The Wing Chun Wooden Man (Mook Yan Jong) is a training tool that can and should be used throughout training from the very first day. Concepts from all courses can be applied and practiced on the Wooden Man. He makes a suitable training partner when none else can be found, and he is a superb aid in conditioning the hands, forearms, feet and shins. However, the twelve-month Wooden Man Course exploits its own Wooden Man Form. This form is more like a mock fight with the Wooden Man in which he either provides the initiating attack, or takes the alternate side of a mock fight.

The Wooden Man Course enhances the punch by teaching students to combine concepts, strategies and techniques from all of the previous courses. Whereas in the each subsequent course builds on the principles learned in the previous courses, the Intermediate Course and Advanced Course have much closer ties to the Novice Course than they do to each other. However, in the Wooden Man Course, all of these concepts are woven together on an apparatus that at once forces correct lines and conditions the arms, legs, hands and feet.

The Wooden Man Course combines all aspects of fighting, including entering, kicking, boxing, trapping, throwing, grappling and ground fighting. However, the emphasis is on upright and mobile fighting (kicking, boxing, trapping and grappling), so there is very little practice with entering, throwing and ground fighting. The Wooden Man Form causes the student to change distances often. Therefore, he or she is constantly called to flow between one aspect of fighting and another.

The sparring exercises learned in the previous courses are maintained in the Wooden Man Course, but this course adds another type of sparring exercise known as “Dummy Hands,” or “Jong Sao.” Jong Sao consists of two partners working through the mock fights outlined in the Wooden Man Form and breaking those forms into combinations of two or three sequences.

Continually striking a wooden man will condition a person of any size or stature and enable them to strike with shocking force. In addition, the emphasis on bodylines allows students to much more effectively and powerfully deliver force in their strikes.