Category: FIST LOGIC

This post could save your Bacon.

Guys.

Do not get nervous about there being more than two paragraphs to read and no video you can listen to on the toilet.

This post could save your Bacon.

Martial Art knowledge is a skill set, and like all skill sets it will work at different levels in different situations, excelling in some and being unsuited to others.

Think about it this way, being a great swimmer will not particularly help with your Maths homework.

We all get this, but for some reason, we do not think it applies to getting the most from our Martial Arts training.

To be able to fully utilise any skill set we need to have two things.

#1. As deep an understanding as possible of the ‘capacity’ of our skill -set.

#2. As deep an understanding as possible of the problem we hope to solve with our skill set.

Hopefully, now my swimmer doing maths homework does not sound so frivolous.

There is no easy or binary answer to this, it is always subjective, ‘Can I use the things I am learning to deal with the problem I anticipate’?

The first priority is of course identifying the problem.

What do we anticipate happening that we will need this skill set for?

This is why it is so subjective, my fears may not be your fears, my goals, may not be your goals.

I am choosing to generalise so that most of us can get the most out of reading this.

For us as Martial Artists, the potential problem is violence.

There are two sides to this coin.

#1. Violence that we chose to engage in.

#2. Violence we did not choose to engage in.

Let’s present this as option #1, a fight, and option #2, a mugging [being attacked].

Do we fully understand the difference between these options?

We must, many students fail or fear to recognise that they do not understand this.

If I am training to fight I will most likely fail in a ‘Mugging’.

Equally, if I am training to escape/survive a ‘Mugging’ I will most likely fail in a fight.

You can try to train for both but the requirements of time and effort are beyond the best of us.

Even professional fighters get mugged, never forget Anthony Mundine getting mugged at Brighton Beach [N.S.W.] at pretty much the peak of his ability.

Once we have made the decision the next question is….

What type of situation was our training devised for?

In our case, the training of Wing Chun, it is the training of a counter-attacking Martial Art.

It should be clear to all that we only counter-attack once we have been attacked [otherwise we are the attacker], so the primary objective of Wing Chun is to escape/survive a ‘Mugging’.

If we need to beat the ‘Brown Stuff’ out of the attacker to achieve this, so be it, but our primary intention is escape.

If you do not tick this box your future could be perilous.

In my imagined scenario, my justification for why I train in Wing Chun, I find myself in a situation where I have been attacked, I did not choose to be in this situation, but luckily, the skill set I possess is a great fit, I can engage this situation from a position of confidence.

It is of critical importance that we understand this not only before the violent situation materialises, but before we begin training in the first place.

I am pretty sure that we will all be in a different head-space over this, so here is some more information to hopefully help establish a more representative stance.

There is a tendency amongst Martial Artists to believe that whatever Martial Art they train, it is this training that will save the day.

This is very rarely the case.

No matter what style we use it is simply a tool to help us implement our current intentions, strategies, ideas, or whatever word fits the bill.

Basically, it helps us make good decisions.

Of greater importance is how we see the situation, as this will colour our understanding, influence any intentions, strategies, or ideas we may have, and it will heavily influence our decision-making.

Violent situations are won or lost by how well we understand what is happening and how well we implement any decisions we choose to balance this situation.

It is impossible to make suitable decisions if we do not know what is going on.

Are we identifying the situation correctly?

Are we fighting someone?

Are we attacking someone?

Are we being attacked by someone?

Fighting, attacking, and defending are not as is often mistakenly thought, different aspects of the same thing.

Fighting, attacking, and defending exist in different environments, and different worlds, they create different problems on physical, emotional, and mental levels that demand an almost specialist approach.

There is rarely a one-size-fits-all answer.

The old cliche of “Never take a knife to a gunfight” is a clear picture of how what may work well in one situation will just flat-out fail in another situation.

Are we fighting, are we attacking someone, or are we being attacked?

Is there a difference in mindset between these 3 situations? Only you can decide this.

