Last week at a training group session I noticed that someone had leg Protectors in their Bag, they did not get them out but it does prompt me to Blog this.
I am against any type of Protectors {Mouth Guards excepted} in training, this is not because I am so tough I do not need them, but because as far as I am concerned they promote an environment of unreality, I have expressed my opinion many times that we gain confidence in the functional ability of Wing Chun more from the perspective of the Bad Guy that does not successfully land his strikes or find any way through our Training Partners Wing Chun set up than by being the Good Guy that stops our partner who may just be throwing Half Arsed generic attacks. Pads prevent you from realising that it is painful to make contact with Good Structure, that this contact can be debilitating and actually take away any chance of a good follow up to the present attack, and this can work at deep levels upon you to stop you having the confidence to offer “Structure” instead of “Strength” in your defence.
From the perspective of a Wing Chun Man attacking a padded Partner, when our Partner can just keep throwing Punches and Kicks without stopping due to injury it can lead to us to believe that we do not have enough “Fire Power’ and this again can lead to the use of Strength and loss of belief in our Wing Chun. I also believe that it takes a far greater amount of “Be Here Now” to strike softly than it does to just go off, and a great big piece of our Relaxation is in the “Be Here Now” and in not loosing our Emotions / Head.
Lastly, it is only training, do we really need to hurt each other?
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