Wooden Dummy Training Videos
When you want to get to the bottom of your Martial Arts training, you also want your sessions to be the most fight-alike possible. Sparring is indeed the best way to improve aspects like focus, adaptability, technique efficiency and courage, but there is a way, the best way in my opinion, to help your body to get rid of that annoying thought everyone has when facing the opponent -should he be in a ring or in real life-:
…will it hurt…?
The Wooden Dummy (Chinese 木人樁, pinyin “Mu ren zhuang”) literally means “a piece of log looking like a human” and its purpose in life is to serve you. As tough as you want to go.
Why training with a Wooden Dummy. The out-of-discussion advantage of the Wooden Dummy is to share with you the real meaning of sparring: on the one hand it’s you, throwing fists and techniques to him, trying not to think about pain; on the other hand it’s him, standing immobile, same expression, never getting tired of being punched and hit. This is the real and ultimate exchange in learning between you two: being able to maintain that Martial Spirit throughout the whole match, even if it hurts, because you don’t want your opponent to gain confidence and think he is close to causing you pain.
The Wooden dummy is the best mate for serving this purpose, and it won’t ever say “no” to your hits.
The following are just some videos of basic combinations you can perform with your wooden dummy: of course each martial style has its own sets of techniques, so we invite you to take the following clips as basic patterns only.
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Limits of a Wooden Dummy.
Technically speaking, the Wooden Dummy can offer the Martial Artist the ability to perform a limited set of techniques, and the reason is simple: it doesn’t move: his arms are motionless, his leg too, and the main log just oscillates when hit. Of course there are versions out there that offer some degree of dynamism, but that’s way too far from a real human body.
Why the Wooden Dummy then?
The Wooden Dummy is the bible for Martial Arts styles such as Wing Chun and Jeet Kune Do, as it’s the best way to simulate a close combat situation where the above styles can unleash their full potential. Unfortunately, the wooden dummy cannot take in consideration the whole range of movements and techniques a human body can perform, resulting, in the end, very limited under this point of view, while still being the best training tool for improving your B.M.C.© level.