Is there a difference in physical preparedness between these 3 situations? Only you can decide this.

Is there a difference in our mental/emotional reaction between these 3 situations? Only you can decide this.

Let’s unpack this a little and paint a simple picture to help us come to a better decision.

FIGHTING.

Fighting is a contest of two or more people trying to better their opponent and giving no quarter along the way, for whatever reason.

The goal is to win at all costs, to give everything until it has all gone.

There will be pain, there will be injury, it will be brutal.

FIGHTERS expect and accept this.

If someone is not physically, mentally, and emotionally trained to deal with being hit, being hurt, or being injured, their chances of success in a fight are diminished.

Being fit, being fast, and being strong is of little use if that person cannot handle being hurt.

The key to being a good FIGHTER is not any chosen style, every style can be effective, the key is training to work through the pain.

ATTACKING.

It is easy to think that attacking a defending are two sides of the same coin, but this is a serious mistake, they are two sides of related yet very different coins and require completely different thinking and approach.

To the attacker, the focus is on surprise, stealth, and even cheating.

There is no wish to engage the person they are attacking on any kind of level playing field.

Speed and surprise are the currency of an attacker, the sooner it is done and dusted the better.

In a perfect attack, the victim does not get the chance to defend themselves.

Think about that.

Attackers tend to lead with their most powerful or most successful weapon or tactic to the extent that they may flee the field if they do not get early success.

Very few attackers [bullies, muggers] are courageous.

DEFENDING.

As a victim of an attack, the most important thing is time.

Time for the defender to orient to this chaotic situation.

Time to allow the attacker to fail.

This may be a simple picture but it is valid.

Where all this gets confused and conflated is that there is a real chance we could find ourselves in a situation where we begin as a defender, somehow we find the time to turn the tables and become the attacker, but then find that we cannot close it out, so we just end up fighting.

This is a negative situation for everyone.

To give ourselves the highest hope of a positive outcome the first thing we need to establish is, what group do we identify with?

Are we Fighters?

Are we Attackers?

Are we Defenders?

Only once we decide who we are can we have any hope of enabling our training.

At this point, it is very important to get on board with the IDEA that all Martial Arts styles can do the job.

No one style is any better than any other style, it is always how well the practitioner can implement the training.

If we re-read the simple painting of the situation there are already some effective answers.

Only a FIGHTER trains to ignore pain, if we see ourselves as fighters are we training for this?

I know that I am not, I am training to hurt an attacker who more than likely cannot handle pain.

This more than anything else informs my training and as such it will hopefully inform my decision-making when the “Brown gets Airborne”.

MANY PEOPLE CAN IGNORE A HIT.

NO-ONE CAN IGNORE AN INJURY

TIM LARKIN. T.F.T.

Rule #1, move as well as a normal person can move when they are just being normal.

Hey Guys, picture this.

We are watching a sporting event, pick your favourite flavour on this, and one player catches our eye, they are not doing anything outrageously special, but everything they do is effortless, smooth, focused and uncluttered.

Our thought is that this person is an elite sportsperson.

Why?

Because they move so well.

This thought exercise holds true for any sport, so it is obviously not the movements themselves, after all, different sports use different actions.

Rule #1, move as well as a normal person can move when they are just being normal.

As I mentioned, different sports use different moves because they have different goals and agendas.

So do different martial arts.

But in their hearts, they are all just the same human movements.

The takeaway from this thought experiment is that nothing we do will be of any benefit to us if we do not move well as a person.

Despite the hype around Wing Chun Forms, they are just our IDEA of a normal movement that meets our specific needs.

like most of the posts on FaceBook this sounds good, but, it is actually Bullshit.

Hey Guys,

Just a quick post to keep in touch.

Sam, Costas and I were working on stuff on Saturday that I thought was quite important to share, we lost the sound early into the piece so there is no commentary on the practice, all the same I am posting a few frames of what we did, with a bit of Timo Mass playing, to seed the water so to speak.

