TALKING IS THE BEST TRAINING.

Ability is gained through trust, trusting the knowledge enough to use it when things get nasty.

Saturday mornings are most often just me and the seniors, Sam, Costas, and George.
This Saturday was a little bit exceptional because I recognised their training effort and awarded them a level 6 Certificate.
So what does that mean?
I follow the same progression as my own Sifu did with his school and treat each of the Forms as a level.
Level 6 equates to having finished the training that comes with each Form.
Which, as you know for me, means that they have completed the first circuit of the completed Sil Lim Tao Form.
So what now?
Easy.
Rinse and repeat.
In terms of organisation, they are now officially Junior Masters {how I hate that term} and are beginning the descent into becoming Masters.

Descent why not ascent?

To teach others how to fly, we must start back at the airfield.
The requirements needed to safely make this landing, and to claim the right to call oneself a Master, are earned by developing enough understanding of the 6 Forms to teach someone else how to get to Level 6.
When a person reaches J. M. Level, there is nothing new physically to learn, ironically this is where the going gets tough, the training wheels come off and we go headlong into turbulence.
We must chart our flight path to develop our IDEA of Wing Chun.
This is very hard, it is easy to get lost and drift off course.
All of us have our EGO as a co-pilot, yes, we could, with a certain level of honesty, say that now we know all there is about Wing Chun.
But knowledge is not the same as ability.
Not even close.
There is a misconception that being a Kung Fu Master equates to being able to fight like Iron Mike, and we see the results of this thinking every time a Kung Fu Master engages a Professional Fighter.
However, ability is a lot easier to develop once we have knowledge.
Ability is gained through trust, trusting the knowledge enough to use it when things get nasty.
Trust comes through understanding.
The next step in the 3 Sixes training is to understand what they know.
Most of this training happens in quiet moments of contemplation.

Congratulation guys.
You earned it.

In the video above we are exploring and mostly talking about the FORMS and tying them into actions, from the outside, this may not look very advanced, but hey, street fights are not very advanced.

The real value in this training is what we talk about, what we question, and what answers we come up with, this is the real stuff if you can listen more than watch.

And watch what is happening away from the conversation that I am having, don’t watch me watch the guys.

Watch how effortlessly people are being thrown around, thrown away.

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

GREAT GRAND MASTER ISAAC NEWTON