Tag: kung-fu

FIST LOGIC

3 BAGS OF CONCRETE.

The "D" Man

If this is the case, which it could be, I would recommend immediately activating the “Nike Defence”, you know, run like hell.

Hi Guys,

You may wonder about the title of this piece and its relevance to self-defence, and believe me, it is relevant.

It stems from a conversation I held with our senior students Sam and Costas about the desire to develop more power, or simply put, ‘hitting harder’.

We have all noticed that lately there is a preponderance of videos on YouTube to this end, “How to hit harder”.

My position on this is that for Wing Chun students this type of video is not only of no value but holds the potential to undo all of our good work, let me try to explain.

The essence of Wing Chun, and many other “Soft Style” Martial Arts, is that we develop hitting power by naturally transferring “Body Mass” into a single point of our body and then onto a single point of a chosen target, not by physically trying to impart force by making a “Big Hit”.

No one in my Martial Arts community is lighter than 60kg, as you all know I have always only taught adults. Here in Australia, a bag of pre-mixed concrete is 20 kg, so anyone that weighs 60 kg has the equivalent “Body Mass” of 3 bags of Concrete.

If we think that a 60kg guy cannot naturally hit hard enough, we are saying that dropping 3 bags of concrete onto an opponent will not get the job done?

If this is the case, which it could be, I would recommend immediately activating the “Nike Defence”, you know, run like hell.

Hitting someone shares the same science as any collision, and as such the force created is the sum of both forces involved, so if we are 60kg and the Bad Guy is 80kg {Bullies tend to be bigger than their chosen target}, the impact created will be the summation of both forces and closer to 140kg.

Which is of course 7 bags of concrete.

How is that not enough?

And again if that is the case, and it could be, here for sure, we use the Nike Defence.

To fully cover this topic we need to bring in some different concepts, which can end up in a bloated and somewhat confusing video, so I will break it down into smaller, bite-sized chunks.

This video is essentially just an intro.

Despite this there is a way for a 60kg person to drop 120kg onto an opponent without any extra training, yes you get it, hit them twice.

Which to me sounds a lot like what we train to do.

FIST LOGIC

SIMULTANEOUS ATTACK AND DEFENCE, what is it?

The "D" Man

It is highly unlikely that the Bad Guy has a plan, so any plan we have is a step up from them.

The video footage with this post is of the senior guys working on developing an understanding of the ‘Concept’ of Simultaneous Attack and Defence.

Apart from ‘Simplicity’, it is this concept that is paramount to functionality.

The body text of this post is another way of ‘EXPLORING’ the ‘BIG PICTURE”.

Wing Chun, in its purest representation, has no techniques, no patterns, and no set strategies, to non Wing Chun people this is its biggest weakness, but to those of us that understand…

             … it is its greatest strength.

But like so much of Wing Chun’s Fist Logic, this is so counter intuitive that very few students give it enough time to sink in.

The above statement does not mean that we go in eyes closed and Brain on pause, it is more that we care little about what the Bad Guy wants to do, and focus mainly on what we want to do.

To start this thought experiment let’s open with two questions.

Q. 1.  Why is it that highly skilled, highly trained martial artists with many years of experience get their asses handed to them by “Punks in Pubs”?

Q. 2.  Why is it that completely untrained people can be so effective when it comes to fighting?

The majority of non-competetive martial artists tend to overthink the situation, underestimate their own ability, and go way to soft with their opening , while untrained people just do not know enough to be worried and so go in full bore without fear of reply.

The default position for Wing Chun is that we are being attacked, as a result we are always starting in second place, so we cannot afford to hesitate when it comes to ‘Go Time’, we need clear plan, and we need to implement it with extreme prejudice.

Now you may ask “How can we have a clear plan if we do not know what is happening”?

And that would appear to be a fair question, except we do know what is happening, we are being fronted by someone that wishes to hurt us, and we also have a plan, counter-attacking using simultaneous attack and defence.

This may sound like a vague even half baked plan, but it is enough.

Something many people struggle to understand is that no plan ever works, whatever we plan to do will need to be changed, on the fly, so we can go in with anything, and the simpler that anything is the better.

It is highly unlikely that the Bad Guy has a plan, so any plan we have is a step up from them.

If we have set ourselves up correctly, physically, mentally, and emotionally, our attackers options are far fewer than they think, and even though we may think we are starting in second place, if we have a correct Wing Chun set up, such as CRAZY HORSE, we are pretty much in pole position. 

