Wooden Dummy Plans

The Wooden Dummy

In 1982 I ordered a Teak Wooden Dummy from a Toronto Wing Chun supply store for $800 Canadian. Now in 2002 the price seems to be about $1,000 to $1,500 for a Dummy made from other kinds of wood. In the 1980's a lot of the students here just got a log from the beach, rented a drill for $15 an hour to drill the arm and leg holes, got a carpenter to lathe the arms, and found some natural shaped leg on the beech or got a carpenter to laminate a two piece leg. The cost of this kind of Dummy was $15 for each arm plus the labor to build the dummy. Taking into consideration mounting hardware and whatever else, the total cost did not go above $150.

In a way the Wooden Dummy is like a musical instrument. If the dummy is too loose, has too much play or is too tight then the whole feeling when doing the dummy movements is not comfortable. With a good wooden dummy, a double palm movement applied to the trunk gives just the right springiness. The suspended Wooden Dummy probably has a better feel than the original type which was just planted in a square hole in the ground.

Yip Man seems to have taught a 108 movement Dummy at first. This sequence consisted of 108 movements broken out into ten sections. Each section has 10 movements except the last which has 18. Later he reorganized the movements into eight sections with a different number of movements in each section. The early sections in both versions are almost the same. The dummy movements from some Fatsan styles of Wing Chun are much longer and a little more elaborate. Actually Leung's Sheung's dummy movements are also more elaborate than Wang Kiu's dummy movements. They are not the same as the 108 version or the 116 movement version.  So I conclude that it is not so important what version you do. 

The Wang Kiu lineage also trains a partner version of the Dummy which they refer to as the "Live Dummy." Other lineages call the suspended dummy the "Live Dummy" as compared to the one planted in the ground. I don't know if the "Live Dummy" is Wang Kiu's training procedure or if it comes from Yip Man?  However it is logical and can be thought up my any smart person. There can be many variations too.

The Dummy measurements should relate to the size of the person such that any Wing Chun movements allows one to be in a comfortable position, neither having to raise the stance or lower the stance too much. If the dummy is too high then the practitioner is encouraged to get out of his stance. If too low, it' s just too awkward. If the arms are too wide then the movements will become sloppy and not economical or tight. If the arms are too narrow then movements become cramped.

There seem to be two schools of though on the dummy. One school "beats the hell" out of the dummy while the other "dances" with the dummy. The dummy can be used for both. The dummy is a good tool to keep one's positions accurate over time because the dummy limbs are always in a fixed position. 

See how one school makes a wooden dummy...

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