Wing Chun Sydney, Australia

 

I have Boxed, and I have raced Bicycles, looking back I was training the wrong thing all along.

 

If you came into my studio and hopped on my computer you would find anywhere from 8 to 28 articles in progress, writing down my thoughts and opinions are part of my training, they are how I try to push the envelope and expand my universe.

They are also my biggest tool toward attaining honesty.

When I am writing I just throw it all down, frequently these observations are extremely one-eyed, opinionated and I do nothing to filter this out.

At least not there and then.

I leave them for a few days and then come back to them with the metric of “do I believe this piece of writing, is it simple, clear and above all honest”?

Then I begin editing.

WHY ARE WE TRAINING has been ongoing for as long as I can remember, it has so many bifurcations that it is just not possible to keep it going in a straight line.

Why are you training?

Do you know?

Do you have objectives, genuine goals that you are striving for?

Do you know what the key ingredient is for your success?

Are you working to attain it?

As I get older, as I look back on 67 years of experience there are only a few things that ‘really’ stick out.

There were some things that I became almost obsessed with that just faded away and in retrospect, I understand why.

I was following the wrong breadcrumbs.

Experience is a great teacher.

No matter how old you are you have a wealth of experience that is pertinent to you.

COVID is making us all part-time philosophers so do it.

Think.

This is a little unrelated but perhaps something to think about.

After winning the 1986 Tour de France, Greg LeMond was asked…

Q. “What do you think was the main reason you won”?

A. I can hurt more than anyone else”.

 

Greg LeMond did not train to ride a bike, he trained to accept pain.

 

I have Boxed, and I have raced Bicycles, looking back I was training the wrong thing all along.

 

STAY HEALTHY.

 

 

Knowing what we are doing is the first step to being able to use what we know.

 

One thing that is becoming very clear to me as we reopen for training is that so many Wing Chun Students, including some Senior Instructors, have a remarkably poor IDEA of what violence is.

This really is a serious worry because the only aim of Wing Chun is to deal with violence that is being acted out upon us, if we do not understand the nature of violence how can we ever hope to train to survive it?

Yes, due to COVID 19 these are difficult times, changes need to be made and adhered to, but what changes?

Even a complete idiot would tell you that you cannot teach a counter-attacking Close-Quarter Martial Art from a distance of 1.5M.

At this time practical Wing Chun must take a back seat, our focus should be on understanding the environment of violence, understanding the ‘mindset’ that leads to violence, and of the utmost importance the mindset needed to deal with violence, without this there is no Wing Chun.

I will expand on this over the next few posts and hopefully offer suggestions to take us forwards.

Even from 1.5M.

 

Let’s start here with an approach to attitude, and what it takes to develop the right type.

 

As Martial Artists, even if we are just a bit half-arsed, we all trust our training, and expect it to work if and when needed.

But what do we really expect the outcome of our training to be, do we even know?

For instance what ‘BOX’ does it live in?

From a biophysical standpoint, training is training, there is no difference between training to play a sport or training to defend ourselves from violence.

I personally find that my training fits perfectly in the all-round General Sports Box.

But so many of my Martial Arts friends and associates rail against this opinion.

 

Kung Fu is kick ass man, sport is just sport.

 

I believe that to become functionally effective it is, in fact, more beneficial to approach our training from a sports perspective, to embrace and include modern sports science, if for no other reason than to foster a lesser involvement of the Ego.

We are less likely to respond to a situational question with ‘I will just step in and hit him’, which we may well do in reality, but we cannot train for that.

Especially from 1.5Mtrs away.

All training is task-specific, it just is.

So what specific task is what we are doing preparing us for?

Is it enough?

Is it too much?

Is it just right?

Anyone with a schoolboys experience of sport is well aware that before playing we go through a routine using the same movements and actions as we may use in the game at an easier, softer, slower level of participation.

This allows the body to prepare itself for the greater demands to come.

We all know this as the ‘Warm-up’.

Anyone that has undertaken training to improve their sports capability knows that here as well we do similar movements and actions as we may use in the game but this time under increasing load.

Increasing weight, resistance and speed.

This brings about an overall physical improvement, this is the ‘Training Effect’.

The ‘Training Effect’ helps us to develop a higher power output for a lower effort input, hence the maxim ‘Train Hard, Play Easy’.

This also indicates that the environment we expect to use these skills, to be operationally effective in, is considerably more involved than a ‘Warm Up” but not as full-on as “Heavy Training”.

Traditionally in Chinese Martial Arts both the ‘Warm-up’ and the “Heavy Training” fall under the banner of Chi Kung while the operational aspect is, of course, Kung Fu.

On the face of it, Wing Chun does not have a Chi Kung component, everything is useable Kung Fu.

Sadly this is just spin, marketing, selling less for more.

How can we tell the difference between Chi Kung and Kung Fu in our Wing Chun training?

This a great deal more simple than you may imagine, and Simplicity is one of the central pillars of our ‘Fist Logic’.

If whatever it is we do is not aligned with our ‘Fist Logic’ it is not Wing Chun.

Similar is not the same.

Close, but no cigar.

The absolute ‘Central Pillar’ of our Fist logic is ‘Practicality’.

I have said elsewhere that there are only 2 important aspects to using Wing Chun effectively.

1. We must not get hit.
2. We must be able to accurately and powerfully hit our opponent.

If we defending against a genuine attack that is genuinely meant to harm us we are using Kung Fu.

If we are hitting our opponent with full focus and total commitment to finish this right here, right now we are using Kung Fu.

Everything else is Chi Kung.

This is not a bad thing, this is in no way a negative, it is in-fact an absolute and dynamic positive.

Knowing what we are doing is the first step to being able to use what we know.

The big test, the real goal in all of our training is to not allow our Ego to coax us into self-delusion, this starts with being honest about our training, what it is, what it can do for us but most importantly…

 

WHAT IT IS FOR.

 

 

 

 

If we try to deliberately make this happen it disappears like morning mist.

 

Social distancing means we are still working mostly on head stuff.

Nothing we are training is of any practical use.

If / when we get into a violent situation we will not even think about using Wing Chun we will only think about getting out of that situation in the best shape possible.

In a fight we will simply fight, only in training will we do Wing Chun, only in the training hall, never in the street.

But we know this.

Every man and his dog connected to Wing Chun will tell you that Wing Chun is a concept-driven Martial Art.

If that is the case then whatever we do physically, or energetically if you study ‘Internal’ aspects, are nothing but vehicles for the exploration and deeper understanding of the concepts.

Learning to understand things like not fighting force, not carrying weight, escorting what comes in, facing the shadow – chasing the shadow, embracing the economy of movement and the true reality of what it means to Counter-Attack.

Without a method to explore and experience these ideas, they will remain as just words.

Take adopting softness as an example.

The ultimate goal is not to be soft, come on get real what use is being soft in a shit storm, the goal is to avoid becoming stiff, learning how to not tense up under pressure.

Relaxation is not an ongoing and ever-evolving condition, relaxation is a method to disengage from overt tension in our body when we are placed under load, the tension that will slow us down and steal power.

In Wing Chun training we are rarely placed under load due to our misunderstanding of this concept.

Muscles have two states, tense and relaxed, if they are being used they are tense if they are not being used they are relaxed.

A relaxed muscle is turned off, we cannot use a muscle that is turned off, to believe otherwise is foolish.

Our idea of relaxing is out of context, as are so many things if they are looked at as being practical.

The majority of our training is Chi Sau and Forms.

Even the most one-eyed of Wing Chun students realise that neither Chi Sau nor Forms are intended for fighting, it is simply not their role in the system.

Can they inform and influence how we fight, of course they can, but they cannot teach us how to fight.

Many people pay lip service to the notion that ‘training is not fighting’ without having any genuine experience of fighting and as such no means of comparison.

My first 15 years in the Martial Arts were in the combat sports of Boxing and then Judo.

I have first-hand experience of the difference between training for an upcoming fight or match and turning up and fighting, it is huge and extremely dissimilar.

Living in Liverpool through the 1960s and 1970s meant that not all of my fights were in a ring or on a mat.

The fights that were not in a ring or on a mat turned out to have nothing in common with what happened in the ring or on the mat and were even farther away from what I was training.

I am really not too sure if I did anything in these street encounters that could be considered a result of my training.

The role of our shapes and movements is to expose us to the intelligence of Wing Chun, which is deep and wide.

Seek out the why and ignore the how, just like Master Wong it is bogus.

Once we find it it can never be lost.

Once we understand it we do not need to train techniques.

Once we become one with Wing Chun every single gesture has power.

If we try to deliberately make this happen it disappears like morning mist.

 

TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESS’.

WORK TO YOUR STRENGTH.