Reader Question: Fung Hao or Fat Sao

“Hello,have you ever heard of a move or drill (or whatever) in Wing Chun called : foon hao ? It’s said that it is used in advanced chi sao but unfortunately I can’t find anything about this move on the internet (hope i pronounce it correctly)Many thanks in advance”

That sounds like Fung Hao (also called Fak Sao) which I believe translates as “neck sealing hand.”

One manifestation of this hand in the forms is in Siu Lum Tao, when you do that sort of chopping out to either side.

As usual with the SLT, this is training two hands at once (no one is chopping the neck of two people simultaneously, except perhaps Austin Powers).

In practice, Fung Hao is not the “best” hand as your go to move (no structure) but it can be useful in various scenarios, usually as an inside action (fast).  One way its used is the defender catches the incoming strike with an inside lap — the lap hand takes the hand offline (defusing it) and then re-attacks.

The classic application (as shown in the primary drill) is the “defender” ends up cutting toward the attacker’s neck with a quick succession of blade hand strikes (driven as always by the elbow) to the larynx or thereabouts.

They called it “neck-sealing hand” because if you do it right, you’ll crack the larynx and their throat will swell and strangle them.

Be careful with your training partners!

We usually apply the strikes to the shoulder muscle for safety.

There are like five variations of this drill, including one where you end up walking past the partner and throwing a strike with the ridge of the hand on the outside of the index finger (opposite the thumb), a little going away present as you escape past your opponent.

The interesting thing to note is that this hand is deprecated.  It is not a grounded strike made with the elbow down, so its efficacy is limited.  This is no money shot.  This is an “Oh, shit” maneuver and not to be relied upon.

Fancy chi sao players (like me back in the day) will do this because its hard to defend against, but in a real fight your opponent might decide to suffer one of these while knocking you out with his ground supported chained attack.

Below Gary Lam demos on my Sifu, Greg LeBlanc.

Its surprising how fast you can get with this technique, but maybe its a bit misleading!

Five fingers of death!