A Return to Form: Chum Kiu

My own muscle memory tried to kill me.

Let me ‘splain - see, I’m getting back into my kung fu training after a long hiatus and a serious illness. After weeks of just focusing on siu nim tao and conditioning exercises, I was feeling pretty good about how far I’ve come in my recovery. I decided it was time to work on my chum kiu form.

Chum kiu is the second open-hand form that we learn in ving tsun, and it is - by far - my favorite. It takes all of the movements learned in siu nim tao and straps rockets to them, launching hands and feet in a full 180-degree arc from my horse stance, creating a legit danger zone around my body. There are strikes, defensive reactions, shapes to the body structure that are designed to absorb incoming energy and send it back with power and precision. Chum kiu was the first time I got a sense of the mobility of my kung fu. That all the strength and balance I’d cultivated during my siu nim tao studies could actually move, and move aggressively.

Chum kiu teaches me to bridge the gap between myself and an attacker by bridging the gap between my stationary siu nim tao form and the more kinetic forms learned later. It’s a brilliant, efficient evolution of my kung fu, and I was really excited to get back into it.

So I took a deep breath. Lifted my hands in front of me to open the form, and let muscle memory take over. I’ve done this form hundreds of times, with its shifting balance and forceful energy. My body knows the sequence down to my bones; what could possibly go wrong? Nothing at all! 

… for about eight seconds. Then I hit the first shift in section one of the form, and my body’s alarm bells started ringing. But I was committed now. Muscle memory had the wheel and the last time it remembered doing chum kiu was on Cranked Up To Eleven Mode. All I could do was keep going through the form and hope I’d survive to the end.

Once it was over, I staggered to a bench and sat down to take stock of the damage.

My legs were in open revolt. Knees were screaming that they had only twisted because the hip flexors were too lazy to absorb the shift momentum. Hip flexors were protesting that nobody had asked them to do anything in literally months, so of course they missed the memo about today’s shifting insanity. Quad muscles were just simply too on fire to say anything at all, but my shoulders had some very snide remarks to make about excessive bong sau energy. All the while, my heart rate had skyrocketed high enough to give my pulse oximeter a panic attack. (yes, I have a device for measuring my heart rate and blood oxygenation - if you don’t own random medical equipment, are you even really chronically ill?)

As I sat there, apologizing to my knees and trying like hell to slow my breathing, I had to laugh at myself - had I really forgotten everything that my month of siu nim tao study had taught me? That whole thing about not expecting my body to perform at pre-serious-illness levels? That doing so would just make me hurt myself? So now I was just sitting here, in pain, on the bench in my new kung fu school in Denver, trying not to embarrass myself by passing out?

Yes. Yes I had, in fact, forgotten.

But did I let any of that stop me from getting back to work on chum kiu? No. No I did not. It’s still my favorite form, even though I let my own muscle memory hurt me. Now I’m just taking the time to study it slowly. Thoughtfully. Focusing more on the precise details, and less on the speed and power. Remembering what my siu nim tao taught me - it takes patience to rebuild a body.

But once I’ve put in the time? You better believe I’m cranking my chum kiu back up to eleven.