Category: FIST LOGIC

QUOTE

There is little doubt that we do not see the world as it is, we see the world as we perceive it, and this perception, this image, is built up incrementally over the course of our lifetime, it is never set in place and undergoes many reinventions.

As ‘out there’ as it sounds, the easiest way to improve something is simply changing how we see it, which in turn changes its importance. And this cascades into trust and priority, which we may not realise it is the basis of choice.

Last week’s training was mostly about punching, so keeping it in line with this, how do we see/perceive our punch and punching? How and where do we file it away in our ‘Battle Computer’?

I do not remember how many punch variations we worked on but let’s call it four.  

Did you perceive this as four separate punches or four variations of the one punch?

Why is this relevant?

Hick’s Law states that the time it takes to make a decision increases logarithmically with the number of choices available. Logarithmically means that every added choice takes longer to make than the previous choice.

Theoretically, deciding which punch to use will take more than four times as long as deciding to just punch, and although we will not consciously compare the variables, we will do it subconsciously.

How we SEE our punch might just be the difference between going home or going to the hospital.

Sticking with ‘PUNCH’ for the moment, what do we punch with? 

Are we using a FIST, or are we using a HAND?

I am sure you have a good IDEA of where this is going, depending on how I see my training to hit someone I may need to choose between a punch, a palm strike, a knife hand chop, a slap, a backhand, a hammer fist or a finger poke.

Refer back to Hicks Law to see the problem here.

Without meaning to over-egg the cake, “What are we striking with”?

Hands do not float independently in the air; they are connected to our wrists.

Consider my Sifu’s maxim of “Shoulder pushers Elbow, Elbow pushes Wrist”.

It is possible to get lost in the weeds with this type of regression to a point where we end up thinking that everything is initiated by the collective “BODY”, or if we are hooked on specifics with our Big Toe, so some level of compartmentalism is advised.

“Shoulder pushers Elbow, Elbow pushes Wrist” is, in essence, describing the general mechanics of all of our Hand Strikes, it is the fundamental mechanics of using an ARM.

Again I ask, why is this relevant?

As Martial Artists, we subscribe to the IDEA that it is INTENTION, and not conscious decision-making, that drives the physical application of our Martial skill, this position has been held for as long as there has been Kung Fu and is a central tenet of the work.

Now modern Neuroscience agrees with this age old wisdom, and while Conscious Intentions are formed through deliberate thought and awareness, where you consciously decide on a goal and the steps to achieve it. 

They recognise that Unconscious Intentions stem from deeply ingrained habits, unconscious desires, or past experiences, influencing behaviour without conscious awareness.  In other words, how we train.

Advances in neurological medical scanners have allowed scientists to observe brain activity, which leads to movement before conscious thought.

Intention happens before we think about doing things.

“This is not exactly keeping things REAL is it”?

THE DARK SIDE OF “LET ME GET MY HEAD AROUND IT”

Have you ever heard the term… “I just could not get my head around it”?

What do you think it means?

We have spoke about this many times, essentially it is only what is in our Heads that can come out of our Hands, and of course, this is training.

But what are we putting in our heads? There is a dark side that is always present and often unseen.

I was recently watching a T.V. Show that was set in the late 70s England, at one point a young man was in a situation with three skinheads that turned on him and gave him a sound beating, nothing new there, back then that was pretty normal. But the young man on the wrong end of this thing did nothing to protect or defend himself, he did not even attempt to flee the scene, he just got the shit kicked out of him.

This triggered a memory from my Sifu’s school about 15 or 20 years ago, bear with me on this, it needs a bit of a back story for context. 

My Sifu had a very large school, in Sydney alone there were 14 sub-schools, with approximately 50 teaching personnel of varying levels from Branch [Sub-school] leaders, Branch Instructors down to assistant Instructors, even my Sub-School, which averaged around 15 students, had 4 teaching members.

To prevent the school from turning into a complete MacDojo all Instructors needed to attend Wednesday evening training under Sifu’s supervision, and as a Senior Instructor in the School one of my duties was to mentor a certain group of these Instructors on these Wednesday evenings, usually Non-Asians from the branches in the Western Suburbs, which was and is the working class part of Sydney.

