Category: FIST LOGIC

All fighting is a consensual contest where both parties give their opposite number permission to hurt them;

This post is mostly to help William and Saleh understand my position on Sparring, and why I refer to it as “Play fighting”.

But first, let’s be clear about what “Play Fighting” is and is not.

Play fighting is anything organised that follows a set of rules, even if those rules are unwritten.

“Play Fighting” is a contest with a referee, me, on a Thursday, who has the authority to stop the fight if one participant is taking dangerous or simply unnecessary levels of damage. 

Play Fighting is considered complete if one person decides to yield, tap out, or throw in the towel.  

Play fighting is a long way from being safe, but deliberate, malicious injury is not the aim.

In Play fighting, just as in all fighting, defence is minimal at best; the goal is to attack your opponent and win at all costs. 

The goal is not primarily to defend yourself.

All fighting is a consensual contest where both parties give their opposite number permission to hurt them;  there are no surprises, no ambushes. 

Usually, the event is planned, expected, and even looked forward to, such as the usual Sparring session on Thursday evening training.

The “Headspace” of a person about to engage in any type of play fighting, be it
a pro-level championship fight, an amateur-level club championship fight, or even just a sparring session at the local Kung Fu School, is completely under the control of the player.

You can have a strategy, a plan of attack, just as in any game.

Violence has nothing in common with play fighting.

Violence is everything else.

In a violent encounter, only the attacker has control of his Headspace, only the attacker has a plan.

This attacker is not interested in fighting;  their goal is to dominate and inflict harm, and if possible, to finish this before we know what is happening.

Non-Competitive Martial Arts are first and foremost about surviving this onslaught.

Non-Competitive Martial Arts are about becoming a Hedgehog.

This does not mean that there is no place for sparring in Non-Competitive Martial Arts.

But the training is not about finding ways to hit your partner.  The training is about not being hit and then finding ways to turn the tables on the attacker.

To become the attacker, the new man with a plan, who is now the only man with a plan.

The training is about maintaining composure when all appears lost.

And, shock horror, using the things we learn in our everyday training, the way we use them in our everyday training.

When someone attacks us, we do not have the luxury of staying out of range and popping in to strike when we see an opening; that ship sailed the instant the attack began. 

Real Violence is fought out in the space between our Ears.

The difference between Fighting and Self-defence is not a difference of scale of punishment or hurt; Combat Sports can and have cost lives, while street-level violence can be survived with only injured pride.

The difference is the aimed-for outcome.

As I said at the top of this post, All fighting is a consensual contest where both parties give their opposite number permission to hurt them;

If you are not planning to be hurt, why learn how to fight?

First become a Hedgehog, and then become a Dragon.

HOW MANY TIMES DO WE NEED TO ROLL A BALL DOWN HILL TO UNDERSTAND THAT BALLS ROLL DOWN HILLS?

As I get older, as the view gets clearer and the end is coming into sight my drive from an instructional point of view is to help you guys bypass the things that in my personal experience slow us down, things that, as important as they most certainly are, ultimately need to be jettisoned due to redundancy, to be thrown away.

It is not that these things were ever unimportant, it is more that we overestimate their purpose, just like the scaffolding that cannot be ignored during construction of a skyscraper, but is taken down once the exterior skin is completed, self-supporting, so the work of transforming the shell into a working building can ramp up and progress, be it an office, hotel, data centre, or mixed purpose building, the scaffolding is taken down and rarely thought of again.

It is beyond all doubt that the shell is essential, without it there is just empty space, but it is in every sense generic, look around there is a certain sameness to all buildings, it is only what goes on inside of them that gives them purpose, and frequently, all be it years later, the interior gets redesigned to change that purpose without a change to the exterior.

Now look at all the different Kung Fu styles.

On Thursday evening I used the metaphor of building a telescope, to study the cosmos, to do astronomy.

The more accurately we assemble this telescope, the higher the optical quality of the lenses, the better the reliability, performance and compatibility of the data chip that governs the C.P.U. to achieve perfect focus and the overall care with which we align all the working parts of this telescope will all contribute to the end efficiency of this instrument.

But even a cheap telescope will look upwards, anyway, it is not the telescope that does astronomy.

The Telescope, the shell of the Skyscraper,  both essential to the work, but they are not the work.

Obviously to be able to do the work we must firstly build the telescope, erect the shell, there is no short-cut here, but does it need to take so long?

How many times do we need to roll a ball down hill to understand that balls roll down hills?

