these parts become and the stronger your structure is. Any martial skill has to begin with a strong structure, and this is how we train this in Wing Chun.