Category: FIST LOGIC

We only need to “Think outside of the box” when the content of the box fails,

Hi guys.

We are back at it again as of this Thursday, so here is something to think about to get the juices flowing.

A continuation of the question , “Are we playing or are we training”?

First up a couple of seed thoughts to stick in a corner of your head and allow to grow.

#1. When we do not remember something, for that moment in time we do not know it”

#2. All training is task-specific.

When we find ourselves forgetting something, it is the same thing as not being able to find a file on our computer; we know it is there somewhere, but no keyword in the search bar brings results.

This is what I was getting at in the last post when I was bringing up “Information Theory”.

How we organise incoming information, “Colation”, and how we store that information, “Memorise”, determines how we recall the information “Remember”.

It is overlooked how important memory is to our training; in fact, it is taken for granted.

Do we understand how memory operates?

When I first researched this topic, it completely changed how I approached all of my training, and instantly improved it out of sight.

Short-term memory is where we hold working information at the time we are doing it. It only holds a very small amount of information, calculated as being as little as 7 items, and then it is shunted away to long-term memory for storage and later retrieval.

How does this impact “playing over training”?

The difference is how we remember the event we were involved in.

When we describe a hectic sparring session to a friend, we will describe it along the lines of it as being hectic, we were all bouncing off the wall, fists and feet flying everywhere, it was insane fun.

This is us remembering a feeling.

However, if we explain to a classmate who missed a session what we did, we talk about specific movements, we talk about applications of the technique, and we talk about physical drills that repeat these techniques.

As a basic yardstick, when we play, we remember the feelings we had while playing, and when we are training, we remember the specifics of the lesson.

If we are hoping for something from our long-term memory, “Kicking in” while we are deep in a shit storm, which one of these memories gives us the best chance of survival?

Playing is important and teaches valuable lessons, but the lesson it teaches is not what people think.

Training is order, training is process, training is repetition, training is setting boundaries, “Thinking and working inside of the Box”.

Playing is everything that training is not; it is chaos, playing is making things up on the run, being creative, everything is original and never repeated, total “thinking outside of the Box”.

We only need to “Think outside of the box” when the content of the box fails, and the real value of thinking outside of the box is not the content of the thinking; it is the freedom from being trapped in the box, the ability to re-orient once the box fails.

But first we need the box.

Data Retrieval: If we buy into the whole ‘our training will kick in’, we expect this to just happen.

This is a thought exercise to lead us into the new year. We have been working towards this end for some time, so it should ring a bell or two.

Every Martial Artist hopes that in a time of extreme stress, our nervous system will choose, without any conscious intervention on our part, to use a certain set of movements that we are familiar with over other different sets of movements, some of which we may be even more familiar with.

This is the whole “our training will kick in” ethos.

Empirically, there are some very mixed results; for some people, this is what happens: “our training will kick in”, while for others it does not.

If we hope to be part of the first group, which I am sure we all do, we need to understand why the situation exists in the first place.

Bear with me while I make a slight detour, I promise this is not as nerdy as it may at first sound.

Something that changed my way of looking at life in general was when at school, I  found out about ‘Information Theory’,  described in 1948 by Claude Shannon in a paper entitled A Mathematical Theory of Communication, in which information is thought of as a set of possible messages, and the goal is to send these messages over a noisy channel, and to have the receiver reconstruct the message with low probability of error.

This is not just about maths or computers; it has influenced everyday thinking in all experiences on all levels and can be crystallised in the meme term ‘signal-to-noise ratio’

The stronger the signal, the weaker the noise, the clearer the signal.

Think about this, we research by reading, but not all reading is research. Why not? . The action is the same.

When we are researching, by reading, we consciously try to turn down the outside noise, to somewhat insulate ourselves from distractions; in that way, we make the signal stronger, clearer, easier to hear.

Or as Shannon put it “the goal is to send these messages over a noisy channel, and to have the receiver reconstruct the message with low probability of error”.

The question becomes, is our training research, or are we just reading?

Are we training, or are we playing? The action is the same.

There are movement sets and actions from our working life that we know far more intimately and perform many times more often than our Kung Fu movement sets, yet we expect our subconscious to choose these less familiar sets when we are in trouble. How does that work? Because for some people, it does work, 

Sitting in the shadow of ‘Information Theory’ we can clearly see the progression as …

Data Collection..

Data Collation..

Data Storage..

Data Retrieval..

And as in all shadows, it is far from clearly visible.

Data collection; This is the same if we are training or playing, it is just us doing stuff, any stuff, Kung Fu, Gardening, or Work, essentially Raw Data.

