Category: VIDEO

 

Although the area I live in was a ‘COVID Hot Spot’ for a while there are no active cases anywhere near the Studio so training is as safe as it ever was

 

This pandemic is 6 months old and no signs of vanishing, how often do we hear “The new normal” is what we are experiencing and we need to get used to it.

Way back at the beginning of the ‘Lockdown’ I had great intentions of posting at least one video a week to help all of us in the club, myself included’, keep our mojo active, I did not quite do that, I tried and came close, but not good enough.

Getting our routine back means different things for different people but at its heart, it is the same thing, the same challenge…

“How do we get today to look a much like way back then as I can”?

We have all invested time, energy and money into our pursuit of Wing Chun excellence, we train to be able to defend ourselves and our loved ones against any or all attackers, only to be beaten by a bug.

Although the area I live in was a ‘COVID Hot Spot’ for a while there are no active cases anywhere near the Studio so training is as safe as it ever was, perhaps safer now that we all take precautions.

In an attempt to help you all {my fellow INCas} resume your own routine I will endeavour to resume mine and post a training help video every week, if there is any particular aspect that you would like covered just ping me, this blog is our Club’s after all, your blog as much as mine.

Stay Healthy, stay frosty.

 

 

TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESS’

PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTH.

 

 

 it is we will have to work with when the ‘Brown gets Airbourne’.

I am posting this video not to have a dig at the gentleman involved, but rather to shine a light into a dark corner.

I first put it up on my Clubs Facebook page, I know that a good many senior Wing Chun people, even Instructors with their own schools visit this page so I was hoping to start a genuine conversation.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Only one Instructor approached it critically and serious by firstly pointing out that the guy was way out of his depth just by being in the ring.

Gdonya Snowy!!!

Apart from that, it was the usual drivel.

I have one friend, who is also an Instructor, who claimed…

“I just get so bored by these videos”

…which is such a ‘sad and sorry’ thing to say.

How can anyone be “So Bored” by something that validates everything that we say and claim about Wing Chun, something that clearly shows what can happen when you cannot access the intelligence of our Fist Logic, something that on so many levels proves us right when we tell the haters to ‘go eat a dick’.

His comment was, to be expected, followed up with the default Wing Chun position of “Wing Chun is not intended for use in the Ring or Cage”!

Such a mountain of Bullshit it made my eyes water.

Watch some of Bas Rutten Pancrase fights {the forerunner of today’s M.M.A. but with fewer rules} where he just ‘Bitch Slaps’ the shit out of his opponents.

How does a “Bitch Slap” become more fit for purpose than the whole of Wing Chun?

If what you do can transfer force and deliver pain it is well and truly fit for purpose in the Ring or Cage.

But there is something in the Wing Chun Universe that is not fit for purpose in the Ring or Cage, and that, of course, is most of the worlds Wing Chun players, including “Yours Truly”!

Most of us are not fit enough, not fast enough, not robust enough and have little if any of the attitude it takes to engage someone ‘Mano e Mano’.

Why pretend otherwise?

We should embrace this and structure our expectations accordingly because…

“it is what it is’!

And it is we will have to work with when the ‘Brown gets Airbourne’.

Just before the “Lockdown”, I organised a sparring session with a local Karate School, I worked with my guys for about a month on how to spar with someone other than a fellow W.C. guy, what to look out for against a Karate player, how to use what they knew, how to use the things I had shown them, we worked hard and we were as prepared as we could have been.

When my guys started sparring there was no Wing Chun or at least none that I recognised.

At first, they would not believe me, but in the debrief they realised I was speaking the truth, but I was still really proud of them, they did as well if not better than I expected.

Been there, done that!

When I was a young boxer my coach would ask me after a fight “why did you not use what worked on for so long”?

I always thought that I had and that he was just a hard arse.

Go figure.

When we watch these videos, and we should, we should watch them all and watch them many times, we should give our Martial Arts cousin well deserved respect, understand that he is our equal, a fellow Priest of Mars kneeling at the same altar, dancing the same dance, singing the same song.

“Do we really think that this is what he trained for”?

“Do we really believe that this is what he wanted to do”?

We should not just slag the shit out of him, like ourselves he is digging a deep and lonely furrow.

One thing I think about this particular W.C. Master to some of the other W.C. Masters that found themselves in the same place is that this man took it to his opponent, he gave it ‘as good go as he could’, I just think that he was overwhelmed by the experience lack of ring experience, global video audience and all that crazy stuff and not necessarily the fight itself.

 

 

IF WE ARE HONEST WE CAN LEARN SO MUCH FROM THIS VIDEO.