I cannot express strongly enough how important our state of mind is when we are navigating a violent situation.

Something to be wary of is if we loose our ability to think on our feet we will rapidly become overwhelmed.

If we become overwhelmed we will at the very least hesitate, quite possibly just shut down, no more movement, then it is curtains.

If being overwhelmed prevents us from moving, then the reverse should also be true, that moving will prevent being overwhelmed.

A positive state of mind and a clear plan of action, and free and easay movement is all that is required to prevent ourselves being overwhelmed.

This is what our training should be focused on and what we want it to provide.

OVERTHINKING: THE ART OF CREATING PROBLEMS OUT OF SOMETHING THAT WAS NEVER THERE.

BATMAN.

WHAT KIND OF DAY IS IT?
FIST LOGIC

WING CHUN, PHILOSOPHY, AND DAOIST ALCHEMY.

The "D" Man

quote

Hey Guys,

After training on Saturday, I asked the question of us all…

 ‘Why was it that the most talented of Kung Fu Masters came from either the Buddhist Shaolin Temple or the Taoist retreat of  “Wudang Mountain”?

This connection has for hundreds of years been pounced upon by the Right Wing, New-Age Charlatans claiming that Martial Arts leads us to the light.

That meditation and spirituality, not effort and conditioning, deserve to be regarded as the true secret to effective Kung Fu, and why it is so suited to the higher man as opposed to the thug.

That it is not about violence.

This has always been the selling point, even back in the time of ip Man.

Initially, it was an attempt to clean up the image of Kung Fu in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion.

But soon, as it sadly is today, it became a con to deceive unfit, physically challenged, lazy people into thinking that progress comes from good thoughts and relaxation, not, as is the actual way, through commitment and toil.

One thing that greatly aided the Monks and the Hermits to become highly capable was an abundance of time in which to train, and the inescapable fact that in their society if you could not effectively defend yourself you were soon eaten up by those lower men who coveted everything you owned, and cared not how they got their hands on it.

The Bandits ran amok through the Pearl River Delta.

Need does what needs must, even for Holy Men.

If we could put ourselves in the shoes of the Shaolin Monks, or, especially with regards to Wing Chun, the  Wudang Mountain Ascetics, there was obviously something besides just time to train that helped them excel.

Every action in their lives was an action that only dealt with the immediacy of the moment they were in.

In Wudang Taoism in particular, the essence of everything they did was mental focus and deliberation on the ‘WAY’.

This was reflected equally in everything they did and was not somehow specific to their Kung Fu as some would infer.

This adherence to the “WAY” is usually described as Taoist Alchemy.

But what we in this modern time think of as Alchemy, which has been so vilified by the world’s religions that it is considered to be a type of ‘Black Magic’ was not anything like what the Taoist Ascetics thought of themselves.

They were simply seekers of knowledge,  seekers after the truth of what they saw around themselves, Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Which of course included their Kung Fu.

It was not so much that they were trying to learn Kung Fu fighting, but rather trying to understand this thing they did on the deepest possible level, as just another method to follow ‘the Way’ even in the most chaotic moments and situations.

In many ways the physical aspect of Kung Fu fighting was not part of the process at all, it was just a way to engage with the subject of the study.

And this is very much mirrored in Wing Chun.

Wing Chun is about how to think about fighting, which has the happy result of us becoming extremely proficient at it.

Because there was never the pursuit of the fighting skill there is not a finishing point as such, there is never a moment where we can say. 

I am a Master.

There is always more.

Or at least the potential for more.

Those now referred to as Alchemists would have thought of themselves as Philosophers involved in understanding the Natural World, which all men are part of.

Natural Philosopher was the term in use before the coining of the term Scientist.

Plato was an Alchemist, and Pythagoras was an Alchemist.

The Church of Rome claimed that Leonardo De Vinci was an Alchemist and condemned him to death for his thinking.

Alchemical thinking is not anti-religion but it is accused of this by every religion.

We all harbor personal biases, that were planted into us at a very young age, which may make it tricky to engage with this IDEA, the IDEA of understanding the thinking of Alchemists as a way to understand Wing Chun, but it was this thinking that created it.

The thinking of the Alchemists was just that, thinking, it was never intended or envisioned as a replacement belief system

Anything we do intending to improve ourselves is the core of what we call Hermetic Alchemy.

Once we know the moves of Wing Chun this is the only way forward.


“The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.”

THE KYBALION.

THE WAY THAT CAN BE SPOKEN OF……