Data Collation: This is the big step. The organising and structuring of the Raw Data from various sources into a coherent, usable dataset. This is where we put files into folders. This is when we separate Kung Fu Data from all other sources and create a dedicated file.

Data Storage:  This is the vital step; this is where we organise our many, many files and folders into Groups. Some files are needed in multiple folders, and some folders are needed in multiple groups. The movement we know as Tarn Sau is the same as paying for a pie, the same movement as putting our hand out to catch a ball, the same movement as showing our hands are empty. All require different folders. In the case of our Wing Chun, where every movement is based on natural human movement, we will find a copy of everything in every file.

Data Retrieval: If we buy into the whole ‘our training will kick in’, we expect this to just happen.

And for some, it does.

The key is understanding the difference between playing and training, especially as  ‘The action is the same’.

It is more fun playing at being a “Bad Ass” than it is training to become one, but deep down, we know violence is serious, so why would our nervous system choose to play when we need to get serious?

NEWS FLASH… it won’t!

Our main aim next year is to fix this so that it does.

It should come as no surprise that this requires us to stop playing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The goal is not primarily to defend yourself.

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

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

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

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

Violence has nothing in common with play fighting.

Violence is everything else.

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

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

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

Non-Competitive Martial Arts are about becoming a Hedgehog.

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

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

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

The training is about maintaining composure when all appears lost.

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

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

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

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

The difference is the aimed-for outcome.

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

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

First become a Hedgehog, and then become a Dragon.

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

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

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

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

Now look at all the different Kung Fu styles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I focused on the Telescope and forgot about the Sky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what is the real work?

The real work is TRUST.

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

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

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

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

EVERY TELESCOPE CAN SEE THE SKY.

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

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

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

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

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

Stay frosty.

Hoping to achieve relaxation by thinking about relaxing is just an “Are we there yet” moment.

The paradox of training for composure.

This is a bit of a brain twister and may need to be read more than once, if we are actively training for Composure then at that moment we are not composed, {if we are composed why are we trying to achieve it}and as such we have already failed and have zero chance of success because we have tricked ourselves into thinking that maintaining this state of non-composure will somehow lead to being composed.

If this does not make sense re-read it until it does.

Just like being relaxed, being composed is an end-state and not something we can engage in.

We become composed or relaxed due to other actions which, due to how we use language, especially English, appear to deal with the opposite condition.

Until we get this we will think that everything we are being told or asked to do is completely backwards from achieving the end state and find it difficult to engage in.

This can and often does bring about a level of cognitive dissonance.

We all know by now that if we are not mentally involved in the action we are doing we will struggle to get the outcome we are after.

Relaxation is the result of releasing, or at the least diminishing tension, as counterintuitive as it sounds, if we are not mentally connected to, and thinking about tension we will not become relaxed.  How can we release tension if we are not thinking about tension?

Hoping to achieve relaxation by thinking about relaxing is just an “Are we there yet” moment.

We need to build the correct mental architecture for the condition we wish to be in, which in this instance is composure.

As a starting point, it should be a given that we would only work on being composed if we think we are not composed.  DUH!

If we are thinking of being composed we will automatically measure our present state against our desired state, and no matter how close we are to our desired end-state not being there will create stress, which will just eat up whatever composure we have at that moment.

Here is where everything sounds backwards, If we are in a dangerous situation the only way we can remain composed is to not think about the danger we are facing, and the only way we can do that is to think about something else.

It is a bit like ‘Fight Club’.  The first rule of ‘Fight Club’ is not to talk about ‘Fight Club”.

Training for composure is Multi-tasking, it is about doing one thing and being completely involved with that thing, with the ‘intention’ of achieving something else, while also doing sometimes many other things.

This is not as weird as it sounds, there are many ways we do this every day, we do it when we are driving, for instance, and we do it when walking through the crowded city shopping district window shopping.

We fail because we are trying to turn these subconscious actions into conscious actions.

We need to think backwards, we need ‘Fight Club’ thinking.

The first rule of training for composure is that we cannot think about composure.

If you can unscramble this egg it will make tonight’s work so much easier.

This is a very counter-intuitive IDEA,  to do the FORM during a violent encounter.

The most important ability in a violent confrontation is maintaining composure.

Composure is the state or feeling of being calm and in control.

How do we train this, and most importantly how do we transition this skill from the training hall to the street?

There are only two ways to accomplish this.