How many times do we need to play the same FORM?

Even though it took me much longer, I cannot see why we cannot have all of the physical tools, the shell or telescope, in 2 to 3 years, depending on involvement and the type of help received or information researched.

I, like many others, paid too much attention to the wrong things. 

I focused on the Telescope and forgot about the Sky.

We all know that training is not fighting, we all know that what we wish to learn is not the Forms, or Chi Sau, or even the free-play pretend fighting, but we get seduced.

If we are using our training in anger, then we are involved in a violent situation.

No 2 violent situations are the same, but they can be looked at in 2 very wide generalities.

1. A violent situation that we know about, this can be a situation that we have started or a situation that we have agreed to participate in, which is either us attacking somebody with or without just cause or us agreeing to engage physically with somebody else, this last option is your classic “Fight”.
2. A violent situation we have no prior knowledge of, a situation where someone acts out violently against us, and we have no choice except to deal with it. This is a classic “SELF DEFENCE” situation.

In the first situation, there is a high probability that we throw the first punch, and our chances are at worst 50/50.

In the second situation, the “Bad Guy” always throws the first punch, and we are playing catch-up.

The situation that Wing Chun prepares us for is a Self-Defence situation; we will be second cab off the rank, playing catch-up.

Playing catch-up is reactionary and not responsive. What this boils down to is that we will not be thinking about what we are doing, only thinking about what we wish to achieve, such as not being hit, getting out of trouble, or escaping the immediate danger.

How our brain and body react will not be under our direct control; it will be reflexive, and there will be no thinking.

In this or similar situations, our Brain/Body will choose something it knows well and trusts totally; it will not choose an action it does not trust, no matter how effective or powerful that action might be.

This is how our Brain makes decisions, and it is not just about violence.

Would you buy a used car from a shifty-looking bloke that you know nothing about?

You have no evidence at all that the guy cannot be trusted, but do you take the punt?  How did you come to the decision?

This is not just about Wing Chun, it is not really bout Martial Art or violence, it is about any problem that needs us to make a choice.

We will not choose something we do not trust or believe in; we will, in fact, ignore obvious truths if we think otherwise.

So what is the real work?

The real work is TRUST.

An understanding of WHY what we do works, not how it works.

This is the meaning behind our saying that “WING CHUN IS A CONCEPT-DRIVEN MARTIAL ART”.

We do all the physical stuff so that we can explore the concepts that they use.

Once we see it and trust it, we can use those concepts in any way that is available to us.

EVERY TELESCOPE CAN SEE THE SKY.

I have come to the end of words, as Bill Burroughs may say.

It has been a minute since I posted anything, mostly because over the past 20 years of blogging, I have said everything that needs to be said.

I have come to the end of words as Bill Burroughs may say.

But all the same I understand that you guys may still want something to think about so I intend to reboot a collection of the more fundamental yet meaningful videos.

Videos can never come close to supervised training, in fact, they can take us to places we do not need to go, but hey.

Stay frosty.

SPOILER ALERT!!! IT IS PREVENTING THIS THAT IS THE CORE OF EVERY MARTIAL ART THAT I HAVE STUDIED.

It blows my mind a little bit to think that I have been involved in Martial Art training now for 65 years, numerous styles and many good and talented Sifus, Senseis, Instructors and Coaches, and let me never forget the many talented fellow students, whom I learned just as much from.

To be expected, there are some major differences between these styles and differing teachers’ approaches, but there is also common ground, core elements that relate directly to the aim of all Martial Arts.

I was chatting with Saleh last week and I mentioned to him, as I have mentioned to all of you at some time, from “Day 1”, we can all fight, we have always been able to fight, what we are trying to achieve through training is the ability to fight better, better than we did last week, and to be sure better than anyone who wishes us harm.

“Training” is developing an ability that we may or will use somewhere else at some other time, not today, not here and not against my training partner, who is a friend and Brother.

Why would we wish to hurt our training buddies?

In short, training is not, never was, and never will be the same as the thing we are training for.  Training is about learning the thing we are training, and not about doing the thing that the training teaches us.

We need to rejoice in this, embrace the “PLAY” aspect that is training, and not to treat it so seriously, and above all not to keep score on ourselves.

In every style I have studied, and in fact in every Sport that I have trained in, the main aim is to get out of our own way, to quiet the inner voice, and become a “NIKE” meme.

JUST DO IT!

All styles, all sports, no exceptions.

