Category: FIST LOGIC

Q. Does your training prepare you for this situation? A. It can and will do if you know what to look for.

Week 10 of the “Lockdown” with at least 7 more weeks to follow, when we return we will all be starting over, we will all be beginners again.

This is not a bad thing, after years of training we often forget why we started this journey in the first place.

I said in a previous post that if we know what the basic IDEAS or Fundamental Concepts of Wing Chun are, we know ‘all most’ everything.

What is Wing Chun in its most fundamental state?

It is a ‘Counter-Attacking’ Martial Art.

Just knowing this tells us so much and sets the agenda for an intelligent approach to training.

Let’s ask a simple questions about this premise.

Q. Why are we counter-attacking.

A. Because we are under attack.

As obvious as this is many students just don’t get it, they do not see that this tells us all we need to know, it tells us of the environment that this event is happening in, it tells us of our mental and emotional condition, it tells us of our level of preparedness.

Once we see this it tells us what and how we should train.

Being attacked is not consensual, it is not a joint operation, when we got out of bed on this morning it was not in our plans, whatever is happening we did not ask for it and we do not wish to be there.

We will be on the back foot, surprised and quite possibly in shock.

Keeping all this in mind another simple question.

Q. What outcome do we hope for?

A. Escape, hopefully uninjured.

You may well have answered these two questions very differently, and that is fine, the answers you gave will still tell you what and how to train.

Q. Does your training prepare you for this situation?

A. It can and will do if you know what to look for.

What should we look for?

Let us just lay it all out and see what we have, let’s put all the pieces on the carpet and then start doing the jig-saw.

Over the coming weeks I will attempt to put together a comprehensive guide to help us get back up to speed as quickly a possible but for now let’s just talk about FORM.

What is the First Form, {Sil Lim Tao} showing us in its most fundamental state?

1. It {Sil Lim Tao} teaches us how to develop a well-balanced body, balanced as in the usual understanding of this term but equally important balanced as in having equal tension throughout the whole body.
2. It teaches us the most efficient way to engage our arms from the perspective or ‘IDEA’, of accepting and issuing force.

That is it, all she wrote. If we can develop an innate understanding of these two simple factors, we are almost there.

What is the Second Form, Chum Kiu, showing us in its most fundamental state?

1. The second form {Chum Kiu} teaches us how to support our limbs with our Torso {centre if you prefer this term} primarily with the thought of accepting and transferring force. The conduit we develop, understand and engage that allows us to accept force is the same conduit that issues force, The Kinetic Chain.
2. It introduces the basic movements of shifting and twisting while maintaining the IDEA from the first form. 

Here again. that is it, all she wrote. If we can develop an innate understanding of these two simple Chum Kiu related factors, without forgetting the S.L.T. factors, we are approaching complete comprehension.

What is the Third Form showing us in its most fundamental state?

1. The third form {Biu Gee} teaches us how to generate force by use of the same conduit we developed an understanding of in Chum Kiu, the Kinetic Chain, from the perspective of how to issue that force.
2. Biu Gee teaches us how to accelerate the force issuing from our Kinetic Chain using weight shifts, torque, torsion and sequential acceleration.

Here again. that is it, all she wrote. If we can develop an innate understanding of the two simple Biu Gee factors, combine them intuitively with the 4 previous factors we now have 90% of the Wing Chun knowledge.

The final 10% is the refinement of what we know, there is nothing else to learn.

The next 5 – 10 – 20 years are about refining and owning the IDEA through combining the three forms into one.

Go outside and throw a ball, it can be a tennis ball, soccer ball or rugby ball, observe yourself closely, all of the factors we are talking about are there in that simple well-known action.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

You will in turn present the information in your own way when you have students, you must of the style will petrify.

Hi Guys,

It is 7am and very chilly as I am filming this so my back is just not moving the way a human back should move, do not use me as a role model.

The main drive behind this post and the last post is for us to get the most from any videos we watch throughout the lockdown, even if they have dialogue this is a good approach.

This youtube channel that I have recently become aware of is a fabulous resource, it has a number of clips from 1991 when a group of guys from our Adalaide Headquarters visited with our Sigung, Chu Shong Tin over in H.K..

There are some minor differences between how my Sifu presented the knowledge he was taught just as there are minor differences with how I present the knowledge I was taught, this is natural evolution, each generation amends the information to fit the present circumstances.

But in essence the ‘Fundamentals” remain the same.

You will in turn present the information in your own way when you have students, you must of the style will petrify.