1. Make training the same as a violent event.

2. Operate in a violent event in the same way as we operate in training.

The obvious problem here is that these two sides never meet, they are opposites, training is the camp of the left side of the Brain whilst actively using our training is in the camp of the right side of the Brain, with the left hemisphere being more analytical and logical, and the right hemisphere being more creative and intuitive.

The only sensible choice is #2.

This is neither as simple nor as straightforward as it may sound.

Without any intention of pointing fingers, most students mistake playing for training and spend far more time in that zone, there is nothing wrong with playing it is a very important part of transferring information and skill, but it is not the best vehicle for attaining knowledge.

In many ways playing or practising is similar to fighting, it is mission-critical with pre-determined objectives, namely coming out on top, whereas training is about understanding the things we will choose to use when we play.

Training is about understanding the theory, the IDEA, the WAY and not so much the how or the why, and this can only be done in a calm, relaxed environment, where no one else is trying to push their agenda, which essentially means that it can only be approached through solo training, through the FORM.

Through understanding the deep meaning of the FORM, or perceiving the connectedness of information regarding individual aspects of the FORM that are not about movement or shapes.

The WAY, and not the how or the why.

The WAY we make rather than use the movements and shapes.

This is why I say that Wing Chun does not fight, we use the WAY, the IDEA, the “FORM” even when we beat the shit out of attackers.

This is tricky stuff to write or talk about, mainly because many of us will believe we already do this, but frequently, and against our best intentions, our nervous system hijacks the situation at the last minute and we slip out of the FORM and into playing/fighting.

This is a very counter-intuitive IDEA,  to do the FORM during a violent encounter.

But think on this, when we are doing the FORM {correctly}, even amid Chaos, we remain physically, mentally, and emotionally relaxed, in short, we have the potential for COMPOSURE.

If I am fighting someone I am concerned with and responding to someone else’s agenda, this at the very least requires some level of multi-tasking, and trying to multi-task in a shit storm is not my IDEA of SIMPLE.

Words are tricksy, we will work on this.

THIS CREATES A DIFFERENT APPROACH, WHICH CREATES A DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDING.

How well we perform any act is never a reflection of the level of our training; rather, it is a direct representation of the level of our understanding. 

The last post was the first instalment of a packet of information that, if delivered in one shot, would more than likely miss the target, if you did not read the last post, read it before this, then take a break and read this when the dust has settled.

If we digest the content of these two posts before Thursday evening training, it will leave more disk space, more R.A.M. and more processing power for the work we will do on the night.

We want to get the thinking done before training because we will be hitting things throughout training.

To our missing brethren, if you are thinking of coming back to training, even if it is just for a catch-up, this would be the week to choose.

What is a ‘Theoretical Physicist’?

Very few people, myself included, have a deep understanding of what they are, what they do, and how they do it, most of us ask ourselves, ‘Do they just make shit up out of thin air’?

This is a tricky one to answer for a layman, while they do make shit up, it is not out of thin air, they make shit up from an atmosphere that is thick and deep with well-established and accepted facts.

And what they come up with, these new IDEAS or CONCEPTS are constructed from elements of that atmosphere and are measured against that atmosphere.

Before they can come up with something new, they must know and understand everything old.

As Carl Sagan humorously pointed out “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”. 

 When we are only ‘THINKING’, we need to build a solid environment in which the thing we are thinking about exists, even if we only build it in our heads.

How does that relate to this thing we do?

Like it or not, we need a complete and concise understanding of the physical nature of the environment before we can approach the non-physical aspects of that same environment.

This is the bit that all students, and I do mean ALL STUDENTS, because, at one point in time, everyone that became involved with Wing Chun was that guy, get the wrong IDEA.

The environment we need to understand is not the physical aspect of Wing Chun, and therefore, the non-physical aspect becomes the non-physical aspect of  Wing Chun.

The environment we need to understand is VIOLENCE.

To a very large degree, Wing Chun is the non-physical aspect of violence.

The reason statements like this can be a bit difficult to deal with is usually because we approach them with the wrong Mindset.

The most important thing to understand about Mindset is that different Mindsets bring about different patterns of thinking, IDEAS that make perfect sense in one Mindset makes no sense at all if we adopt a different Mindset.

Thinking that Wing Chun is a fighting style creates a different Mindset than thinking Wing Chun is a Self-defence system.

This creates a different approach, which brings with it a different understanding.

The work is the same, but the goal, and frequently the results, are very different.

HOW WE FEEL CHANGES WHAT WE THINK.

WHAT WE THINK CHANGES HOW WE FEEL.

THEY BOTH CHANGE HOW WE ACT.

