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.
But we are not and have never claimed or pretended to be training to become Elite Combat Athletes
Hey Tribe.
I had a fantastic two and a half hours with James Monday evening, mostly talking through what we have been doing for the last month and a half while he was away.
I have been a mentor to James for over twenty years we have a very open training relationship, James has never cared too much about the “Art” side of our thing, he cares more about what happens when the rubber meets the road, at the pointy end of the stick.
He sees what we do as a capital M ….. Martial -art, and not a capital A, ….. martial-Art.
If James thinks anything is in any way ‘suss’ he calls it out.
So Monday was probably 70% chat as I tried to explain the whole three-legged stool thing.
You know Mind – Body – [fighting] Spirit thing.
Being able to see beyond what we are doing at that moment in training, to be able to see things as dynamic relationships can help us see where and how our training fits into the bigger picture of surviving and escaping violence. This is I.M.O. The key to being a capable, competent human being.
This can only be done later in our down-time, going over events in our mind, comparing what we did to what we meant to do, when we self-evaluate the actions we took in training or in a shit-storm.
In the military this would be referred to as an ‘after-action report’, or debrief.
In training, we work on how to defend/defuse all and any of the usual attacks we can think a Bad Guy may use.
This is referred to as ‘generic attack training’.
Through this method we see that we can deal with any generic shape, any generic attempts to hit us, in short, we can beat anything a generic attacker will throw at us.
The complaint many Armchair Warriors throw at this generic approach is that all of the things we train against are nothing less than feeds, that we are ready for them, and that we not only know what is coming but make sure our training partners avoid trickery so that we do see it coming.
The claim is that in a real fight the Bad Guy will not let us see it coming.
On the surface, this sounds like a fair call.
But it is not and here is why.
Perhaps if we are two highly skilled Elite Combat Athletes that have trained intensely for this fight for months, watched videos to understand each others style and have come up with new ways to beat established defences this would be true.
On top of all that we, the Elite Combat Athletes, arrive at the venue for the fight fully rested, in peak condition, full of confidence and self-belief to the extent that when it gets hard and messy we can stay calm and not get stressed in anyway, hold off adrenalin, stay focused and stick to the game plan.
This complaint may appear to make sense.
Especially if you have never been a guest at one of these occasions.
But we are not and have never claimed or pretended to be training to become Elite Combat Athletes
For everyone except Elite Combat Athletes this claim is just as self-delusional as the claim that generic training is self-delusional.
The IDEA of training IS“to be ready for it”, and the IDEA of developing awareness IS“to see it coming”.
But training is never fighting and we all know this.
Not for ourselves or the Elite Combat Athletes.
Things never go the way we plan or the way we hope.
But if we start without a plan we cannot change our plan.
If we start without hope we have no hope.
There is a maxim in the Military, and if anyone truly knows about conflict it is the real Warriors, the guys that go to war, the Military. They say….
…. “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy”.
What we are trying to achieve through training is a condition, a mind-set, an attitude that when it is “Go-Time” we have the “IDEA” of being ready and the “IDEA” of awareness.
That will put us streets ahead because in a real shit storm the Bad Guy will soon have no IDEA ….. just anger.
Let’s keep this conversation going, we all speak English in slightly different ways, feel free to ask me what I mean by certain word choices.
Not Counter-Attack as a method or Counter-Attack as a strategy but as an IDEA or group of IDEAS that can give purpose to method and direction to strategy.
O.K. Guys.
This mini-essay was way too big for the WhatsApp chat and anyway you may need to bookmark it to come back and re-read it.
Wing Chun was hybridised in the late 1860s from various Shaolin Styles by Dr. Leung Jan, this is history, not news, but do we understand why it is worth remembering?
If the physical shapes we use began as Shaolin shapes they are still Shaolin shapes.
Therefore Wing Chun is everything else apart from the Shaolin shapes.
The everything else package is the “Little Idea”, the five principles, and one concept.
The “Little Idea” of uniting the three aspects of Body, Mind, and {fighting} Spirit to the same end.
The principles of Directness, Practicality, Simplicity. Economy of Movement and Non-use of Brute Force.
The concept of Counter-Attack.
Not Counter-Attack as a method or Counter-Attack as a strategy but as an IDEA or group of IDEAS that can give purpose to method and direction to strategy.
If we watch anyone trying and failing to use Wing Chun in a violent situation, it is usually because they are FIGHTING and not Counter-Attacking.
They are using shapes we would recognise as they walk into punches or stand still for kicks and take-downs, but these are Shaolin shapes.