 

The commentary in this video is spot on in places, he talks about the Wing Chun Man losing his shape in the clinch, as we all know the final move in Biu Gee, the 3 Bows to Buddha, would not only get him back into a good shape but help him to a position that he could easily have won from.

As a Master level Tactician, he would surely know this, but that is the thing, knowing may be good, but doing is better..

Would we fare any better?

Personally, I do not think so, I would imagine that he will watch this video and weep.

We should approach these videos with respect and understanding.

If we are honest there is much we can learn from them.

All of these guys must have thought that they had a chance, why be involved if not, I also expect that they trained hard to get ready for the fight, harder than most Wing Chun Hobbyist does.

Which means they would be better prepared at that time than we are right here right now if we went out and got in strife.

This could so easily be us, so what should we be working on to do our best to not be ‘that Guy’?

 

FIST LOGIC.

 

 

WHEN YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, THINGS ARE JUST THE WAY THEY ARE.  .

 

In our post COVID world, we are still more involved in the mental aspects of our training than the usual physical aspects, there is a lot more to be gained from this type of training if we know what to look for.

On Saturday the senior guys and I spent some time working on a video to expand on why what we do is not what we think it is.

How the learning objective of the things we are doing is not the things we are doing themselves and as such how the things we do are of little if any practical value.

How the fact that nothing we do will work if we try to use it and why this is not even the slightest of problems.

However, it was 6 days before my 67th birthday and I appear to have had a ‘seniors moment’ and forgot to press the record button.

This video is a preamble to the next video.

 

 

This line of thinking brings me back to one of my favourite maxims…

 

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

WHEN YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, THINGS ARE JUST THE WAY THEY ARE.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is all Wing Chun and all inter-related.

 

Going forwards in the short to medium term will be very challenging for the collective Martial Arts community, not just Wing Chun, with such a major disruption to training some students will simply not return.

Especially when we consider that a situation could easily arise were by Schools will be forced to deny training to their students due to the number of restrictions.

Visitors will be out of the question.

Many M.A. Schools run more as a labour of love than a business, overheads are high and returns are low so the requirements of greatly restricted numbers will be a severe test for many schools.

Rent will become a real threat to existence and the shortage of available extra evenings will be crippling.

Here at Wing Chun Sydney, we train in the Studio at the rear of my home, I am my Landlord, that gives me much greater flexibility than many of my colleagues, I can easily open up on additional days if needs be.

For our community to get through this upcoming test as best we can the keyword needs to be FLEXIBILITY.

I have always run an open door here, people are welcome as a casual that visits once or twice a year or a semi-regular that turns up every couple of weeks so to a large extent I am capable of being lineage agnostic.

The type of training we are used to will be on hold for some weeks perhaps even months, direct physical contact will be very limited.

Things like Chi Sau and Hand Drills will be sidelined, most training will be focused on Pad work and the Forms, especially the Knives {Baat Cham Dao} and the Pole {Lok Dim Boon Kwan} which I am happy to teach to any person of any level of training.

It is all Wing Chun and all inter-related.

 

If you find yourself in a difficult position, perhaps just want some guidance or small help so that you have things to work on at home until things return to normal consider having a one on one lesson with me.

Better still if you have a friend or three in the same position let me put together a program just for you and your friends at a day and time of your choosing covering exactly what you want to work on.

During the immediate post COVID period, until normality resumes, I am reducing the cost of private training to $40.00 per session so that everyone can at least stay in touch with what we do.

Stay healthy.

 

TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESS.

WORK TO YOUR STRENGTH.

STAY FROSTY.

 

 

 

when we lay ‘Hands-On’ we should be looking to begin a conversation.

 

I have pretty much finished the refit of the Studio so that when we can resume training we have plenty of space to work with, we now have over 30 square meters of ‘training area’, more than enough for 8 people at any one time still abiding by social distancing guidelines.

There is still no firm date on when we can resume but the rumblings from Macquarie Street have me anticipating it being before July so I wanted to get something out there for you guys.

Trying to do a solo video about the Dummy is really challenging and confusing, it is not possible to simply talk about any sort of ‘Hands-On’ training,  but in this instance, it gets convoluted because the Dummy is not really about putting ‘Hands-On’.

If we approach it from a ‘Hands-On’ perspective we are going astray, despite it being a ‘Hands-On’ training device it is still solo Training,  it is all about ‘Input’ and not ‘Output’ try not to see it like physical training but connect along the lines of mental training.

More than any other aspect of our training, even Chi Sau, the work we do on the Dummy has no direct practical application to fighting.

A situation arose in my training on the Dummy where I realised that half of what we do is incorrect by our own ‘Fist Logic’, our own philosophy and the other half was so impractical it was of very little value.

As a Martial Artist first and a Wing Chun student second this was a great cause of concern for me.