A violent encounter is a form of ‘Culture Shock’, and the only way to deal with ‘Culture Shock’ is to accept, adapt and find the middle ground.

I recently read an article that claimed Western Intelligence is waning due to our avoiding reading over watching video.

Watching videos requires no mental interpretation, and as such, we are eroding our ability to convert words and IDEAS into mental images, as we all know our Brains love and live by mental images.

Just putting this out there, it has nothing to do with this post.

My Sifu’s school was an excellent place for beginners to engage with Wing Chun. It was orderly,  technically informed and above all, safe, but as you progressed to the intermediate level, very little changed in the approach, even as a Senior Instructor, the training was pretty much unchanged from the very first day we entered the school, still orderly, still technical, still informed and above all, still safe.

So, what is wrong with this approach?

Perhaps nothing.

It depends on why you are training in the first place.

My Sifu offered an approach where progress was measured by the ability to accurately copy what we had been taught and then to explain the established method of instruction to others.

This is an Academic approach to training, the system was a copy of organised education, a genuine SCHOOL.

As such, the end game was to progress from student to teacher {Instructor}, from teacher to professor, {Master} and finally from professor to recognised expert {Grand Master}.

It was an Academic approach where progress was measured by the ability to accurately copy and explain what we had been taught and to advance the established method of instruction.

This is in no way a criticism of my Sifu’s approach; he made it very clear that this is what he was selling, and as an Academic product, it was of a very high quality. We should be a bit more even-handed; this is the mainstream Martial Arts model of every style.

There were many occasions when asked about how we could use the training; my Sifu would say that it was up to the individual and how well they could transition the knowledge into practice.

If we step away from Martial Arts for a second, this is reflected in everyday life, it is essentially the tension between an Academic Expert and a Master Craftsman.

The value of each depends on context. If you wish to design a water delivery system, you would call a hydraulics engineer but when the pipes burst you call a plumber.

My Sifu turned out many quality Hydraulic Engineers.

How do we now become Plumbers?

ALL TRAINING IS INADEQUATE AS A METHODOLOGY.

Engaging with a violent and aggressive attacker is just about as far away as we can get from how and what we train.

But is it different?

If we revisit my Sifu’s comment that “ it was up to the individual and how well they could transition the knowledge into practice”, this implies that the information is already in the teaching and that once fully understood, there is nothing needed to add, nothing extra to learn.

I agree with this.

Once we see that most martial arts training is about training future teachers and not future fighters, it makes it easy to differentiate between what is an academic explanation and what is a practical methodology. 

But most importantly that they cannot be both.

Once we accept that all of our FORMS are collections of movements and not patterns of movements, and here again, that they cannot be both, we create fertile ground for hybridisation.

Training is inadequate when it comes to dealing with violence.

The difference between violence and training is not a difference of scale; it is not about being quicker or more physical or even more relaxed or more mindful, it is a difference of philosophy.

The difference is the WHY.

Neither is this a difference in identity; we are not trying to measure apples by oranges. Wing Chun is organised or systemic violence, and what the attacker is doing is, at least from our perspective, unorganised or non-systemic violence, but they are both expressions of violence.

A violent encounter is a form of ‘Culture Shock’, and the only way to deal with ‘Culture Shock’ is to accept, adapt and find the middle ground.

Ask any ‘Tradie”, and they will tell you that the answer always contains a level of compromise, that, like it or not, all work is done in the middle ground, which must work here and now while professors get trapped going over old blueprints, locked in their study looking for perfection, rapidly becoming irrelevant.

To be sure the best ‘Tradies” are the ones that know the most and compromise the least, but they still compromise.

Navigating a violent encounter is about capturing the middle ground, about compromise, about mixing what we know to be “RIGHT” with what we think is perhaps simply “NOT RIGHT”.

It becomes a sliding scale between what we know is ‘RIGHT” and what we know “WORKS”.

LEARN THE FORM AND THEN ABANDON IT.

LEARN THE WAY AND THEN ABANDON IT.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIND YOUR OWN FORM.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIND YOUR OWN WAY.

Hey Guys,

Just in case one of the lost children tries to come home this weekend be aware that I will not be here.

Mandy and I are away up the coast so in the meantime keep up your solo training.

One of the down-sides of reposting old videos is the visual proof that the passing years are not being kind.

Stay frosty.

https://videopress.com/v/LnV5bn82?resizeToParent=1&cover=1&autoPlay=0&controls=1&loop=0&muted=0&persistVolume=1&playsinline=0&preloadContent=metadata&sbc&sbpc&sblc&useAverageColor=1