People that have little to no experience of what Geoff Thompson referred to as the ‘Pavement Arena’, street violence, struggle to understand how to take this dance we are learning and make it shine out there in the dark.
Without experience, there is no way to compare our training to the ugly mess of violent reality.
But we do not need experience of violent street contact to understand a Concept.
A concept is a head thing, ‘reality’ is everything else.
I know that you guys think that I am some kind of sports nut and that’s why I bring everything we do into the sports universe.
As Hercule Poirot would quip, ‘au contraire mon ami’.
Sports is ritual warfare, it was a semi-civilised substitute for violent contact between rival tribes, you only need to watch Liverpool v Everton in the English Premier League, New South Wales v Queensland in ‘The State of Origin’, Chicago Bears v the Green Bay Packers in the American National Football League or the old U.S.S.R.v Czechoslovakia ice hockey teams in the Olympics to see that it still is.
A good starting point for this chat, what is Counter-Attacking in Sport?
Counter-Attacking begins with a turnover of the ball/puck in the build-up attack by team ‘A’.
Up to that point, team ‘B’ was either not in the play or under the cosh.
This can come about from a tackle or a bad pass but to be relevant to Wing Chun it comes from team ‘B’ reading the play and being in the right place at the right time.
A team ‘B’ player unexpectedly intercepts a pass while team ‘A’ is still pressing forward, breaks free unmarked and heads for the team ‘A’s goal.
I can almost hear you all saying ‘DUH’ we know how does it help?
To ‘GROK” Counter-Attack we need to understand what team ‘B’ is NOT DOING before the interception.
Of great importance is they are not trying to force the play.
They are simply taking up intelligent positions, moving with the press, filling gaps and waiting for that moment their training tells them will come, waiting for their window of opportunity to open.
And when it opens, they dive through.
Recently when we were working on defending against an opponent that kicks, I suggested that the learning objective should be to understand why the kicks failed and not why we succeeded.
This is tricky stuff because we need to refuse our ego the credit of a job well done and reduce it to a bad decision by the attacker.
As I said at the time, we should work on these defences against opponents kicks to understand the futility of unsophisticated, obvious attacking.
As we know Wing Chun is based on everyday human body movements, if our attacker is an everyday type of human, which they will be, there is a random chance that they could come up with the same response as we would use to the same attack.
Without realising or intending it.
I realise that this is Chimpanzee typing out Shakespear level of possibility but it is a possibility, and Wing Chun does not take chances no matter how small.
Wing Chun is not for sport, if we are using our training someone is actively trying to harm us.
Not a place to take chances.
Wing Chun training shows us is that when we use our shapes and movements, working from the perspective of Counter-Attack, the majority of what others see as effective, useable attacks do nothing more than put the attacker in a perilous position.
Returning to the Sports counter-Attack for a moment, once the breakthrough has been made the counter-Attack is completed.
From this point on it is an attack in its own right, do not miss this.
Did you miss it?
There is still a lot of work to be done, team ‘A’ will turn and chase, if it is Soccer or Hockey there is a goalie to take on and there is every chance of the break fizzling out and it is back to the drawing board, once again taking up intelligent positions, moving with the press, filling gaps and waiting for that moment, waiting for a window of opportunity to open.
Counter-Attacking is not a method or strategy it is a conscious and deliberate decision not to force an attack.
It is a waiting game.
Once taken, this decision can apply our method and prosecute our strategy.
I realise that this is a bit wordy and may take a few run-throughs to get it, there is another way, go watch some Football or Ice Hockey.
WE DO NOT SEE THE WORLD AS IT IS. WE SEE IT AS WE ARE.
Sil Lim Tao translates to the Way of the Little Idea. The little Idea is simple, but the ‘Way’ to discover the Little Idea is less simple.
Hi guys, this is to try to prompt those of you that do not yet spend quality SOLO time working with the Form to get more involved with it.
I get it, it can be frustrating trying to understand how doing a Form can be fundamental to our core abilities.
Been there, done that.
It took me about 7 years before I finally understood the importance but once I did my Wing Chun improved on an almost daily basis.
I am just trying to save you time. Lots of time.
Understanding complex ideas easily is as much about understanding the analogies we use as it is about genuinely related information. Analogies are the pictures we use to bring into focus or gather up the loose ends of a vague idea or underdeveloped concept.
Try to consider the Sil Lim Tao Form as a physical manifestation of an analogy. Let it paint you a picture.