Yes, this was racist, but it was not meant to be disrespectful, Sifu had always thought that Westerners thought and processed information differently than Asians, that Westerners preferred hitting things to doing FORMS, and on top of this that people from Western Sydney were an individual sub-set to the rest of Sydney.

In practice, what I did amounted to no more than translating Sifu’s polite words into ‘MACHO’ language and roughening up the edges of Sifu’s descriptions.

This one evening I noticed a small group of guys not exactly getting enjoyment out of the training, so I went and asked if I could help, there was a little bit of indecision, and then one of them piped up “This is not exactly keeping things REAL is it”?

My attempt to persuade them that Forms, especially Chum Kiu, were important fell flat so I asked what they would like to do instead.

Long story short they said they did not know what to do because all we taught them was “Limp Shit that does not work on the street”.

I said “O.K. let’s fix that, attack me and then we will start from there”.

They declined and said it was pointless because as a Senior Instructor I would know what to do and do it easily.

I was a bit lost with this comment, and in hindsight did not make the best choice, I said, fine, I will attack you, and if it fails, we can work from there.

There was a bit of indecision and looking from one to the other, and then one said “Let’s do it, but do what a street thug would do, just do not hurt me”, we all laughed, and I agreed.

I realised I was potentially setting myself up to get ‘regally’ embarrassed and punched in the head, but I had painted myself into a corner.

I decided on starting with a distraction, so I told the guys how I thought I could be biting off more than I could chew, to which they all laughed, and while they were laughing I gave the volunteer a huge double handed push in the chest that sent him flying into the wall, I immediately followed up by grabbing him by the throat and pinning him to the wall while posing a hammer fist with the other hand.

As soon as I grabbed his throat I knew things had gone to shit, the guy just went limp, the colour drained from his face, his eyes became glassy and he offered no defence.

I immediately let go of him and turned to the other guys, asking what had gone wrong, luckily no-one appeared to notice what I had noticed, and the conversation was about how fast it had been and how they had not even seen me move.

I was in my early 50s at the time and told them that it was not that I was fast, this allowed us to steer the conversation into preparedness, distances and awareness.

If it had been a real situation, that young Instructor would have just stood there while I pummelled him unconscious.

I told them that “KEEPING IT REAL’ was more about thinking fast and paying attention, about understanding that this guy you are now talking to is not interested in talking to you, he is trying to slow your mind down, that “KEEPING IT REAL”  was to understand that this guy wants to hit you, and if you are close enough he will hit you, and that you may not even see it coming.

Things settled down and we did a bit of work on entering and exiting, on transitioning from defence to attack, and hopefully I demonstrated how the Chum Kiu Form helps us control the distance between the two protagonists.

But what did alarm me was that in the conversation they implied that by teaching advanced defences against complex attacks all we did was paint a picture that the attacker was a skilled and difficult opponent.

I could hear the ‘Dark Side’ softly breathing in the background.

Are we teaching ourselves to be scared, are we failing to see that the Bad Guy never gets any better than he was on our first day of training.

If we do not remind ourselves that we are the ones getting better, we are the ones training and preparing it is so easy to slip towards the DARK SIDE and not even know it.

The BAD GUY will not be getting better because, they are just Arseholes looking for an easy win, they will try to distract and then hit when you are not looking.

Just as I had done to them.

Before they left, they came and thanked me again for the help, I just hope it stuck.

Even JEDI can fall.

Toughen the fuck up Padawan.

quote

I am currently reading a book titled “Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit”, it is a collaboration by the ex C.E.O. of Google Eric Schmidt, Henry Kissinger, and ex Microsoft C.E.O. Craig Mundie.

It challenges a lot of my preconceptions about A.I.

although I am not far into it, one thing I am getting is that original, ground-breaking IDEAS are more likely to come from random, almost rambling thinking than deep thinking and the scientific model.

The future may not lay in the past.

Training Large Language Models appears to me to be an advanced form of posing a “thought exercise”.

I am a big fan and participant in Thought Exercises, and they have always been part of my teaching for many years.

They are a form of training we can practice anywhere, any time, and once we get the habit, it is so easy to do.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

How many ways can an attacker hit us?

After all being able to defeat this action is the core of what we do.

About 20 years ago I had 3 brothers as students, for a few years they were deep into the work.

Thought exercise allowed them to compete with each other and often getting one up on a brother was more important than coming up with a great IDEA.

I asked these boys “How many ways can an attacker hit us”?

One common thing in these exchanges was that if one brother could not get one up with an informed answer he would use a frivolous, almost smart arse answer.

After a few of the usual answers, one of them said “Unseen”.

I asked them to expand on this, to be expected comments around awareness and surprise were offered up, even being blind drunk, then one of them said that we could be in a dark place.

This was a complete side step, a leap of intuition if you wish, which lead us to training Blindfold Chi Sau and even Blindfold free play trying to place people in space by sound.

Thought exercises are not posed with any intention of finding an answer, correct or incorrect, the aim is more about creating more questions and in doing so exploring our thinking.

If we do come up with a final answer, lets say 27 ways to hit us, then the next exercise is how many defences do we need to nullify this?

Think about it, we can explore what you come up with on Thursday.

The biggest challenge we all face is quietening the EGO.

I had another rewarding session with our senior students this morning, how can it not be rewarding to explore Wing Chun with other Master level practitioners?

I cannot physically teach Costas, George or Sam anything new, they have my knowledge, all I can do is hold up the mirror at a different angle than usual, this allows for a different perspective.

Human memory is fickle, if we are told 5 things, we remember one thing in every detail, another somewhat clearly, and then we forget the other three, this is just the way it is, and this is why we must revisit things.

Many times I said to my Sifu, “Why did you not tell me this earlier”? He would just laugh, because of course he had told me earlier, often MANY times.

In these situations, it is the conversations that we have that are important, somewhere, perhaps deep inside, the physical knowledge is sleeping, waiting to be rediscovered.

It should come as a surprise to nobody that our conversation revolved around Counter-Attack.

But as I said, the mirror was at an unusual angle.

The biggest challenge we all face is quietening the EGO.

By ‘EGO’ I am not talking about always choosing a shirt that is one size too tight, or trying not to look in the mirror while we are training, not even criticising trying to look good, these are minor, surface traits of EGO.

What I am alluding at is the fear of being hit, the fear of losing, in short, FEAR itself.

To use Frank Herberts litany against fear…

“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing”.

To successfully Counter Attack we must not FEAR being attacked.

Counterattack means inviting an attack, in its own way, this decision desensitises us to the fear of being attacked.

To the uninitiated, this will sound like industrial-level self-delusion, because no matter who we are, or even think we are, we all fear being attacked.

This is just another aspect of Mind Boxing.

I have told you guys many times that I cannot be taken to the ground, that there is no-one alive that can take me to the ground, and I assure you that I believe it, or more importantly that I have browbeaten my nervous system into believing it.

I am obviously wrong, but I am not self-delusional.

My rational is that when someone adopts a shape that tells me they intend to try to grapple me to the floor, my self-created belief will prevent my nervous system from trying to “Anti-Grapple” my attacker, something I am not trained in, and instead I will treat it as any other attack and punch the attacker in the head on the way in.

I could still get taken to the floor, but at least it will not be because of poor grappling skills.

Accepting that we are going to be hit, basing all of our training around being hit, is an absolute pre-requisite if we hope to effectively use Wing Chun.

Counter-Attack only manifests in the wake of an attack, accept it, move on, and then kick some ass.

Everything else is just fighting, and fighting is EGO.

At its centre is Kung Fu essentially a system for converting energy.

Hey Guys,

Just a quick IDEA to consider that arose from a conversation I was having with Sam and Saleh last night.

The one thing above all else that ‘Combat Athletes’ mock Kung Fu players for is the way we talk about using ‘Energ’.