I would go to my Sifu and ask if I was doing the ‘Form’ correctly because it did not appear to make much sense and he would say “yes that is correct”.

On one occasion after voicing a negative opinion of the value of the Dummy he said to me “perhaps you are asking it the wrong questions”.

This comment stuck with me and I thought about it many times in many different ways, once when using a mind map I found myself wondering about the act of questioning itself.

When we ask our Sifu or a senior student a question we expect an answer that will illuminate the situation and help us progress, but if we ask a training partner we are usually looking to start a conversation that can help us see things from a different perspective, the Dummy is a training partner and not a teacher, when we lay ‘Hands-On’ we should be looking to begin a conversation.

 

 

If you are wondering why my Dummy is so high, my students that are presently working on the dummy are all about 30mm taller than me, it is easier for me to work with a bigger Wooden Man that it is for them to work with a smaller Wooden Man, the joys of being an Instructor.

 

WORK ON YOUR WEAKNESS’

PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTH.

 

 

My own thinking is that he included the Pole Form as a counter-point to his empty hand system, to establish context.

 

Why is there a long-range tool in a close quarter combat system?

Is it truly part of the Wing Chun System?

If so. Where does the Long Pole fit into the Wing Chun system?

Is it still relevant?

Was it ever relevant?

If we look at the historical record as to why “Empty Hand” fighting styles appeared, it is not as is often indicated that an autocratic regime banned the carrying and use of weapons, although this has happened on several occasions through history.

Early empty hand systems were developed to assist a warrior that had for some reason become unarmed to firstly protect themselves, then secondly stay in the fight by defeating and then taking an enemies weapon.

The armed and unarmed systems would be complementary but not necessarily integrated, or even remotely connected.

Jujutsu was the empty hand fighting style developed for Samurai Warriors that had been knocked off or fell off their Horse or found themselves unarmed in a nasty situation.

These days nobody seriously considers the Katana and the Wakizashi to be Jujutsu weapons but there was a time when Kenjutsu and Jujutsu walked hand in hand.

If we consider the situation in Southern China in the early to mid-1800s, when Wing Chun as we now know it was formalised by Dr Leung Jan, it was in the grip of the most vicious civil war our planet has witnessed.

The Taiping or Red Turban Rebellion.

As late in history as this was many of the rebel soldiers still fought with Spears or some kind of Pole Weapon, it is easy to imagine that these fighters would welcome a simple and effective hand fighting style.

But why would Dr Leung Jan add the Long Pole to his new system?

The Knives I can almost understand, they connect to the empty hands work on certain levels, but the Pole needs to be forced to even look like it belongs.

It is estimated that as many as 30, Million people died in the Taiping Rebellion, many would have been local rebel militia armed with Poles and Knives going up against trained soldiers with muskets.

Dr Leung Jan must have been aware of the impracticality of the Pole as a weapon.

We will never know.

My own thinking is that he included the Pole Form as a counter-point to his empty hand system, to establish context.

If the Wing Chun weapons were ever genuine fighting weapons or not is a mute question, in our time and our society using a weapon, even for self-defence is illegal and likely to make matters much worse.

The most important attribute for a Martial Artist to develop is not speed, it is not power, it is not balance or co-ordination it is HONESTY.

So let’s be honest, if we seriously need a weapon are we going to choose a Pole?

If we did choose a Pole would we choose a Pole that was tapered?

And if we chose a tapered Pole would we choose to hit the Bad Guy with the thin end?

A Pole can be looked at as a very long Baseball Bat, which end of a Baseball Bat would you use and why?

 

 

 

We can however still benefit from the Knives and Pole by paying close attention to the footwork and the challenges the Forms bring to staying in balance and remaining in a neutral state while working with loaded arms.

 

 

ON WEAPONS AND DANCING.

Bake in the U.K. during the 1970s I had friends that were involved in historical re-enactment activities, during most of this time I moved from ‘city to city’ because of my work and these groups gave me a touchstone to quickly make new friends.

Especially the Sealed Knot group the I became acquainted with from spending 3 years in Windsor.

Many were active soldiers and many did martial arts as well so it also helped me find training partners.

Although the training I did with these re-enactment groups was 100% theatrical, a bit like the Red Boat Opera, their desire to be as correct as possible meant that there was a premium placed on doing things that were accurate to how things were done at that period.

A time capsule.

As non-combative as this was, it was clear how deadly some of these techniques would have been, how weapons that may appear clumsy, like a Pike, in the right hands became unstoppable.

The Pike is a formidable weapon and a very real weapon.

The Lok Dim Boon Quan is a “Dancing Stick”.

But it teaches a great dance.

Turn the music up.

 

WORK ON YOUR WEAKNESS’.

PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTH.