Relationship of Serrada's lock position with Wing Chun's chi sao

Many martial artists have at least some glancing knowledge, if even only from YouTube, of Wing Chun’s chi sao exercise where partners face each other and interlock hands, each with one in a palm up position (tan sao) and the other in a downward hooking position (fook sao) … and hopefully I recalled those correctly. The hands are then rotated back and forth between these positions in the basic form of the exercise.

Less well known is the “lock-and-block” position used in Serrada Escrima, and perhaps some other FMA (Filipino Martial Art) systems as well – GM Hortensio Navales’ system from Panay comes to mind. In this position, the main weapon, be it a stick or blade, is in the primary hand, which generally and for this description we’ll assume to be the right. The hand is palm down (pronate), with the weapon basically parallel to the front of the body, pointed at a downward diagonal angle towards the left. In this manner it essentially can cover the torso defensively from about the right armpit to the left hip. The other (left) hand, holding a shorter weapon, generally a knife or dagger (daga), is basically on the same level as the right hand, so that it is above the longer primary weapon, but held back closer to the body, in reserve, and also so as not to impede any upward movement of the primary weapon. The shorter weapon generally points forward towards the opponent, so that the two weapons essentially form an x and y axis, or two sides of a box (your torso being a third side).

Now, take away the weapons, and what you see looks like one position from Wing Chun’s chi sao, with the left in tan sao and the right in fook sao. Conversely, put those weapons in the hands of a Wing Chun practitioner doing that and you pretty much can’t miss the similarity!

Whereas Wing Chun rolls the hands between these positions, Serrada does not …. but it can and sometimes should. Why? The lock-and-block position is designed for the primary weapon to jam and trap the opponent’s arm, allowing the opposite hand to strike targets. That sets up perfectly if you are outside of the right arm, or even inside of the left, but other positions can be trickier and possibly force you to have to cross yourself in less optimal manner. However, using that Wing Chun chi sao roll, we’ve now reversed the position of the weapons, where the short weapon takes on the role of checking while the primary weapon in the right hand does the dirty work.

So which position do we use? The right hand in the lock position, as first described above, is the main and most common position. One of our primary concepts, however, is directness, and so in checking, we try to utilize the hand closest to the limb being checked as it can orient more quickly and efficiently. This means there are times when we’ll need to check with the off-hand, which is where this rolling switch comes into play. GM Angel Cabales utilized this daga checking from time to time, though it wasn’t stressed in the curriculum and he always finished back in the primary position. That being said, we always want to have versatile options that meet the needs of a given situation.