Begin with what we know for certain and not with what we think we see, depending on where you are at in your training some will relate this to Chum Kiu, some to Biu Gee, some to the Dummy, eventually you will just see it as Wing Chun.

One Form.

One method.

The exploration and understanding of potential.

Wing Chun Forms are not Kata, not shadow boxing drills, they are closer to callisthenics than Kata.

Chum Kiu is not a stand-alone set of information, it is a sub-set or aspect of Siu Lim Tau, the ‘Little Idea’.

It makes little if any difference what exercise we are using to explore Chum Kiu, we are always doing the same thing “Seeking the Bridge”.

The exercises are how we refine our idea of what it means to “seek the Bridge’.

However we must avoid slipping away into Kung Fu Fantasyland and all of our training becoming a “Finger pointing at the Moon”.

Form analysis is not based in reality and as such it does not…

1. Teach a fighting skill.
2. Teach situational awareness.
3. Teach decision making or judgement.
4. Teach the ability to execute the action under pressure.

27 Ninja’s jumping out of the Air Conditioning?  You’re not likely to face that here, however it feels safe for many to have a solution for unlikely threats. Or worse, amazing solutions to fantasy problems.

At this point in time C.S.T. was teaching a physical ‘FIST LOGIC’ oriented version of Wing Chun.

Here is a clip of our Sigung, Chu Shong Tin teaching one of the final movements in the Chum Kiu Form

Before anyone on either side of the ‘Internal – External’ debacle gets their knickers in a knot this video is obviously from before C.S.T. changed his mind about Wing Chun, I recognise at least one person in this video and numerous in other videos from this time in Hong Kong on this channel, I reckon that it is from the 1980s, as such it is the Wing Chun he taught to my teacher and as such very in line with what I am passing on to you guys.

At this point in time C.S.T. was teaching a physical ‘FIST LOGIC’ oriented version of Wing Chun.

This clip IS what we do.

There are 2 reasons I am using this video, firstly it gives all of you guys access to this channel,
Wing Chun – Simple kung fu which has some exceptional historical footage of our Sigung, Chu Shong Tin, never doubt that C.S.T. was an astonishing Wing Chun proponent and teacher.

Secondly and most importantly because it is a shinning example of a situation where as comedians would say ‘You really had to be there’.

As this post is about the merits of learning from videos and not any kind of critique of what is being covered in the clip we really do need to think beyond and behind what is going on in front of us.

I intend to pose a few questions for you to mull over that I have no intention of answering in this post.

The exercise that is being shown is an exercise that I did with my seniors on many occasions and something I spoke of in some depth with my teacher, so I know what is expected and being covered.

Watch it numerous times, watch some of the other videos from this historically valuable channel and then see where it takes you.

First thing first, what do we think is going on here? What is the purpose of the exercise?

Is it one movement or a sequence of separate /individual/independent movements?

Is this in any way practical?

I will revisit this post and give my IDEAS on this clip as a vehicle for instruction in a few days so get stuck in and form some opinions.

As with any exploration the best place to start is by asking “What would need to happen for me to be doing this thing in this place and in this way”?

This is not about the content of the video or the relative or otherwise value of the instruction, do not fall into the trap that thinking that pointing out what you think is wrong is in any way related to what is right.

Get into this guys, we have at least 5 more weeks in ‘LOCKDOWN’ before we can go hands on so developing the ability to look at videos with as little confirmation bias as possible can help you train at another level.

WE LEARN FAR MORE BY DISPELLING OLD ILLUSIONS THAN WE DO FROM LEARNING NEW SECRETS.

It is not ‘Rocket Science’ it is just another level of understanding.

These are a few IDEAS to work with when playing with sticks.

They are primarily for Kunal but you would all benefit from playing with this stuff.

Any decent Martial Artist should be able to transfer their knowledge from empty hands to full hands.

It is not ‘Rocket Science’ it is just another level of understanding.

Do not feel that you are expected to work with what I am showing here, I am an old and half broken man so get on line and find someone that you would like to look like.

Try not to pick an American, this is not bias on my part, in the U.S.A. Karate is a performance sport and not a combat sport, in Karate in the U.S.A. Kata are super important and finding new almost ‘Hollywood’ ways of doing Kata becomes essential.

Flashy moves never work in genuine violence, keep it simple.

Chi Sau is just a game we play, a means to an end , if we play it without awareness and intention it is so easy to end up in a ‘finger pointing at the moon’ situation.

Rick asked me to expand on my statement that the Chi Sau skills we learn and develop need to be engaged before we make contact with incoming force.

It is pretty hard to make a video on Chi Sau without a partner so I hope this makes some kind of sense.

Chi Sau is just a game we play, a means to an end , if we play it without awareness and intention it is so easy to end up in a ‘finger pointing at the moon’ situation.

When we get back to training, hopefully in September, we will spend the month working towards a deeper understanding and appreciation of Chi Sau.

HERE ARE SOME OLDER POSTS THAT ALSO COVER ASPECTS OF THIS.

POST ON CHI SAU FROM THE VAULT.

Most problems associated with misunderstanding Chi Sau or even just Wing Chun itself arise out of a misunderstanding of what ‘COUNTER ATTACKING’ means.

Here is an old post that may help with that.

COUNTER ATTACKING.

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
― Winston S. Churchill

CHI SAU.

CHI SAU.

I.M.O. Wing Chun is not a fighting art, it is a fighting strategy.

Albert Einstein was of the opinion that ‘time is an illusion’.

Without time nothing happens, so nothing moves.

Hence the confusion because his own words ‘nothing happens until something moves’ brings this into doubt.

I.M.O. Wing Chun is not a fighting art, it is a fighting strategy.

Which is why it fails so often when people try to use it as it is taught.

I do not think that this was ever Dr. Leung Jan’s intention.

How we engage with the work mentally is more important than how we engage with it physically.

Mental fluidity is essential for us to reach out and touch the ‘little idea’.

Most of my own training is a hybrid of all the things that have affected my life, Boxing, Judo, numerous diverse sports, cooking and even music, because it is through this eclectic lived experience that I view my Wing Chun.

To be expected, you will see it differently as you have lived differently.

PIC

The amount of power needed to abruptly push someone off of their feet is commensurate with the amount of power needed to break things.

Richard asked the following question on our whatsapp Group page…

“Hi Derek, question for the week. The 1 inch punch. I have seen vids of Bruce Lee do it with a lot of torsion, and Sigung Fung doing it square on. Is there any practical use? Was Sigung Fung that powerful?”

It is important to understand the nature of any demonstration is basically ‘Infotainment’.

The amount of power needed to abruptly push someone off of their feet is commensurate with the amount of power needed to break things.

Like ribs and eye sockets, good luck finding a volunteer for that trick.

There are many internet trolls that watch a video of my Sifu and scream “Fake”,.

From a video.

How smart are they.

One of the reasons Wing Chun does not have sparring is because the average Wing Chun player wishes to avoid getting hurt and not engage in it, it is the same with any demo.

I have seen my Sifu perform this on many occasions, the body movement is minimal, the focus sublime, it is as real as a car crash.

But it is also a gimmick, or at the least a training exercise.

As I recount in the video my Sifu once gave me a serious tap, not really a punch, but it was as hard as anything I have experienced.

And I used to box.

EVERYONE. HAS A PLAN, UNTIL YOU PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE.

This is not the body that did the WORK, this is not the mind that studied the IDEA.

I was forwarded a FB page from a contact of sorts, it was of a Wing Chun Group showing a workshop with a Hong Kong Sifu.

It was the standard format showing how to do S.L.T. movement to inflict a powerful strike.

In the comments someone trolled the Sifu saying some rubbish about how it would not work and how he should be pressure testing his stuff.

I was not surprised by the trolling it really was the type of video presentation that encourages trolling and is so easy for an uneducated person to look at and think that Wing Chun is a ‘FAKE’ Martial Art.

Not because of the Sifu, but because the students looked and acted like they would as Geoff Thompson says ‘struggle to fight off sleep’ and the Sifu was trying his best not to wake them up.

In partial defence of the troll, all of the ideas shown were extremely lame and unrealistic, even for that particular group of sleepy students.

I have done my share of workshops and you have no choice but to work with what you have been given.

Absolute fact: Everything will work if we are in the right place at the right time and we decide to use it.

Even Table Tennis shots.

Especially Table Tennis shots.

Like all trolls, the guy was a total dick-head with little to no idea about genuine street like situational violence.

It is never the Martial Arts style that gets pressure tested, it is the person.

It is about how the person reacts when his/her body and mind panic.

This is why demonstrations that show students chilling and having fun are prone to trolling, where is the stress factor?

Dealing with genuine violence is all about understanding and compensating for our hormonal response and not about physically fighting.

Hormone induced panic is not controllable, it happens because we experience a sudden shock.

Hormones do not trickle in, they flood the system before that initial shock has fully registered.

WE DO NOT SEE THEM HORMONES COMING.

Thinking that we can somehow control our hormones once they are running amok in our bloodstream is madness.

Advising students to breathe easy, relax, centre, put their minds in their spine is great and all that, but about as achievable as levitating out of the way once the hormone dump has happened.

That is why so many Wing Chun demonstration videos look so lame, even when the information is excellent.

These videos all end up looking like a David Attenborough presentation of a bunch of Pandas with some Sifu or another making up stuff you can do with the S.L.T.

100% Troll bait.

But I pity the Sifu, he is on ‘a hiding for nothing’ from people that understand neither violence nor Wing Chun.

Wing Chun, like all Socially Oriented Martial Arts, is a method to explore violent contact not deal with violent contact.

Once the shock happens and the hormones drop we are out of our standard operation settings.

Right here, right now, in this shit storm. This is not the body that did the WORK, this is not the mind that studied the IDEA.

We have not trained in this completely new physical/mental/emotional condition or for this chaotic unknown/unexpected/random situation so it becomes a flip of the coin type of thing.

This sounds much worse than it is because it is the same for all styles, all people, even the Bad Guy.

What we can do in training is to explore why such shocks occur and work on limiting the chance of that occurrence.

Awareness and avoidance are key ideas to factor in.

Shock is a result of something happening that we did not expect or something that we may have expected acting in a different way.

Such as a small man with a massively heavy punch.

Or a big, heavy man that moves like a ballet dancer.

When we engage another person our aim may appear to be self-defence, at least initially, but in reality, we should be attempting to take the shock out of our opponents attack and ramping up the shock level of our response.

Diminish the incoming load while increasing the outgoing load.

The initial panic problem is due to our poor timing, essentially, if the strike gets to us quicker than we expected we slip into Hormone Shock.

Hormone Shock is a response to things happening too quickly for us to evaluate and respond to.

It is all in the ‘timing’.

The easiest way to control ‘timing’ is to control the space in which it is happening.

The longer something takes to happen the less the chance of shock.

At this present juncture, where we should be, social distancing, 1.5 metres from each other, we are still too close to our partner to adequately respond to a surprise attack.

At this position, Chi Sau range, we are deliberately placing ourselves in the ‘Shock-Zone’.

Playing with this aspect, especially as we really should be anyway, can help us get a new perspective on what we think we do.

Distance {Space} = Time.

If we have sufficient Space and Time we will be able to think in a much more concise manner, better and clearer thinking minimise shock.

A quick but important sidestep, we do not get more time by stepping into an attacker, just sayin’, this is physics, not Wing Chun.

It is only thinking that can help us.

It is our MIND that gets shocked but our BODY pays the price.

The question becomes how do we get more time?

This subject is a whole series of posts in itself, but to generalise we stretch the time we have been offered.

When we stretch something it gets weaker, longer and slower, even if we still get hit the shock of that hit is much less.

Something we can explore during this enforced period of Solo Training is ‘how can we use our training to apply this idea of stretching the timing of an incoming attack’?

Our ability to control this first second of the engagement will depend far more on quick thinking and creativity than 30 years of training.

We will all come up with our own solutions, and this is as it should be.

Below is a video from the vault, back in early 2018 when I was still working for the railways as a Controller, that can give us a starting point towards stretching time.

If some of the content of the above video appears a trifle disconnected to the content of the article here is a link to the original post that may, or may not help clear things up. CLICK HERE.

Violence happens by Surprise, Closer, Harder and Faster than in most Martial Arts Training.

Or of course there is always someone that asks ‘Will this work in the street’?

This is just a bit extra to keep our heads somewhere near what our training was.

It is meant to be light hearted and off beat but it may just come over a tad confused and delusional.

CABIN FEVER.

Over the years I have been teaching there have been many students that when shown something a little bit outside the box say ‘Can we do that in Wing Chun’?

Or of course there is always someone that asks ‘Will this work in the street’?

I get it, we understand that there is a bunch of ‘shitheads out there and we may just bump into them so we best be ready’.

But we do not know who they are so we do not know if what we are doing is enough.

IT IS.

It always was.

It always will be.

I also do a belated look at the Rubber Mallets.

STAY HEALTHY.

The quick takeaway would be “Chill out, nobody can relax anyway”.

This post could well be proof that I have been cooped up in my place for just a bit too long.

There is nothing in this post that we do not all know but perhaps it will encourage you to think about it a little bit more or at least again.

The quick takeaway would be “Chill out, nobody can relax anyway”.

The key to what we do is more about experiencing what it means to be a body.

Stay frosty tribe.

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.