Self Defence is not Fighting!

When I am teaching my Students it becomes very clear that many do not see that there is a huge difference between Self Defence and Fighting, most think that the two are the same. Self Defence should be a method used to get out of a violent Situation as quickly as possible and as such should always, always include and escape strategy, usually the "Nike Defence". Fighting is a lot more complicated and is usually more about Ego and Dominance than escape. Fighting is a contest between two or more individuals that by definition needs to have a result, Win or Loose. Self Defence needs an outcome, Survival. This becomes very obvious when Students start adding flourishes and extra little tweaks to a Scenario than they where instructed, they start using Techniques that they think have more "Visibility and Social Credibility" than direct shots that just do the Job and go largely unnoticed.  If someone Lunges at me with a Punch, and I have the chance to side step him, push him to the floor and then make of in Great Haste {the Nike Defence}, then this should be the choice, and not choosing to try to off load all my favourite techniques, and join in Battle. Self Defence is about survival, not about becoming Jackie Chan. And fights are very Dynamic and have a will of their own than cannot be controlled, the longer you are involved in a fight the more chance there is that you will come second.

Become a Hunter, look for a way to not alert the Prey, look for a way to finish the event before the other guy knows that it has started and then depart.  And not a Fighter that will hang around trying for a result instead of leaving.

Wing Chun Kung Fu and Fitness

One of the main Idea's in Wing Chun is to not use "Brute Force" and to not have any Muscular Tension, so bearing this in Mind where does Fitness and Exercise fit in? As Human beings we operate at a much higher level if we are in good condition, if all the "Bits" work correctly, but most exercise regimes that use Strength improvement actually create continuos Muscular Tension so on Paper they may be detrimental to our advancement in Wing Chun. There is nothing inherently negative with any form of exercise or even weight training in respect of Wing Chun, where the problem does arise is where individuals partake of these regimes for reasons of changing their Body, changing their natural Strength / Fitness, and sadly this is the Western Idea of using Weights or of working out in general.

 Get Bigger! Get Faster!

And it is this that will wreck your Wing Chun, if you use your training regime in "Maintenance" mode it can only benefit everything you do in Life, but how many People are really interested in keeping things the way they are? When I run classes and I bring some stretching exercises in just about everyone tries to stretch their muscles to just under breaking, it goes with the old adage "No Pain - No Gain" and this was only ever an advertising gimmick not genuine fitness advice, we know much more these Days and so we should think "Some Pain - No Brain", if your exercises leave you feeling like you have been "Beaten Up" then you more than likely have been.

For most Martial Arts what we really need is to improve our Mobility and our Balance, and not to try to build Lumps.

Not Using Strength

I know from Years of Teaching that Students get confused about the whole "Do not use Strength" idea, firstly we should realise that it should be described as "Do not use too much Physical Strength" because we all use Strength, using a Strong Structure is in fact still using Strength, just like a strong Focus, so we need to separate Physical Strength, also we all know that if we do not use some Physical Strength then we will not be able to move at all, we will always use a certain percentage of Physical Strength but our aim should be to use less and less Physical Strength as we continue on our Wing Chun Journey, there are a number of reasons for not using Physical Strength, but the most important is that using Physical Strength activates your Muscles, and an activated Muscle does not work as well as a Relaxed Muscle, so using Strength prevents our Muscles from doing the job that we want them to do, and ironically that is the reason we tense our Muscles in the first place, to do a Job that we believe needs Strength, we just tend to use way too much to get the Job done. When we strive to remove the use of Physical Strength what we are trying to do is find out the minimum amount of Strength needed to perform whatever it is we are attempting, this is usually a great deal less than we are willing to believe and so we spend Years and Years taking away a bit at a time.
And then there are some people that immediately stop using all Strength and then they have nothing to defend themselves with, if your Arms have no Structure, and no Natural Strength then they will just become Spaghetti, and if you try to defend your self against someone with Spaghetti Arms they will just have you for Dinner. We must never forget the Wing Chun has a specific task to undertake, to stop us being Hit, deep down we all know this of course and this is one of the reasons we have difficulty taking Physical Strength out of our Arms and our Wing Chun.
The best way to begin to reduce Strength without loosing the ability to keep the Dogs at Bay is to pick one exercise that you are willing to do every time you train for at least the next Year and consciously use less and less Strength / Effort, it is only when you do the same exercise that you can tell if you are really reducing the Strength. The biggest trap and the worst practice is to use Strength in Chi Sau, because Chi Sau is in contact with another Person it is a bit more "Real" than other training and is more affected by your nerves, if you are mentally tense when doing Chi Sau this will result in Physical Tension that will prevent your Muscles from working efficiently and cause you to use Strength. It is really, really important that you do not hit each other in Chi Sau, just Roll.

Wearing Protection when training!!

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?

Simultaneous Attack and Defence in Chi Sau

Following on from the last post, do we use or can we find Simultaneous Attack and Defence in our Chi Sau practice? Lately we have been having a closer look at Chi Sau and Chum Kiu especially focusing on the Concept of the "Spinning Ball" for defensive duties and the "Spinning Cone", or "Witches Hat" for attacking duties, but what about Simultaneous A & D? Sometimes we forget that Chi Sau is nothing more than a Drill, a dynamic environment in which we can explore and try out the things that the various Forms show us, and that it is up to us to look for our training in Chi Sau and not just be shown "Moves". If the "Spinning Ball is defensive and the "Spinning Cone" is attacking then Simultaneous A&D must contain both. In Chi Sau the first part of the Taan Sau / Bong Sau rotation is the Man Sau or  Searching Hand, when intercepted this redirects the force away by turning into Bong Sau, but if it is not intercepted it continues forwards to strike, while this is happening we are applying pressure through our Fook Sau to our Partners attempt to roll from Bong to a striking position, at this point we are utilising the concept of "Simultaneous Attack and Defence", if we think the situation is open to perform the Basic Fook Sau Latch it is usually here, and of course any other Gwoh Sau application is also using Simultaneous A&D. Often advances in understanding come from simply looking closely at what you are doing, observing your actions and reactions to the dynamic exchanges that make up Chi Sau and then doing them deliberately when the chance allows.

Simultaneous Attack and Defence

I was involved in a discussion on this on another site and thought that I would post this here as well, "Simultaneous Attack and Defence" is one of the underlying attributes of Wing Chun, does it mean that we Strike and Defend at the same time? No it does not, sometimes it will be the case but most likely not, sometimes we will Strike before we Defend, what we do is begin the Process of "Simultaneous Attack and Defence" at the same time, what lands first will be determined more by the position and action of the opponent than by our design.

Knowledge, where does it come from?

I had a group of my more senior charges at my home over the weekend, we were going over some work on Chum Kiu and Gwoh Sau {crossing Hands, trapping}, it is really easy to teach intelligent people that actually want to learn, somewhere in the middle of the Day I suddenly thought to myself "how and when did I amass this knowledge"? I have not had much guidance since my Sifu passed away 3 years ago but I have moved forward and improved quite noticeably, and I feel confident in saying this, so it must at least be almost true.
Sometimes when you keep trying to learn new things you just loose some of the old things, I doubt that I know anymore today than I did the last time I spoke to my Sifu, but by continually trying to pass on his teaching through my own teaching I am beginning to understand it and make it my own, I still have a great deal to learn I know that, but I am happy with where my knowledge is at this time.
After my Sifu's passing there was a lot of negative talk about us not being given all the relevant information, in hindsight my Sifu was very frugal with information but if you asked a question he would answer it, happily I asked lots of questions, recently my Sifu's own Sifu had his book translated into English, I awaited its arrival with great excitement, I have read it a few times already and there is nothing in it that I was not told at least once by my Sifu, this is a cause of great Joy to me.  Even today when I make new connections, find new ways to understand my Wing Chun it is all based on the seed that my Sifu planted, and always will be.