THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS.

One thing I have always accepted, even back in the day as a tradesman teaching apprentices, is that any failings of the student are the fault of the teacher.

This post was initially meant to be a follow-up of sorts to the last post.

However, once I started thinking of reusing, and as such viewing some of the older videos that no longer get viewed, I realise what a wealth of information I have put out there, that is now sadly just talking to itself.

And I cannot help but ask, “have I always been talking to myself”?

You all by now know my IDEA of “only one shape, only one movement, and only one body”, and without meaning any disrespect to anyone I just do not see it, even in the senior guys.

I struggle to try to understand why this is and what I can do to change it.

One thing I have always accepted, even back in the day as a tradesman teaching apprentices, is that any failings of the student are the fault of the teacher.

I caused this problem, by always creating new content I unwittingly diminish the value of the old content and create the illusion that there is still more to learn.

There isn’t.

From the day before we began this journey, yes you read that correctly, the day before we began, we already knew everything.

NORMAL HUMAN BODY MOVEMENT.

This has turned into a huge post, I realise that these days many people do not have the attention span for something like this, so it may well be for nothing, but I hope not, try approaching it in the way we eat an Elephant.

One bite at a time.

Read through the text before watching the videos, this act in itself will be a severe test for the YouTube generation.

In my time as a teacher I have assisted hundreds of students with their training, back in my teacher’s school, I was the go-to mentor for my group when talking about all things Chum Kiu, but even then, almost 20 years ago, the advice I gave did not show on the students, and I would wonder.

Why do intermediate Wing Chun players move so poorly?

One big issue is that after spending some time getting to understand the “Standard Model”, that in Chum Kiu the lower body moves the upper body, which from the outset is a misleading way of describing it, we move on to Biu Gee, and everything changes to the extent that it almost gets turned on its head.

This contradiction arises from the fact that most mainstream Wing Chun is still working with 1950s Body Mechanics, or at least how to teach and understand the Kinetic Chain approach to Body Mechanics.

In reality, it is much better to see that in Chum Kiu we only move the Pelvis/Hips, we do not move the upper body at all, the Torso simply sits there and goes along for the ride.

Better or easier understanding is not helped by the teaching/learning of the Forms as stand-alone patterns, especially in a linear way.

There is and has always been “only one Form”.

If, as we always claim, that Wing Chun is based on normal human body movement then everything we do is, at some level at least, Wing Chun.

As an “IDEA” and not a Form, Sil Lim Tau is a circle, with no set beginning, and no set end.

Even though it is taught Arms first, then Lower Body/Pelvis, and then Upper body/Torso, to be understood it must be seen as an impulse from the feet up through the Body and out of the Arms.

However the learning curve is too steep if we do not learn the Arms Form first, this is why I refer to it as what everyone knows as S.L.T. as the “First Form” until we have progressed through the cycle.

Once we have some understanding of the First Form, then the Chum Kiu Form, and then the Biu Gee Form we now have the information that makes up the Sil Lim Tao.

Not the Sil Lim Tao Form, the IDEA itself, but to see it we must read it from Chum Kiu Form, then Biu Gee Form, and then Sil Lim Tao Form.

There are countless complexities inside all of the Forms, but if we are talking about how to move the Wing Chun Frame it could be learned in a weekend.

Chum Kiu is simply side-stepping, Biu Gee is Core Winding and Sil Lim Tao is extending the Arms in an optimal condition.

It really is this simple, but like all “GOOD THINGS,” the Devil is in the details.

Here are some views on how to play the Forms.

Here is another video, try to see that these are all just different ways to observe the IDEA, it is like looking into a large hall from different windows, a different perspective from every window, but still the same hall.

Or if you prefer a more imaginative visualisation, we circle the IDEA like hungry sharks around a dying whale.

A bite here, a swim, and then a bite there.

If the window we are looking through is the window that helps us use our training out in the wild it would look a lot like the video below. At 6.00 minutes there is some important information about natural body recruitment. We think we know this stuff but usually, we do not, we only think we do and as such overlook it.

At last the Steak Knives.

If any of these videos fulfill its promise as a direct follow-on to the last post it is this one.

Hopefully, you have watched all of the videos and can clearly see how, in their own way, they were expanding on this.

A really significant difference between today and the earlier times, 1960 through to 2000 in particular, is the availability of information, especially Wing Chun information.

Up until the mid-1990s, there was nothing on video, it was all written and very expensive at that.

Finding anything in English was rare, and anything about Wing Chun was even rarer.

Information was cherished and reread many times until even the page numbers were remembered.

Today information is everywhere and easy to access, so it is not looked on with the same reverence, to the extent that nothing is important anymore.

To paraphrase Rutherford Rogers, “we are awash with information and starved of motivation”.

If we do not wish to be the type of students that watch and forget, we need to deliberately become the type of students that watch and learn.

It is simply a choice, unfortunately, I do not have a video for that.

IT IS NOT WHAT YOU LOOK AT THAT MATTERS, IT IS WHAT YOU SEE.

Henry David Thoreau