We will revisit this on Thursday evening so if you can, be here, and get all the information instead of just about 5% which is all we really put in these videos.

The heart of this matter is a better understanding of the whole idea of being fast.

Mark Zuckerberg once stated that his motto for Facebook was “Move fast and break things”, like most of the posts on FaceBook this sounds good, but, it is actually Bullshit.

Wing Chun does not attack, Wing Chun counterattacks.

I have mentioned before how intercepting an incoming strike is essentially a ‘Hard Block’, something that we do not do with Wing Chun, and a major misunderstanding about contact.

This is not just a stylistic interpretation, it is a fundamental aspect of what Wing Chun is.

To intercept an incoming strike we must firstly be aware of the event as it unfolds, and secondly, be moving towards the contact.

Moving in towards contact is off course an act of attacking.

Wing Chun does not attack, Wing Chun counter attacks.

Many students struggle to appreciate the true nature of a counter-attack and fail to grasp some very basic even bedrock IDEAS that result from operating from a counter-attacking perspective.

Everyone pays lip service to the notion that we cannot counter-attack unless an attack has happened.

But few join the dots and arrive at the conclusion that an attack has not happened until a strike lands.

Nor do they understand the implications.

If we are in a violent situation we are not bound to only use Wing Chun.

If I choose I can intercept or block an incoming strike or even initiate a preemptive strike of my own, options that may be the better choice in situ.

If I am using Wing Chun Fist Logic the situation has been taken out of my hands, I am already the victim of an attack.

I can only counter-attack after an attack.

After a strike has landed or is at the very least microseconds away from landing.

If the choice is mine {which it will not be anyway} my best option is to let the strike land and not try to prevent it from landing.

Before everyone loses their shit over this comment this is not advice on what to do, it is simply pointing out the conditions needed for counter-attack and as such the conditions needed for Wing Chun.

Letting the incoming strike make contact does not mean that I just stand there and take it, it is more that I control the time, place, and manner of contact.

This is a strategic approach that once understood aids us in being in the best place, at the best time and doing the best thing. 

Although this is most definitely a strategic approach it is not about pre-planning or trying to force the attacker into moving how we wish them to move.

It is strategy from the perspective of knowing our options.

Like so much of Wing Chun this IDEA is counter-intuitive but once explored becomes the go to choice.

Sticks and Stones were the first weapons man ever used.

RANGES AND STICKS.

I always get bemused when people who claim to know things about violent physical interactions with other people start to talk about fighting ranges.

Anyone who does know about violence knows that there is only one range.

Contact.

When we consider the range that Wing Chun operates at as a self-defence-oriented martial art, what we are talking about is the other end of an attack.

Even if the initial strike is from what is sometimes called long-range, the follow-up is right down our throats so we should settle down and settle in.

Into being up close and personal.

Our very own Dai Sigung Isaac Newton and Sibak Albert Einstein made it very clear that time and space are two sides of the same coin.

When we are short of one we are short of both, so whatever we do it needs to be very quick, and very close.

There is a great deal of well-intentioned but misguided information kicking around the self-defence community, most of it can be blown away by basic high-school-level physics, and the rest by common sense.

We get out of bad situations by putting the bad guy down, it is not the best thought, but it is the truth.

Sticks and Stones were the first weapons man ever used.

And more than anything else, the only wrong move is not to move.

SPEAK SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG STICK.

Theodore Roosevelt.

Concepts are IDEAS, seed IDEAS, that provide a departure point for exploration.

As a ‘Concept Driven’ Martial Art, we can and do, use training methods that are as much about understanding thought processes as they are about fighting.

Especially if we are digging deep into the theory of our FIST LOGIC.

Some of the more nuanced aspects such as INTENTION, which due to the peculiarities of the English language is always tricky to explain, and understanding what it means to release a strike and not push it are areas where a different approach can pay dividends.

Using IMAGINATION is one such tool.