You all know that I am not a practitioner of Magical Thinking, I always try to firmly ground everything in known science, but there is no doubt that the Human Body is an ‘Energy Body’.

Calling this energy Chi or Nim Lik, {while this drives me crazy and I think that this IDEA is B.S.} Are we really just arguing over words, arguing over how we describe Kinetic {moving} and Potential {stored} energy in the human body?

The Science that informs my thinking tells me that ‘Energy can neither be created of destroyed, it just changes state”, this is the LAw of the Conservation of energy.

At its centre is Kung Fu essentially a system for converting energy.

A method of converting Potential energy into Kinetic Energy.

The ultimate goal of our training is to be able to perform this conversion under pressure and at will.

Think about this and see if you can feel the kinetic energy involved in doing the Form.

This is the GOOD JU-JU.

Trying to describe a feeling through a video is to be expected impossible, that is why we need to experience this together, but if you can think back a couple of years when we spemt a fair bit of time understanding ‘Core Winding’ especially in relation to individual muscles, that is where it lives.

Work on your weakness, but trust in your strength.

“If you can feel it…

… you can find it.”

Debasish Mridha

Are we training to become capable fighters, or capable defenders?

Last week’s training was fun, but I want to revisit it and approach it from the perspective of ‘What is our ‘INTENTION’ here”?

In particular, who is doing what when we activate our stuff?

Not knowing this, or at least not being single-minded about the purpose is a pitfall that we must work hard to not fall for.

If we are not single-minded, what are we? This is a position often described as being in two minds.

Two minds, two perspectives lead to double trouble.

In violent situations, indecision can be the end of us, good decision making is the difference between a favourable conclusion and a disaster.

Being in two minds is peak indecision.

Being in two minds is where we find ourselves when our attempted actions do not match our thinking.

How we feel influences how we think, and how we think directs how we act.

So how do we feel about violence?

Essentially this is the difference between fighters and defenders.

Understanding which type we are is the beginning of competency.

Understanding which type we are will determine our decision making.

Are we training to become capable fighters, or capable defenders?

This is where ‘Intention” originates.

If the “Bad Guy” crosses the line do have the “Intention” to fight him, or do I have the “Intention” to defend myself?

“Intention” can be better understood as mindset, whether we are aware of it or not, this is what we are trying to establish with our training.

“The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.”

Maimonides (1135-1204)

What message are we sending ourselves if we are trying to engage an opponent at medium to long-distance?

Hi Guys, and visitors.

This coming Thursday i want to go over the place of kicking in Wing Chun and the place of kicking in a self-defence situation.

This post is a few years old but it does the job I want it to do, and in accordance with Wing Chun’s Principal of “Economy of Movement” it is easier than writing a new post.

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.

A = SIMPLICITY. B = PRACTICALITY, C = DIRECTNESS, D = ECONOMY OF MOVEMENT.

The Venn diagram above shows how describing simple IDEAS quickly becomes complicated when they interact with each other.

One of the earliest challenges we face when studying Wing Chun is in how we interpret the Fundamental Philosophy or, more accurately, philosophies of Wing Chun.

It is well accepted that Chinese thinking developed along a very different path than Western thinking, I am not implying that either is better than the other because they are so different that we cannot make any relevant comparison, fundamentally the values that informed ancient Chinese thinking are almost diametrically positioned to the values that informed ancient Western thinking.

From the outset, Chinese values have been concerned with the collective, whereas Western values have tended towards individualism.

I often discussed this with my Sifu, {Jim} Fung Chuen Kung, who spoke exceptional English, he would tell me that the best we can hope for is an approximation, and mostly not a very close approximation because when we try to justify or understand Chinese philosophy with Western Ideas we arrive at conclusions that make sense to our thinking, but does not coincide with the original IDEA.

Essentially, Western Wing Chun is a deviation from Chinese Wing Chun. It is still a very good Martial Art, but where we get sidetracked is that in the west, it is a Martial Art with a philosophical side, while originally, it was a philosophy with a Martial side.