Sil Lim Tao translates to the Way of the Little Idea. The little Idea is simple, but the ‘Way’ to discover the Little Idea is less simple.
Because we confuse the “Way” with the”IDEA“.
The “Way” is not the “IDEA“.
“The Map is Not the Territory, the Word is Not the Thing” as pointed out by the philosopher Alfred Korzybski”.
TheSil Lim Tao Form is not the Sil Lim Tao, it is a Form, a movement set, as easy as it is to read this it can prove difficult to digest. The Sil Lim Tao Form is not the Way, it is a vehicle to approach and then explore the Way. But it is not just a vehicle it is also a scaffold that supports and reinforces the IDEA while we build it. And it is also the concept that told us we needed a vehicle to find the IDEA in the first place.
There are three aspects to training, a physical aspect, what we do. A mental aspect, what/how we think. An emotional aspect, how we feel. These three separate aspects are tightly interconnected, how we feel affects how we think, how we think affects what we do, what we do affects how we feel, around and around and around we go. Understanding this interconnection shines a light on the importance of self-talk because self-talk is the major contributor to how we feel.
What does your self-talk say when you consider spending 10 minutes on the Form?
Wing Chun was thought up many years before ‘data retrieval systems’ were invented, years before people understood the role of the conscious mind or short-term memory and the subconscious mind or long-term memory, and how these systems worked together. Years before neuroscience discovered that all physical action begins in the Brain/Mind. From one synapse a signal is sent, that signal is received by a different synapse, a nerve or muscle is activated, an action is performed.
Even the action of standing still, doing nothing is something we actively do!
It is via this interconnection that we come to understand the “IDEA” that became Wing Chun.
When we are in training mode, moving slowly, deliberately and accurately, we are in our conscious mind, accessing short-term memory doing what we are thinking. Our brain is impressing/recording this action to our subconscious mind or long-term memory so that later if we find ourselves in a situation that we do not have enough time to assess and choose the right action, no time to think, we just hit the replay button and allow our subconscious to choose.
If we are not regularly engaging with the Sil Lim Tao Form then on some level we are telling ourselves that it has little or no value.
Without knowing it we are moving into a good/bad, right/wrong, correct/incorrect mindset.
Every action we do, every defence/attack choice is created from aspects of the Sil Lim Tao Form.
Why would our subconscious mind choose to respond with something that we keep telling ourselves is of little value?
Developing our power is 100% in the Mind, consciousness is not optional, if we are awake we are aware, conscious power is everyday power.
Developing our subconscious power is less automatic, we reach it through consistent, deliberate practice.
To phrase this in easy English the aim is to Act, Feel and Think in the same way to the same end.
Three different paths, one vehicle.
The Sil Lim Tao Form.
Stack it up, power it up, build it up.
In the lower of the two videos, I mention that we are trying to be the best we can be at this or any other singular time.
There will be days in training when we appear to never get with the project, nothing goes the way we want it to go, even on this day we are the best we can be…. on this day, at this time in this place.
No one chooses to train poorly, we all give it all that we have, so if it starts going sideways be aware of this, do not try to train harder, do less, even take a break.
When it comes to fu**ing up… TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY.
Words of advice for young people….
IF WE HOPE TO SUCCESSFULLY BE NASTY TO OTHER PEOPLE IT BEGINS BY BEING NICE TO OURSELVES…..THE “D” MAN.
“And we may ask ourselves, well, how did we get here”?
KUNG HEI FAT CHOY to all of you guys and all visitors.
A new year a new start, well that is the dream, but this year it is tinged with doubt due to the Pandemic.
There is always hope or there is nothing, but new starts lead us into thinking of the past period that we have just endured
The changes our school has gone through are many, and some of you do not know the full story.
Chinese New Year is our anniversary.
It was the first Monday of the Lunar New Year for 2010, the Year of the Golden Tiger, that we held the opening night of what is now Wing Chun Sydney.
On the first Monday of this Lunar New Year, the Year of the Water Tiger, we turn 12 years old, and we are only just hanging on.
I know that there are many schools in a similar perhaps even worse situation, many have already upped stumps and headed to the Pavillion.
In the wake of the ravages the school has suffered due to the ramifications of Covid-19, what was once a healthy 40 students and 2 schools is now just 8 of us in the Studio at the back of my home.
To paraphrase David Byrne…
“And we may ask ourselves, well, how did we get here”?
My Sifu, Jim Fung Cheung Kuen passed away in 2007, to many who trained with him this was unexpected.
Out of nowhere, we were rudderless.
His school, the I.W.C.A. was suddenly adrift and taking in water.
The consensus at the top was to keep on keeping on, but this was always a flawed IDEA.
There was no natural successor.
So the school’s 7 most senior students assumed control, the governance of the school fell upon what was at best a non-aligned, non-cooperative committee.
The writing may not have yet been on the wall but the signwriters Van was in the Carpark.
Skip to 18 months later, Wednesday evening after instructor training, in the Cosmo pub over the road from the Training Hall, most of the remaining Senior Instructors carrying on like Wednesday night was party night.
In particular, as usual, me complaining about the fact that the new school had nothing in common with the school our Sifu ran, the school we helped him build.
The ‘Old School”.
A good friend and long-time training partner Greg turns around to me and says…
… “For f*cks sake Derek, are you still going on about this?Either get over it or just leave.”
The chances are that Greg had responded this way to my non-stop complaints every Wednesday evening.
But this Wednesday, perhaps I had not drunk as much, I heard him.
I nodded.
I thanked him for his insight.
The next day, Thursday, I turned up to the sub-school I was responsible for in one of Sydney’s outer suburbs, a group that I had managed for the past 11 years, and gave the students the news that for me…
… the race was run.
To be expected the sub-school continued but a few months and a few replacement instructors later one of the more serious students, Sam, asked if I would be willing to independently teach a breakaway group he had assembled.
A group made up of the core members of the old sub-school.
12 students met with me to lay out their IDEA and asked if I would teach them.
It was a good IDEA, more importantly, it was not my IDEA.
On the first Monday of the Chinese New Year of 2010, we came into existence.
Wing Chun Inc. Began as 14 people with the same goal.
12 students, my wife Mandy, and myself.
The first few years kicked on brilliantly, and there was a moment when we were almost famous, 2 schools at different ends of Sydney and over 40 students.
Things change, life is tricky.
Today, of the 12 Foundation Members, only Sam is still on-board, which is fitting as it was Sam’s drive that created the whole IDEA in the first place.
Thanks to Covid-19 we are now just 8 people.
But we are the best 8.
In February 2010 we grew from 14 people.
We still have Sam.
We can do it again.
Rise up, get on board.
THE REAL VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY IS NOT IN SEEKING NEW LANDSCAPES,
What message are we sending ourselves if we are trying to engage an opponent at medium to long-distance?
As you guys all know I believe that the most important attribute for a Martial Artist is honesty.
So honestly…
…does kicking have a genuine place in a Close – Quarter Combat style such as Wing Chun?
Let me clarify this when I say kicking I am talking about using our leg or foot as a primary attack weapon.
My teacher, Jim Fung {Chuen Keung} was an astonishing kicker and I witnessed some spectacular demos of his ability over the 17 years I trained under him, refer to the picture above to get some idea.
The thing is that kicks like the one above are, by my Sifu’s own admission, NOT Wing Chun.
He did them for the show, to attract more business because it was the type of thing new students wanted, and he always wanted new students.
Kung Fu Movie stuff.
But he was good at it.
Without starting a ‘Bun Fight’ over what is or is not Wing Chun kicking, because it really does not matter in the bigger picture, only results matter, surviving street violence is not an Olympic sport, no one is keeping score or awarding points.
However, if we claim to be doing Wing Chun then we should train Wing Chun.
Because ultimately it is not about Wing Chun kicking, it is about understanding the thinking behind Wing Chun kicking.
Those elusive ‘CONCEPTS’, that ‘Little IDEA”.
If, as we all repeatedly say, Wing Chun is a Concept Driven Fist Fighting style {KUEN} our theatre of operations is, at most, where we play Chi Sau, touching distance.
What message are we sending ourselves if we are training to engage an opponent at medium to long-distance?
I have always believed that Wing Chun is a ‘clever’ Martial Art, so let us take a clever approach to {sic} ‘Kicking’.
The video below was originally intended as the intro to a larger discussion on the merits of kicking, but I think that it is a good enough thought exercise to be viewed as stand-alone information, as a primer for the bigger picture of what is to come regarding how Wing Chun people use their legs in a violent situation.
As always, Y.M.M.V.
WHEN IT COMES TO ASS-KICKING, BE SURE IT AINT YOURS.
Letting the Mind do the work begins with thinking about the work.
LET THE MIND DO THE WORK. What IDEA does this statement lead us to? There is no doubt that the mind plays a vital indeed critical part in all and any movement.
If we do not think it, it simply does not happen, quite literally.
So on one level LET THE MIND DO THE WORK could be as straightforward as being aware of what we intend to do.
INTENTION is most definitely a component, but there must be more for it to manifest itself dynamically.
All movement is the result of an impulse from our brain that informs the nervous system to move the muscles.
VIDEO
Letting the mind do the work is not Mindfulness.
Be very weary about Mindfulness, my advice is to avoid it, and any that speak it.
Letting the Mind do the work is not circulating Chi or any other esoteric IDEA.
Be very weary of talk of esoteric forces, again, avoidance is advised.
Letting the Mind do the work begins with thinking about the work and nothing else.
It begins with simply thinking anything and seeing if it resonates with the work.
The ultimate aim of training is INCLUSION.
How do we include all of the attributes of all of the FORMS into one single whole, it is only when we do this that we begin to approach what Wing Chun IS.
Wing Chun is the art of “Counter Attack”without this understanding to anchor our training everything is just dancing and arm waving.
Since reopening after the 15 week lockdown we are all going through a kind of rebirth, or at the least a re-start that demands a new approach to the training to get back the lost time.
My lockdown training was taken up to a very large extent with playing with swords and poles, working on tying the body to the footwork in a dynamic and meaningful way and understanding that Wing Chun contains all of this movement.
The overwhelming benefit of playing with hand weapons is that they are direct and uncomplicated, just as Wing Chun is meant to be.
With weapons there is one and only one reason for using them, take out the Bad Guy.
Refreshing, re-invigorting, rewarding.
Wing Chun is slightly more complex than using a weapon but the goal is surely the same.
What is the goal of Wing Chun?
The goal is not to do Forms, or to excel at Chi Sau as important as those things are, it is to understand and become at the very least capable and competent at the art of “Counter Attack”.
Wing Chun is the art of “Counter Attack”.
This thinking is not a product of the Pandemic Shutdown, it has always been the case.
I covered this in some depth over 2 years ago and I am still happy with how I presented my opinions and idea so I am reissuing the posts here for you to revisit.
Do yourselves a solid and bookmark this page so that you can revisit it every few months, this is the most important thing to understand about Wing Chun, without this understanding to anchor our training everything is just dancing and arm waving.
The closest we have to a working history of our style is the Kuen Kuit, a ‘Grab-Bag’ collection of training ideas and maxims created by numerous authors over different generations and situations.
Something that becomes obvious after time studying and teaching Wing Chun, is that none of the original ‘Fist Logic’ was passed down in any kind of stable or readily definable condition.
The IDEAS were passed down more like pieces of poetry than as an operating manual.
This is complicated by several magnitudes simply because we work with translations of the original ‘Fist Logic’.
Mandarin Chinese, and even more so Mandarin Chinese from before the mid-20th Century, does not translate well to English, this is the fault of English, the language is too compact and bereft of the necessary tools to accurately describe poetic nuance.
This is hampered even more because the same piece of Mandarin script can be read in different ways.
Even by native speakers.
Add to that that each speaker translates the script differently into English we end up with nothing concrete to work with.
The closest we have to a working history of our style is the Kuen Kuit, a ‘Grab-Bag’ collection of training ideas and maxims created by numerous authors over different generations and situations.
My Sifu {Jim} Fung Chuen Keung who was born and raised in Hong Kong and spoke excellent English said that even in Chinese they were not meant to be taken literally and that most of them did not make direct translations.
For instance take the maxim ‘Loy Lau Hoi Sung, Lut Sau Jik Chung’
One of if not the most pertinent of the Battle Songs.
My Sifu could translate this to be applicable to just about any situation.
Three that I can remember are
Stay when he comes in, follow when he goes out, break contact and attack.
Escort what comes in, follow what goes out, when the hands are free strike.
When they advance, do not retreat, when they retreat advance. Discard the hands and rush straight in.
Subtle but genuine differences can make a very big difference in understanding.
Other Maxims worth thinking on are ‘The Wing Chun Punch comes from the Heart’, add to this ‘Wing Chun does not take a backwards step‘, my reading is that this was not meant as a positioning advice or a restriction on movement but rather what we English refer to as ‘Bottle’.
There are many more, Google Kuen Kuit and pick one that spikes your interest.
Exactly what does ‘He walks the bow but I walk the string’ mean to you?
These Battle Hymns, these Maxims can of course mean anything you want them to mean, choosing what you want them to mean is how you develop your own Wing Chun.
WHAT DAT?
“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.” Heraclitus .
