THE THIRD LEG.

Sports Psychologists are often engaged to address the Sef-Talk of the player.

Hi Guys,

The Sil Lim Tao is like a three-legged stool, and like a three-legged stool if we remove one of the legs the stool fails.

The area that is the third leg is the area that in sports is the realm of Sports Psychology, and this is an area we would all do well to research.

Sports Psychologists are often engaged to address the Sef-Talk of the player.

We are no different, that is part of my job as a teacher.

Self-Talk may appear to be a minor part of learning a Martial Art, but once we can ‘clearly’ see the BIG PICTURE, we come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, the most important part of our training.

You have heard me say over and over that the most important aspect for a Martial Artist to develop is honesty.

A genuine plus here is that this aspect of our training delivers a major positive effect on our everyday life.

Positive, honest Self-Talk firstly benefits our training and then leaks into our all-around behaviour making us more reliable and more responsible people, better people, speaking the truth to ourselves leads to speaking the truth to others and by extension living the truth.

Living the truth leads to good decision making not just in a violent confrontation but in every interaction that we get involved in.

The first and most important step is, to be honest about our training.

Honest about ourselves and why we are training.

Honest about what it is we are training and where and why we would need it.

On the whole Wing Chun people are not aggressive people, we would prefer to avoid confrontation than engage it, we choose to be good citizens.

But this is not a description of the person attacking us.

There is a fair amount of political correctness in Martial Arts training, very few students are comfortable to admit that we are learning to be violent, to be better at violence than the person being { not attempting to be } violent to us, but this is the core of what we do.

Violence is rarely the answer, but when it is the answer, it is the only answer.

TIM LARKIN.

A large part of the ‘Third Leg’, our Psychology or as I call it our ‘FIST LOGIC’ is becoming comfortable with this proposition.

Every sports team of any merit has a sports psychologist on their staff, the difference between ‘Elite’ teams and just very good teams is frequently down to their psychology.

The difference between going home or going to the hospital could be down to our psychology.

WHEN IT IS GO-TIME THERE IS NO CHOICE EXCEPT TO BE BE ALL IN.