In the absence of training partners we have an opportunity to investigate our System’s syllabus, and to look to this for inspiration. Deriving maximum benefit from our syllabus means understanding what our syllabus is for, and generalising from it to understand what led to the syllabus being constructed as it is. The first thing to note is that the syllabus is not the System; the syllabus is no more than a sample of the techniques we practice in class, and it provides a common reference point that everyone returns to, allowing Examiners to assess your understanding and capabilities. Understanding this important point is to understand the difference between studying only to pass exams, and studying a subject truly to understand the subject.

We tend to reserve the novelty element of gradings for the “Examiners’ choice” section of gradings for brown belt and above. We are not purely an impact style, with grasping and takedowns forming such an important part of our style, that the richness of our handwork doesn’t lend itself readily to “marching-up-and-down” drilling without some thought. We are lucky that in classes and gradings we have plenty of partners to work with, allowing us to apply our handwork against a wide range of different people. It is quite common, however, in other martial arts for their own syllabus hand and leg work to be called in novel combinations on grading day in a “marching up and down” manner. There’s nothing, however, to stop us focussing on this element of our Art by working on novel handwork combinations, and today I’d like to offer a few pointers to help you construct your own combinations. By handwork I mean not just striking techniques with the hands, but also blocks, grasps and breaks using every part of the hands and arms reflecting the richness of our System.

Working on novel combinations allows us to improve our precision, speed, balance, stability, muscle memory, creativity, and to bridge the gap from mechanical, precise syllabus work, to freer combinations suitable for sparring and combat. During this time of solo training such novel handwork combinations would form a natural substitute for hands-based padwork.

In constructing your novel handwork combinations please consider working both in “face-on” square stances and stepping drills. Stepping drills should integrate your handwork with different forms of movement such as stepping forwards or backwards, chek-ing, cross-stepping, tap-kar, reverse rotation, jumping to spring forward/backward, and if space permits rolls and cartwheels too.

Below are some ideas, all of which I’m sure your instructors have asked of you in class before!
– Maintain the “face-on” square stance used in your basic syllabus handwork, but use different combinations of existing hand techniques. Don’t be limited by the handwork section of your syllabus, look at the wider range of hands we use such as descending and advancing knife hands (as in our forms starting with SPP1), point and raising elbow strikes, descending, rising, inward and outward kow chiew, pok chiew, phoenix eye, and so on
– Use your familiar strikes but at different heights, such as dropping into a kneeling stance to strike low, or doing your basic punches to head height. For multiple strikes in a combination do them at different heights
– Once again maintain the square stance of your basic syllabus, but include blocks and grasps with hands, perhaps inspired by forms you know
– Use your syllabus handwork that you’d normally do in a square stance, but try to make stepping versions of these punching drills: for example even your most junior handwork could be performed as step with basic punch off front hand only, step with shoulder punch off back hand only, step to punch with the front then back hand, step with box punch off the back hand then the front hand to unwind, step forward kow chiew with the front hand, and so on
– Stepping handwork drills incorporating punching, blocking and grasping. At the most basic level this might resemble the step-grasp-punch part of Sah Poh Poo No 1, and it can be generalised in many directions from there
– Since you’re not constrained only to step forwards, try any of your handwork drills by moving backwards or off-the-line as well as forwards
– Work out how to build handwork drills involving rotational movement, whether turning to face the other way during the sequence, or rotating as you jump forward/backward
– Take a particular combination, and try to make versions of it from square stance, through stepping ultimately to shadow boxing, allowing you to build the bridge between technical syllabus handwork for mechanical learning towards handwork for free movement
– Extract a part of a form you’re working on, and make a drill from it, allowing you to improve your feeling for the technique via repetition

Have you any tricks you use to generalise your syllabus work? Please share your thoughts with our community.

Good luck, keep training and stay safe!
— Sifu Leppard