I can only talk for myself here, but I believe that you may harmonise with this thought.

The times I got things wrong in training, it was because I was trying to prove that I could do it my way just as well as my teacher’s way.

This was not a conscious thing, not overtly deliberate, not me wilfully engaging in “dumb fuckery”,  but it did come from me, and when I messed up, which of course I did frequently, I would blame myself for this failure and get embarrassed.

Which would often result in my talking to myself instead of clearing my mind to start again, and messing up the retry.

 In a way, I was possessed of an evil, mischievous spirit, an inner antagonistic 7-year-old that thinks it knows better and overrules my grown-up thinking.

A results and prestige-driven imp that genuinely and, usually innocently, believes it can already do this thing.

The “E” Word.

Just let me show you.

SPOILER ALERT!!! IT IS PREVENTING THIS THAT IS THE CORE OF EVERY MARTIAL ART THAT I HAVE STUDIED.

Quietening the inner child, doing the work for the sake of the work alone, of course, we want to do it well, but firstly, we need to NIKE it, and not think that we need to prove our individuality.

And guess what?

After 65 years, I am still struggling with this, still failing as much as I am succeeding, but I am cool with it these days, because if nothing else, I understand that this is exactly what training is.

Quietly training. Quietly thinking about hurting some MOFO.

We were told on our very first day, in fact in our first conversations, that Wing Chun is a “Concept Driven” Martial Art, based on normal human body movements.

My sifu was a somewhat traditional teacher, he would show us but was not too big on explanations, he thought we would learn more from our own discoveries than if he simply told us what to look for.

There is some merit in this approach, but not very much if I am honest, a bit of help never hurts.

A case in point is FORMS, he would bang on about how important they were and how if we did not fully understand the FORMS we would never understand Wing Chun, but then he would just leave us to our own devices to fathom what he meant.

He may have ,at least, shared that there are multiple layers of understanding, and that the least important was the physical practice.

He could have told us that the “REAL” approach to the FORMS was not physically copying traditional patterns whose main function is to introduce us to optimal ranges of motion, which is such an easy Rabbit hole to get lost down, but that it is the relationship between the core attributes of each of the FORMs that is the ‘ONLY’ information that we can ever transpose into a random violent situation.

As always, hindsight is a MOFO. 

We were told on our very first day, in fact in our first conversations, that Wing Chun is a “Concept Driven” Martial Art, based on normal human body movements.

Like all of my contemporaries, I did not understand what that statement meant.

As a result, it was many, many years before I began seriously trying to understand what I was doing in the FORMS.

By now, we all know that what we do in training will never be used or repeated in a genuine violent encounter. If we sit down and think about this, it means that the physical, fun bits were not the learning objective; they were the lesson that allowed us to progress our study.

But the study of what?

When I would ask this, my Sifu would say, “Just do the FORMS and you will eventually understand”.

He was, of course, correct.

 Because I do now understand, but I would have understood 20 years ago if he had simply told me told me that the “Learning Objective” is not just learn how to top the FORM, it is not even to understand the Core Attributes of each Form, but is in fact to resolve these attributes into a single IDEA.

A “Little IDEA”.

Again, hindsight is a MOFO.

When a student of any level struggles with an exercise, it soon becomes clear that they are not relating what is being done back to the relevant FORM, but when a senior struggles with an exercise it is usually due to the fact they actively relate the exercise to a FORM, and not back to an IDEA.

Something other things we see in hindsight is that it was made clear to us that Wing Chun does not use two hands for the same function; this goes in one ear and out of the other, even once we begin Chi Sau and Chum Kiu, which fly in the face of this.

Another is that each and every movement in Wing Chun comes from the FORM, and not from the individual FORMS, which deserves thinking on.

Lastly, that every single movement of every FORM is a FORM unto itself. This places the formalised patterns as a convenience to aid memory; there is no pattern, and if there is no pattern, then it stands as a given that there is no set direction of travel or order of play.

We are all different, we all think differently and come to personal conclusions, but an Epiphany for me was once I started to play my FORM PATTERNS in reverse.

This caused me such a head spin and helped me to see what I did not understand.

To a very large extent, playing the FORMS is an exercise in futility and is of no practical value, but it would not be Wing Chun if there were not a contradiction. If we do not play the FORMS, we are not even getting the message.

“Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.”

WINSTON CHURCHILL.

Hey, absent guys, guess what you missed?

We had a great evening training on Thursday, just the 4 of us, myself, Sam, Costas and George, as usual, we began with what could be referred to as Wing Chun fishing, we just did some random stuff, using a Boken, of all things, and drifted into Biu Gee and the Pole, as you would naturally do from this start.

Sadly, I did not turn the camera on, as I usually do, and as Murphy’s Law dictates, we had a blinder of a session.

Even to someone like myself who has understood the essence of effortless power for many years, watching what the guys were doing was a little confusing, watching as Sam holding an 11-foot p[ole with just a thumb and forefinger pushing Costas around the room, and then me being the guy on the wrong end of the pole, was a reality test.

With any handheld weapon what we are doing is absorbing the weapon into the body, in this case, the Boken and then the Pole, as such the weapon becomes part of the body and loses its separate identity, so we are only moving what we move in a Form, when this is achieved it does not matter how the weapon is gripped, or held with thumb and forefinger as in this instance, because this is not a physical act.

To reinforce this IDEA we later did the same thing but this time having the pole wedged into the shoulder or under the arm, or in the crook of the elbow, it makes little difference because it is not physical.

As insane as this may sound, this is the endgame of Wing Chun training: creating usable, practical power without overt effort by understanding natural connectedness and alignment so that every action is powered by our body mass, which of course can be magnified by any simple movement.

This is what Forms are for, this is why we train stances, not to use them as we train them but to teach us how to develop, move and maintain a correct and efficient structure.

As for not having a video, to be honest, it would not have looked like anything special, just some weird shit, so the point of this post is to get you to come into training and ask me to repeat it.

Stay frosty.

Derek.

Due mostly to the Cultural Revolution finding any genuine, provable connection to any “REAL” place, person or event is problematic.

Every now and again it is good to remind ourselves of Human Nature, and, for instance, of the fact that history is written by the victors.

This has been the case since ancient Rome, history is only true from one perspective, and this alone should bring anything based on history into doubt.

The first act of an occupying force is to destroy all of the previous tribe’s culture and replace it with their own version.

With regards to China, the Mongols began this in the 13th Century, the Japanese did this through the early part of the 20th Century, but the job was well and truly finished by the C.C.P’s Cultural Revolution of the 1950’s and 60’s.

Mao Zedong, didn’t formally ban Kung Fu, but he focused on dismantling what he considered “feudal” practices and relationships associated with martial arts, which were seen as traditional and potentially counter-revolutionary, and did the next best thing, he replaced Kung Fu with Wushu.

In 1979 when Deng Xiaoping re-opened China to the world, the Shaw Brothers of Hong Kong were wowing the world with their Wuxi movies, Deng saw the potential to sell Shaolin Kung Fu as a tourist adventure to bring in foreign currency and created what could only be called a Kung Fu Inspired theme park, based more on the very popular Hong Kong Movies than Chinese history.

The “IDENTITY” and “VERIFICATION” of pretty much every Chinese Martial Art is built on the foundation based on the ongoing narrative about lineage and connection to the Shaolin Monastery, in short HISTORY.

But here is the thing.

Due mostly to the Cultural Revolution finding any genuine, provable connection to any “REAL” place, person or event is problematic.

The creation story of many Kung Fu styles usually begins with the burning of the Southern Shaolin Monastery and the escape of the Five Masters, one of whom was Abess Ng Mei.

The C.C.P. realised that a second Kung Fu theme park could bring in even more foreign currency and put great effort into finding the location of this Southern Monastery,

But no proof was to be found, it turned out to be Folk Lore.

No Monastery = no Ng Mei.

Which of course leads to no meeting with and training of the dumpling seller’s daughter, Yim Wing Chun.

But that’s O.K. because we are even more connected to the rebels of the Red Boat Opera Troop.

But yet again there is no proof of this troop.

Yes, Opera Boats were travelling the Pearl River district, and yes some of these Junks were Red,  but they were not an organisation, it was not one “RED BOAT”, and during the years that the Civil War raged around the Pearl River they mostly engaged in self-preservation and sailed in the other direction.

No RED BOAT REBELS = no Dr Leung Jan that administered to them.

In appears that the IDEA of the RED BOAT REBELS didn’t begin until the mid-20th Century by way of the Shaw Brothers movies, yet some schools claim heritage to this.

There is a scholar, researcher and blogger named Ben Judkins with the blog Kung Fu Tea and the Book “The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts”, an exceptionally researched if somewhat dry read, that I never the less fully recommend, that puts forward a very convincing argument that what we call the History of Wing Chun was invented, or at least appropriated from existing WUXIA folk tales by none other than the staving Martial Artist Ip Man.

We can only verify Kung Fu since 1980, but at least we can be sure of this history, be sure of Ip Man.

The question is are we KEEPING IT REAL when we follow a teacher who tells us that Wing Chun started before Ip Man?

We all know better, the information is out there and readily available, get online, and do some research.

If our teacher is basing their information on a fairy story, what else are they making up?

What are they really selling?

CAN I INTEREST YOU IN AN OPERA HOUSE,

IT HAS HARDLY BEEN USED.

We train to reinforce our philosophy and enable our strategy.

Sam was talking with Saleh and Kunal recently, both guys intend to return to training in the not-too-distant futrure, this post is mostly for them to be up on what we have been talking and thinking about for the past couple of months.

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS, AND WHAT SHOULD WE HOPE TO GET?

This is a BIG QUESTION, and it is tempting to think that BIG QUESTIONS require BIG ANSWERS, but a long life has taught me otherwise.

For sure BIG MISTAKES do call for BIG EXCUSES but BIG QUESTIONS are best served by small answers, the 30,000 ft view kind of answer, the broad strokes, outline only kind of answer.

So why do we train a martial art? We can expand this and ask why individuals train, groups train, and armies train.   There is a nexus.

Remember, 30,000 feet view.

We train to reinforce our philosophy and enable our strategy.

I will leave you to translate that statement in a way that fits your worldview, stuff like this must always be first person.

A NOTE OF WARNING. An insidious trap we must avoid is in thinking that we are training to learn Wing Chun.

Training, all training, any training, is a vehicle, a means to an end, it is not the “WHAT” that benefits us, nor the “HOW” as important as this is, we should be focusing on the “WHY”.

PHILOSOPHY is a map, a line in the sand that we choose to follow without deviation, and the clearer we can see this map, the deeper and wider this line in the sand is, the less doubt there is.

One role of training, which is I.M.O. The most important is to burn that map into our souls, to become so myopic that it is the only map we can see.

STRATEGY is a Workflow Chart, a deep understanding of what must be where and when for us to get to the desired destination when we follow the map.

As important as the map is, without a strategy, we have no way to read it.

To some people the IDEA of having a philosophy is alien, but we all have one, about everything, even if we do not know it, Martial Arts training allows us to recognise our philosophy toward violence, and training allows us to simulate situations so that we can see if our philosophy aligns with our choices.

If discover that our philosophy clashes with our actions it gives us the chance to change our philosophy or change our choices, in either way it allows us to align things.

A great many things are spoken about the Mind/Body connection, but it all starts here, if my actions {BODY} are not in line with my philosophy {MIND} there is no way forward.

There is a great deal of wiggle room in this because everything stems from our personal philosophy. 

Using myself as an example, {there is no demanding reason for this to be your way}…

My philosophy is counter-attack, so if I ever strike first or get involved in swapping punches I am out of alignment with myself, and this can only lead to problems.

My strategy to enable this is that I do nothing until the Bad Guy attacks me and is committed to his choices, if the situation devolves into swapping punches I break away and wait for the Bad Guy to re-attack, rinse and repeat.

Does this reflect my training?  If not something should be changed because I am either intending to use a method that I do not believe in or I am hoping to do something that I have not trained.

Crazy shit.

Another aspect of my philosophy is that violence is a mental issue and not a physical issue, my aim when I engage an attacker is to create an environment where the Bad Guy cannot think clearly. 

My strategy to enable this is to cause severe pain on immediate contact with the Bad Guy {severe pain interferes with the ability to think} or compromise the balance of the Bad Guy on the instance of contact or as soon after as possible {the nervous system overrides the Brain when we lose our balance and tries to save us}.

Does this reflect my training? If not, something should be changed because I am either intending to use a method I do not believe in, or I am hoping to do something I have not trained for.

So where to from here?

Step 1.  Identify your philosophy and, if need be change it, but it is easier to keep it and change everything else.

Step 2.  Direct your training to things that achieve the same aim.

As always, talk, think and learn.

I know you Guys do not like reading too much so here is a video from the archive that is somewhat related.

Hurry back, you are missing out heaps.

Strategy is the Secret Sauce, after all ‘you cannot change a plan if you do not have a plan.

Winston Churchill famously said…

“Plans are of little importance,

but planning is essential”.

consider popping in to touch hands…..  and touch minds.

Usually, this Blog is inwards facing as a means for the group to stay connected, but this post, this stream of consciousness, is being sent out into the Cyber Wilderness in the hope of connecting with a fellow traveller.

Q. Why do new students not stay very long?

Our training group has evolved to be composed of only Senior People, all of whom have been training Wing Chun exclusively for a long time, at least 15 years, and myself over 30 years, it is not any kind of arrogance when I say we know all there is to know.

For one thing, it is not arrogance because knowing can be a long way away from understanding, and we know this also.

Another is that the total of Wing Chun knowledge is surprisingly small, so we should know it all, anyone, anywhere, who has trained for half a dozen years should know it all.

At first Wing Chun appears to be wide, deep, and mysterious, so many FORMS, so many movements, so much information, so many pieces to this puzzle.

But then without fanfare, it changes.

This point of change is different for everyone, but it is a real point in time and luckily unavoidable.

For no apparent reason and completely without warning we realise that the 100,000 pieces that are perceived as the Wing Chun pattern is a FRACTAL.

Hence “Knowing it all” is easy, but the understanding can be infinite.

If your training has reached the stage of the Mok Jan Jong the new pattern, the  “FRACTAL” design is close, maybe even visible if you look just a bit closer.

ONCE SEEN, IT CANNOT BE UNSEEN.

To be expected, from this point forward training becomes all about exploring and understanding the FRACTAL design, which can be exciting and engaging once you see it, but this level of understanding is unapproachable if you do not see it, and even just talking about it can appear hopeless, even useless to those that can’t yet see it.

This is why this post is titled “ACCIDENTALLY ELITIST TRAINING”, we do not do this deliberately but our training methods are not very palatable for people who are not at least close to the Dummy level.

We still hit shit, do Chi Sau, work on mobility and stability, use the Pole, swing the Knives, and run through possible violent scenarios and all of the other elements, but not in the way that early or intermediate students think of as REALISTIC training.

Until students recognise then see the FRACTAL design, and reach a level where they can play the Dummy without over-thinking, it sounds like Bullshit when I tell them that this way leads to stopping any incoming strike while delivering effortless counter-attacks that put nasty-folk on their asses.

And I do not blame them, I was there once, and I thought it was Bullshit back then.

The reason I say that the Dummy level is the FRACTAL is because, when we play the Dummy, we play with a combination of all aspects of the earlier FORMS, from here there is nothing new, all has been revealed.

As a small group we are always hoping to get a few new people to come and play with us, but here again the “ACCIDENTALLY ELITIST TRAINING” has us looking for people who can come and add to the collective knowledge, perhaps bring in a new perspective.

FRACTALS repeat themselves into infinity but they do this in every direction to all destinations so more eyes help see more dimensions.

If we can free our thinking up to where we see and work on the FRACTAL IDEA itself and not just on one of its manifestations such as Kung Fu or even more selectively Wing Chun we see it is everywhere, engaging an attacker in a violent situation is governed by the same forces as a car crash.

If this stream of consciousness rings any kind of bell with you, consider joining in the conversation, even better if you are close enough to Western Sydney consider popping in to touch hands…..  and touch minds….. perhaps even bend fenders.

QUOTE

Hey guys,

Since the escalation of trouble in the world, Ukraine, Gaza, and M.A.G.A. Madness there has been an upturn in people’s level of anxiety, and an upsurge in interest from people in where and when we train.

One question that I keep being asked is on the lines of “How far away are you from Bankstown, or Liverpool, or Homebush, or Campbeltown, it appears that distance is an important metric.

I get it, we are all time-poor, we all love convenience, and we have developed the opinion that 20, or 30 minutes make some kind of difference, but lets face it, in Sydney on any day it is almost impossible to be sure of how long any trip will take you.

If you guys are talking to anyone that is thinking of training with us and ask how far remind them that we are “Closer than Hong Kong”.

For 17 years I would travel 36 klm, at peak times, to train with my Sifu, on a bad day this could take 2 hours {and right now, today, Costas and George travel the same distance twice a week, to train with me} even though there are other choices much nearer.

My reasoning was simple, training with the best person available and accessible was more important than convenience, also training with any top Master ends up saving years, not minutes, and here again, that is why Costas and George first chose to travel so far across town, and that was when Sydney was awash with Wing Chun, 12 years later they still make the journey twice a week.

But “I get it”, if we think we can save just ‘5 minutes’ commuting it is like we have won the lotto.

Stay frosty.

WHAT KIND OF DAY IS IT?