It is important to come at this training with an open mind, but it is equally important to understand that this is just a TRAINING TOOL, a method to help us make a breakthrough that we can then work on with more familiar approaches.

As baby humans, “Play Acting” is how we learn all of our earliest lessons, it is something we all know how to do, and if we can allow ourselves to access this very old skill it can help us see things we would never see by other methods.

But as I say, this is just a training method, I am not suggesting that should be something we do in a dire situation.

All this kind of stuff is working on the conceptual aspect of Wing Chun, and as such we should not make the mistake of thinking that a “CONCEPT” is in any way real or what we are after.

Concepts are IDEAS, seed IDEAS, that provide a departure point for exploration.

REALITY: WHAT A CONCEPT.

ROBIN WILLIAMS.

We could ask ‘How long is a piece of string”?

 If we simplify wing Chun the training objective is to minimise incoming force while maximising outgoing force.

This is a game of opposites, accept incoming force with cotton and issue force with steel.

All techniques and strategies pay fealty to this IDEA.

Our concepts are suggestions and not directions, this leaves a great deal of room for interpretation, adlib, and creativity, but it also leaves us open to misunderstandings and working against ourselves.

One concept, ‘Wing Chun does not use Hard Blocking’ is a potential misunderstanding.

What is a ‘Hard Block’?

We could ask ‘How long is a piece of string”?

So what is a Hard Block?  A ‘Hard Block’ is a clash of Arms.

Question.

Is there a time and place of contact where we move from Soft Block to Medium Block? 

Or a transition from Medium Block to Hard Block?

The term ‘Hard’ is an infinitely variable metric that can never be in the same place on two successive instances or be the same quality or amount of HARDNESS for two different people.

Blocking is contact, and contact is a clash.

And clashing invokes the Law of Action/Reaction.

It is a shared event that is determined by two separate sides.

We need to re-explain this Concept as Wing Chun does not Clash with our opponent’s Arms.

One of the most overused cliches in Martial Arts is that of building a House.

When building a house, there are hierarchies that if avoided or approached out of order the task becomes infinitely more challenging.

We could for instance begin by building a roof, then suspend it and build walls down from that roof.

There is no getting away from the fact that a house is made of a roof, walls and a floor, eventually, we need to create all of these to have a house.

Conventional wisdom, and more than likely experience, favours building a slab, erecting walls, and then adding a roof. 

Learning Wing Chun is just like building a House.

We can work on and learn the Forms in any order we choose, but some ways are easier than others.

As wildly confusing as it may sound approaching Wing Chun as a Martial Art in a physical sense is beginning by moving in the wrong direction.

It is not possible to learn the truth of Wing Chun by studying shapes and movements alone, the shapes and movements that are most commonly used are, in all truth, shapes and movements taken from other styles that were popular at the time.

We could just as well use any known style.

Shapes and movements are important, but as keys and not as weapons.

The shapes and movements open doors upon practices that refine and improve those same shapes and movements.

I genuinely believe that we could begin our study of Wing Chun with any of the  Wing Chun Forms, even including the Mom Jan Jong, but just like the house, it is easier if we start with a good foundation.

This foundation is what I refer to as ‘CRAZY HORSE’, a device to hang the clothes known as Sil Lim Tao, Chum Kiu, Biu Gee and Mok Jan Jong on.

Once we have developed ‘CRAZY HORSE’ we could well start with Bill Gee.

But staying with the house-building analogy for a moment, to achieve good foundations it is vital that we build on solid ground.

The ‘solid ground, that we build on in Wing Chun is a previously learned skill set.

If we do not have a previously learned skill set then it stands to reason that we first must develop one.

The physical aspect of Wing Chun training, the aspect that so many people, especially YouTubers, think is what makes up Wing Chun, you know, the making contact bit, is nothing more than the setting up of solid ground to put our foundations on.

The real work begins once we have shapes we trust, once we have an effective way of moving.

In short, the real work begins once we know how to fight.