When I talk philosophy in Wing Chun, I am talking about …

…a theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for behaviour…Oxford English Dictionary

and, of course, measuring everything by itself, by what it is and not by what we think it is or what we want it to be,

And in typical Wing Chun practice, we make it as simple as possible.

Philosophy is always an interpretation; this is the first problem.

The second problem is that, in relation to Wing Chun’s philosophy, it is also a translation.

In my experience, most Western students approach the work as a methodology, which, once developed, they attempt to retrofit with the philosophy, which ultimately leads to overthinking.

If we wish to get as close as possible to the original Wing Chun, it must be clear in our head before it migrates to our hands.

What we are after is acceptance, gained by practice and not belief based on obedience, and then use that understanding to shape our training; this leads to simple, practical, direct thinking.

But what does this mean in plain English?

We should aim to describe the philosophy in simple language, as if to a 7-year-old child, and then see how that compares to what we do.

One of the most obvious misalignments of methodology and philosophy is something that defines Wing Chun.

Counter Attacking.

So let’s begin with that.

Most people, and for a long time, I was part of that most, without realising it drop into methodological thinking when considering Counter Attack.

They immediately think about how to do it or what to do instead of philosophising and asking.

 What does counter-attacking mean?

Then, use the answer as a guide.

Something I meant to mention in the video is that from a point of any Martial philosophy when we step towards our opponent, irrelevant of what we think we are doing, we are issuing force, we are attacking, our mindset will be aggressive, and the opposite is also true that any time we retreat from our opponent if we try to evade or avoid, we are defending, and we will adopt a defensive mindset.

In a violent encounter, how we think and how we feel will be by-products of the environment and situation. To a very large extent, they will be beyond our control; how we think affects how we feel, how we feel affects how we think, and they both affect how we act.

Some deep shit right there.

Bad Ju-Ju does not take a day off.

Hi Guys, and guests.

I had a prospective new student call me up the other day, he was in training with another school so when I asked him why he wished to jump ship he told me that on the few occasions that his life demanded more from him than grinding at Wing Chun he would get bombarded with texts and emails from the school asking him why he was not training.

He said they claimed they were simply trying to motivate him to keep up the good work.

I think we all know this story.

But it does beg the question.

As you all know, if you are away from training for a couple of weeks, I will get in touch to see if everything is going well, we are a family of sorts after all, but I never mention missing training, and I would never be so crass as to pretend it was motivation for your benefit.

As most of you have trained with me for years, you are well aware that I do not bug people to train; I do not even bug you guys to do the FORMS…

..hint, hint, do more FORMS.

My position on this IDEA of motivation is consistent with my position of Wing Chun being a Self-Defence System.

Emphasis on SELF.

If we do find ourselves in trouble, it will be our nervous system that will call the shots and not our social calendar.

Despite the deep and meaningless conversations around ‘Response vs Reflex’, self-defence is never expected; we will always be in crisis mode, and as such, everything will be ‘reflex’.

If any student needs external motivation to train, they are not training for self-defence, I do know that there are a thousand reasons to train, and in their own way they are all just as valid, but if you hope to reflexively use your training when you are not in your ‘Right Mind” it needs to be filed under Self-Defence, and not under Thursday evening if I am not too busy.

Bad Ju-Ju does not take a day off.

I am not saying that we need to train ‘hands-on’ every day; this would be counterproductive and lead to burnout, but we must remind ourselves why we train every day, just in case we get attacked on a Tuesday.

If we believe that violence is real, then we need to be real.

For those of you who train this evening, we will be working on readiness and understanding the ready position.

All good. Now that you have read the post, go do a FORM.

Here is an old video because what is a blog post without a video?

Watch, digest, ask questions.

Hi Guys,

To be expected last nights post was instrumental in this mornings work, so I do not need to add any words.

This is the true HEART of Wing Chun, everything else is just dancing while we wait for the penny to drop.

Watch, digest, ask questions.

WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND, THINGS ARE JUST THE WAY THEY ARE.

WHEN YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND, THINGS ARE JUST THE WAY THEY ARE.