The video below quickly became longer than I intended so I will cover the manifestation of weight and how to use it at a later date, it is a really interesting and powerful topic which is relatively easy to grasp.

The audio volume in the following clip is a tad too much so lower your volume before clicking the play button.

NOTHING HAPPENS UNTIL SOMETHING MOVES.

ALBERT EINSTEIN.

All we need to do is step to the side as we poke the “Bad Guy” in the eye.

Yo Tribe,

Q… Am I a skilled Wing Chun Master?

A… Yes.

Q… Am I a skilled videographer?

A.. Sadly, no.

Yet again I failed to record what was a truly remarkable training session this past Saturday morning.

I am so lucky to have 3 students that are Master level in their own right, lucky to have 3 students that genuinely love digging into the minutiae of what makes this thing we spend so much time on work to its fullest potential.

However, I am dead set cursed that I care more about teaching than filming that teaching.

In the future, I will forego trying to record live training and do pre-set-up videos.

In this piece, I am using an old video of Sam and James on how to fine-tune positioning.

Successfully surviving a violent encounter has nothing to do with technique, it is not Tan Sau to Bong Sau to an Elbow strike, it is not about style, structure, power, or even speed, it is not about defending, it is not about attacking, all of this STUFF is useful, very useful,  but is made redundant by ignorance, by not paying attention to the things that count, the Nitty Gritty.

And the Nitty Gritty is understanding the relationship and the interaction between two bodies in space.

From a training perspective, this means internalising the Concepts that govern the interaction of two bodies in space.

Pushing a car, hanging out the washing, throwing a Frisbee, or fighting Desperate Dan are equally governed by these basic concepts.

Once we have this down, everything just works.

It does not matter how powerful, fast, or devastating an opponent’s strike is if it misses.

Defending is simply a way to make the “Bad Guy” miss.

It also does not matter how soft, slow, or innocuous my own strike may be.

If it lands without any disruption I am in the box seat.

If I poke my attacker in the eye with my little finger the resulting spinal reflex action that their nervous system triggers will leave them open and defenseless for what comes next.

HERE IS SOME SECRET KNOWLEDGE…

All we need to do is step to the side as we poke the “Bad Guy” in the eye.

How hard is that?

But most people will not do that, it is too easy, and they think it will not work because they think there is more going on.

But there isn’t.

NO BATTLE PLAN SURVIVES CONTACT WITH THE ENEMY.

MILITARY MAXIM.

No matter what we may think we are doing there is something happening that is real, measurable and usually contrary to what we think we are actually engaged in.

Body Alignment for instance, is an important topic in any Martial Art, most styles have their own particular approach that is usually played out in different stances and movement patterns, but in this Universe the only thing we ever align ourselves with is Gravity. 

Because we have lived with Gravity for every second of our lives we tend not to notice it, and we need to.

Gravity infuses everything we do, constantly.

Gravity is pulling us down towards the centre of our planet’s mass, the reason we do not end up flat on the floor is that all of our collective body parts are FALLING into our Feet in such a way that they stack up on top of each other to create a balanced structure.  This is the same with buildings, trees and even mountains.

In most Martial Arts the first learning objective is to be able to stand in this Balanced State that prevents us from falling over, there are numerous ways to achieve this, but they all have the same Goal.

Aligning ourselves with Gravity so that all of our weight FALLS into our Feet. 

 If our balance is correct we will not require any tension to hold us still, if there is tension then you are not in balance.  

This is easy to test, just stand still. 

 If you are out of balance you will use tension to stop you from falling, this will fatigue the Muscle providing the tension, when this happens your body will independently move to a new position that will also be out of balance and require tension to prevent falling over, you see this all the time, people shifting from one leg to the other, mostly unaware that it is even happening.

It is easy to think that we use the Muscular Tension to hold us IN balance, but this is incorrect, the tension is holding us out of balance.

When we are in balance there is no need for tension.

Gravity is always pulling on us, if we do anything to work against this we are fighting force.  

Think deeply about that.

 If you are engaged in anything except allowing all of your Body to sink down, to drain into the Earth, you are fighting force and cannot possibly be relaxed no matter what you may think you are doing.

Once we have established balance and stillness it is time to introduce movement.

All movement is a result of our interaction with the Planet, all power comes from our interaction with the Planet, being still is a result of our interaction with the Planet.

The first moves are usually small, minor, often just an Arm, if my movement takes any of my weight out of my feet, if it in any way interferes with the constant sinking into the ground of every part that is me then it is no longer working with Gravity but is in fact fighting it.

Wherever I may choose to move it the weight of my Arm, my Feet must go to, or at the very least the action must not take anything away from my feet.

As difficult as this is to imagine if you think deeply on it you realise that there is no other way if we are to remain in unity with Gravity.

Take 20 minutes every day for a week to think deeply about this, take notes discuss it with friends, use what you discover to examine what you think you know, examine what you think you understand.

It is not about me being right or wrong, this is the way our Universe works, agreeing or disagreeing will not change the reality of our Cosmos.

When you understand ……  things are just the way they are.

When you do not understand ……   things are just the way they are.

When we move we must move with Gravity, so every move begins as a downward move.  

My foot presses the Planet, and the Planet presses back. 

Even when I am standing still the stacking of my body that allows my weight to fall into my foot creates this press.

When still my foot presses the planet, this is the fundamental connection.

The more aware of this you can be, the more you can accomplish with it.

The most important aspect of any stance or any movement is the relationship between our foot and the Planet.

When engaged in Chi Sau, a dynamic drill that encompasses both accepting and issuing force, we lose all idea of gravity, it is now just Chi Sau, for Chi Sau’s sake.

is it even possible to monitor how we are dealing with gravity?

Ultimately if we lose our control of, on, or with gravity, whether we are in a violent situation or a training situation, nothing we attempt will be successful.

My teacher would often come up to me when I was engaging in Chi Sau with a schoolmate and ask “What are your ankles doing”?

A quick aside regarding the video below, especially for any guests that may get confused with this type of training, but also for students who forget that there is a step after this, the step where we develop our own way to turn this IDEA into a practical, physical application for use in a chaotic violent situation.

It should be no surprise to learn that our nervous system is seriously invested in our survival, and as such it will override our brain {and if it deems it is necessary to ignore our training} when it comes to deciding how fast we do things, it will however naturally strive to at least equal the speed of the incoming strike, so it is more important that we are moving with a smooth, even rhythm that can be upsized to suit our needs.

All of our training is a method to physically represent the IDEA behind the work, it is not techniques, it is Wing Chun Science if you would, our Fist Logic.

Isaac Newton, the greatest of all Wing Chun elders, taught us that it takes more effort to make a still object move than it does to keep something moving or even speed up that movement, think about pushing a car.

Any IDEA that we can make work against a static object/training partner will work even more effortlessly against a moving object/training partner, and never forget that speed is just a metric.

This video is just a record of a normal training session, we are working on understanding an aspect of “The little IDEA” and as such see how our “Fist Logic” works in any shape, from any position in any situation.

GRAVITY SUCKS.

THE “D” MAN.

Chi Sau is a game that we play by our own rules to get an outcome that we alone wish for, for reasons only we know.

Growing out of the last post and the premise that “if we do not know what we are looking for we will never find it”, here is a re-run from just after the first lockdown, it will help us move back into trying to establish some form of an understanding of what to look for in our training, I will cover this over the next few weeks.

Chi Sau is a game that we play by our own rules to get an outcome that we alone wish for, for reasons only we know.

In this way it is both remarkable and hopeless.

I think it is remarkable.

Many years ago when I was getting Tennis Instruction from an Australian National Coach, I was informed that we can only ever learn what we already know, which explains why I never made it to State Grade, but what does it tell us about our Chi Sau?

If what we do does not affect the bad guy what is the purpose of training/using it?

WORK ON YOUR WEAKNESS’ – PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTH.