'Things I should have learned about WC in a year but didnt.'

[tjwingchun]

Hmmm, seems a timeout is in order.

Nothing irritates me more than seeing complaints about posts the day I get back from a trip.

Complaint?

Thai Bri is just crap at typing!

To Troll Virus it was meant to be

"Your arse & licking knob"

Just a friendly external NHB practice they have going

[tjwingchun]

That's cool on a few levels.
Firstly, correct me if I'm wrong, but you personally distinguish between those who are looking for what you offer, and those who won't get it.
That's beautifully honest.

Many years ago ( I keep using that phrase as I am always precise but at my age and with my attention span it is difficult to be exact about an event that happened over 15 years ago! Does 15+= many? there lies another question, lol).

Anyway I digress,as I am wont to do, an Asian lad walked in through the door, (He should have tried opening it first, ) and inquired for private lessons as he wanted to learn quickly and told me of his reasoning.

Some years previous his brother had been beaten up by a couple of local racist types, and he promised to his brother that he would take revenge on them before he got married, the wedding was just months away so he wanted to learn quickly so that he could fulfill his word! And he was willing to pay whatever to achieve that goal.

I advised him three ways, buy a baseball bat and wait around a corner for those responsible and administer his punishment, or save the money he was prepared to give me for private lessons and pay to get the job done professionally, then finally the other option was to grow up and get over it!

Don't know how it ended as I never saw him again.

My whole Wing Chun career has been based on honestly and being as truthful as possible, ask as question and I will give you the best answer I can. It is how I live my life also, I have nothing to hide and if I am going to teach, how can I be anything else?

Again, you seem to break from the norm, as WC is deemed to be heavily stylised and pattern/programming based.

I teach the form that way but application has to be reality led, understanding how you apply what you have learned from the forms, via chi sau and entry techniques creates the depth of knowledge which allows you to respond to a variety of situations rather than class set-ups.

Here, we part ways somewhat perhaps (or perhaps not)?
To me, even while training specifics, it's important that an individual is still being creative, rather than simply allowing themselves to be programmed.
Phrases like 'muscle memory' do my box in.


I used to drive up to 500 miles a day, often not realising all the actions I took decisions on because they were immemorable, rather than autonomous or sub-conscious.

Are you telling me your clutch and gear changing is always conscious rather than subconscious?

Relevant to the topic, I respect the honesty there.
I've never seen it that way myself, but obviously, others do.
For me, you are only as good as you are 'that day' and arts, seminars attended, time, belts, certificates & experience etc count for zip.

As with any aspect in life, I will be corrected if I am wrong but was it not 'Fun Boy Three' who said "It ain't what you say, it's the way that you do it" lol.

Prior to my next assault....

I'd just like to say that it's been a pleasure so far.

I would say the pleasure is all mine but Thai Bri might get jealous

[Troll Virus]

Anyway I digress,as I am wont to do, an Asian lad walked in through the door, (He should have tried opening it first, ) and inquired for private lessons as he wanted to learn quickly and told me of his reasoning.

Some years previous his brother had been beaten up by a couple of local racist types, and he promised to his brother that he would take revenge on them before he got married, the wedding was just months away so he wanted to learn quickly so that he could fulfill his word! And he was willing to pay whatever to achieve that goal.

I advised him three ways, buy a baseball bat and wait around a corner for those responsible and administer his punishment, or save the money he was prepared to give me for private lessons and pay to get the job done professionally, then finally the other option was to grow up and get over it!

Don't know how it ended as I never saw him again.

This is the thing though, people turn to styles/systems etc looking for rapid results.
Bite sized peices of martial property, they can buy and add to rest of the clutter on their shelves.

My whole Wing Chun career has been based on honestly and being as truthful as possible, ask as question and I will give you the best answer I can. It is how I live my life also, I have nothing to hide and if I am going to teach, how can I be anything else?

Always best to admit when you don't know something.
Even better to promise that you'll find out.

Are you telling me your clutch and gear changing is always conscious rather than subconscious?

Let me put it to you another way.
Lets say I drive 150 miles and remember nothing of the journey.
Was every mirror check, signal, change of speed, change of gear, change of lane etc sub-conscious?

[tjwingchun]

Always best to admit when you don't know something.
Even better to promise that you'll find out.

Let me put it to you another way.
Lets say I drive 150 miles and remember nothing of the journey.
Was every mirror check, signal, change of speed, change of gear, change of lane etc sub-conscious?

When I first started teaching professionally I did not know the full system but I was honest with my students and they knew that I was doing the 500 mile round trip to Blackpool every weekend to train with Sifu and therefore whatever I learned they would eventually get as well.

I don't know everything about Wing Chun I think I have hinted about the fact that it is a subject too large to be an 'expert' in it all, and as in science there are always 'specialists', I don't speak Chinese, I don't know that much about the history, just the usual Ng Mui/Yim Wing Chun tale.

What I have concentrated on over the years is the body mechanics of application, how they can be identified in the forms, isolated and investigated in chi sau and then via entry techniques how they can be used practically in real fight situations.

The subconscious/conscious debate gets confusing as you are right in thinking that you make conscious decisions to the events that you meet on the road and make conscious decisions to change in relation to the circumstances but the co-ordination of actions is subconscious, you don't think right foot off accelerator, left foot on clutch, left hand on gear stick, etc etc, the process of changing once the conscious decision to change has been made becomes subconscious.

Its splitting hairs but I am a pedantic bastard and deal with split second decision making and the ability to apply relevant 'learned responses' without thinking that gives your conscious mind the time to come up with a more precise solution to the specific situation you find yourself in.

[Thai Bri]

http://www.defend.net/deluxeforums/showthread.php?t=21818

Haw haw haw!!!!

[tjwingchun]

what's that thread all about, mindless drivel

[Troll Virus]

The subconscious/conscious debate gets confusing as you are right in thinking that you make conscious decisions to the events that you meet on the road and make conscious decisions to change in relation to the circumstances but the co-ordination of actions is subconscious, you don't think right foot off accelerator, left foot on clutch, left hand on gear stick, etc etc, the process of changing once the conscious decision to change has been made becomes subconscious.

It's an intense subject.
One easily dismissed by those who would argue for 'nurture' over 'nature'
Too often, skills and ability are perceived to be things that you can buy or consume, regardless of natural ability or availability.
Hence, you have judgements on 'time frame'.
e.g. I paid for a year, and I didn't get my moneys worth.

Its splitting hairs but I am a pedantic bastard and deal with split second decision making and the ability to apply relevant 'learned responses' without thinking that gives your conscious mind the time to come up with a more precise solution to the specific situation you find yourself in.

Live in the details.

Couple of fun things to experiment with;
Take meter stick.
Suspend it with the end just between a students thumb and index finger.
Maintaining eye contact, release the stick.
You could measure their response time imperial or metric.

Now blindfold the student, but allow them contact with the stick with either thumb or index finger.
Compare results.

I know you don't need to do this, as you know which will be more significant.

It's like what you mentioned with Blind fold Chi Sau (should it be any other way?)
When the creative side of the brain gets involved, it can go horribly wrong.
To me, the object is senitivity, and the patterns, rhythmn, pop combinations are often detrimental to that.

All that, just to suggest playing hands.

[Tom Yum]

ok

I believe the art could be effective; some of the master instructors can hit extremely quick. Seems like the strikes are aimed at soft targets. Add to that some good elbow and knee strikes. All it takes is one, maybe two solid strikes and the guy that was standing in front of you is staggering onto the ground.

WC gets a bad rap for the same reason karate point sparring does; the training methods.

Wingchun could be adapted to sports compeition. Striking would have to be done with fists - low kicks, trapping and kneeing would be perfectly legit.

Why doesn't someone take it to a competitive level? Its the artist not the art that makes most fighters - allbeit simpler arts can be used more readily in a short-training time.

Sure the style may not be designed for competition, but if it can stand up against an olympic TKD fighter, decent amateur muay thai fighter or even a giant brawler it would be taken more seriously.

[tjwingchun]

It's an intense subject.
One easily dismissed by those who would argue for 'nurture' over 'nature'
Too often, skills and ability are perceived to be things that you can buy or consume, regardless of natural ability or availability.
Hence, you have judgements on 'time frame'.
e.g. I paid for a year, and I didn't get my moneys worth.

I was having this discussion just the other week, it is one of those repetitive arguments, well repetitive for me as the subject keeps coming up with different students, my life at times seems like a scene from "Groundhog Day", lol.

Apart from the 30+ years training in Wing Chun there are three other aspects to my physical and psychological development that are relevant in my mind.

RUGBY, TABLE TENNIS and DISCO DANCING!!!!

I suppose I had better illiuminate as quickly as possible before your minds are distracted with hideous visions of me wielding a bat on a pitch to the tune of "Everybody was Kung Fu fighting", lol.

From playing rugby I learned quite a few things, contact collisions, avoidance, angled attacks and having to stop a meat head twice your size trying to run through you when you cannot run away!

Table tennis is a good hand/eye co-ordination exercise understanding precise directional energies, and most important, AT SPEED.

Disco dancing at Uni when I was younger and dafter (others would say I have not changed at all, just older lol.) gave me a lot of awareness training of my legs, I would pratice leg techniques, kicks, spins, turns etc, while leaping around making a prat of myself!

I also play cricket, snooker/pool and darts.

Back to my point though, looking at my personal history I can identify positive influences that have helped my Wing Chun development, rugby, the rough and tumble of real contact and collisions, table tennis developed/honed hand speed and co-ordination, dancing I think had a profound effect on my understanding of legs and movement.

Now how do I bring that all together to create a training program for my students, do I organise rugby/table tennis competitions then go out nightclubbing after and maybe have a few drunken fights to round the training off to test the practical skills that have been learned.

Or do I recognise what are my personal skills and identify what are relevant to my Wing Chun and try to devise schemes of practice that entail similar developmental properties?

Maybe if I was teaching professional fighters, who were training with me 7 days a week, it might be of value to do such a thing, I remember around 20 years ago a TV show that had an American football team during their off season training and they had Dan Inosanto showing them JKD, not for any other reason but for keeping their minds focussed on learning something new, in the past they had done ballroom dancing, anything NOT football related, so that they could relax and not get bogged down with continual football theory and practice, to keep them fresh for the start of the next season.

Usually the average MA practitioner will train 1-2 times a week, for 1-2 hours at a time, as an instructor I must be aware of the time limitations for development that this sets and organise the training to cover not just the Wing Chun skills that I had been taught by Sifu, but also to include the extra-curricular awareness that I deem important, however to include them within the Wing Chun forms and syllabus rather than additional outside practice.

Easy job this teaching thing, tee hee.

Live in the details.

It's how I live my life

Couple of fun things to experiment with;
Take meter stick.
Suspend it with the end just between a students thumb and index finger.
Maintaining eye contact, release the stick.
You could measure their response time imperial or metric.

Now blindfold the student, but allow them contact with the stick with either thumb or index finger.
Compare results.

I know you don't need to do this, as you know which will be more significant.

It's like the old trick using a new banknote, saying that the volunteer can have the note if they can catch it.

What it demonstrates is basic reaction time, and the difference between fast nerves and slow ones.

Reflex speed as opposed to thnking speed.

The guideline that I refer to is what I term "the 1/10 of a second rule", I picked this up from Olympic/International Athletics!

1/10 of a second is the time that the IAA say that it takes for a sprinter to react to a starting pistol, anything less than that and it is deemed a false start, so from the gun going off to the pressure sensors in the blocks detecting a reaction, anything less than 1/10 of a second is "jumping the gun".

What that tells me is that if I can do a technique within a 1/10 sec. there is nothing anybody can do about it in response.

This subject really is a topic for a whole new thread as it covers real fighting, chi sau training and application and the big question about when a fight starts and when you should begin hitting!

It's like what you mentioned with Blind fold Chi Sau (should it be any other way?)
When the creative side of the brain gets involved, it can go horribly wrong.
To me, the object is senitivity, and the patterns, rhythmn, pop combinations are often detrimental to that.

All that, just to suggest playing hands.

Rhythm methods do not work, they make people into parents,

[tjwingchun]

I believe the art could be effective; some of the master instructors can hit extremely quick. Seems like the strikes are aimed at soft targets. Add to that some good elbow and knee strikes. All it takes is one, maybe two solid strikes and the guy that was standing in front of you is staggering onto the ground.

I have no arguments with you at all, as mentioned in last post all you need to do is to able to deliver an in-range, non-telegraphed strike within 1/10 sec and it will land.

I teach hitting with the whole of the body, even with what would be classed as a jab (a la Jack Dempsey), from a 10" distance I break 3X1" boards (without pulling back), yes I know they don't hit back, but it indicates that there is power available at short range and fast, I am very elbow orientated as far as awareness is concerned for several reasons, both defence and offence.

WC gets a bad rap for the same reason karate point sparring does; the training methods.

Wing Chun has the bad rep for the number of McDojos, even when Wing Chun is done crap, people with experience, fast hands and big egos, can intimidate beginners who just walk in through the door, they are only found out by the students once the student has acquired enough knowledge to see that it does not work, that is if they have the intelligence or the will to question the instructor, but their money is already spent!

However the McDojo types have been exposed by the growth of NHB and now hide behind their lethal capabilities, striving to keep their heads above the sea of shite their arrogance has created around them.

Wingchun could be adapted to sports compeition. Striking would have to be done with fists - low kicks, trapping and kneeing would be perfectly legit.

Easily adapted with minimal change, just takes specific training to specific rules and just not using high intensity violent threat level reponses, the sort of techniques I relate to drunken teenagers, rather than drugged up psychopaths.

Why doesn't someone take it to a competitive level? Its the artist not the art that makes most fighters - allbeit simpler arts can be used more readily in a short-training time.

www.alanorr.com Alan has the set up for competitive NHB and two of my students have joined his camp and I am sure there will be a growth of more such clubs and hence an increase in the presence of Wing Chun in NHB events.

Sure the style may not be designed for competition, but if it can stand up against an olympic TKD fighter, decent amateur muay thai fighter or even a giant brawler it would be taken more seriously.

Again you are right but I refer back to the previous paragrah, it's not rocket science, it's fighting and if, as Wing Chun people we are going to join into the wider discussion I agree we must be seen and not just heard.

For my part I am a bit past the competing stage, though I have been seriously thinking about it. Even at 47 years old with a knackered back and creaking joints, I am tempted to have a go, but more realistically I am starting an informational website and via that opening up the opportunity to educate at least theoretically, about Wing Chun fighting techniques, stategies and methods that could be taken on by anybody in the NHB game, not just Wing Chun.

[Sagacious Lu]

Sagacious Lu asked
Why are the simpler things taught last? Wouldn't it make more sense to teach the simplist things first? IMHO the simple techniques are usually the most effective.

The problem is it takes years to realise the 'simple' stuff is simple and the other problem is that you still need the traditional methods because they have value for specific development,

This lofty business of lessons learned over the years is great and all, but you're dodging the real question. You said:

...but up against seasoned streetfighters or martial artists a beginner with less than 2-3 years tend not to have the knowledge of body mechanics to generate power from the floor and put full bodyweight behind a strike to make it decisive.

Which is absurd. I can't think of much that's simpler or more basic than throwing a good hard punch. Once I was shown how to throw a punch it took me about 10 minutes of hitting a bag to realize that I could hit harder by using my legs and hips. After a couple of weeks the motion felt comfortable and natural to me, and it was obvious from the way the bag moved when I hit it that I was hitting A LOT harder than I used to. It didn't take 2-3 years, it was more like 2-3 weeks. So I repeat the question I asked on page 2:

Why would it take all that time just to learn basic striking mechanics

[Tom Yum]

First proper thread but will carry on the stance theme started by Thai Bri in my 'introduction'.

Most peoples idea of a Wing Chun stance is from stupid people trying to use the stances from the forms to fight with rather than the knowledge that they give you if you investigate them properly.

Stances from the first 2 forms are there simply to make you aware of your legs, develop strength and balence, in the third it is more flexible for real use.

To understand you legs takes time, hence many think of Chum Kiu as the most difficult form to learn as it introduces you to how you arms work together with the rest of the body and links the hand to the ground via the stances and the generation of energy through the various muscle groups.

The 'Skippy' hop stance that you see in many schools especially used along with chain punching is the most destructive practice routine for power development.

Simplifying each aspect of stepping and how it is being used allows you to involve it into everthing you do in Wing Chun.

Thai Bri I see the dropping step in the first and last section of Chum Kiu also linked to the uppercut in Biu Gee, but I will put more details in the next post.

Chain punching I only use as an exercise not an application, (though it can be effective against unskilled fighters), similar to the speed ball training in boxing which I respect and understand now through the Dempsey book.

So what you're saying, in a round-about manner, is that choice of training methods improves the combat application of traditional arts.

Drop the stuff that doesn't work and refine the stuff that does, right?

[Tom Yum]

Which is absurd. I can't think of much that's simpler or more basic than throwing a good hard punch. Once I was shown how to throw a punch it took me about 10 minutes of hitting a bag to realize that I could hit harder by using my legs and hips.

Its a different school of thought.

If you learn to throw a solid boxing type punch, you can damage whatever you hit; whether you are a 148 lbs or 248 lbs. Its simple; its effective and quick to employ.

If you learn to throw certain kinds of strikes from the traditional arts, the power comes from using a hard part of the body to strike a soft target or making someone move into a strike. By themselves, most of these strikes may not be impressive.

Let's say someone grabs you off guard and agressively pulls you in so they can toss you around, you get pulled off balance and off your power base but on the way in, their nose can still run into the crown of your head (assuming their taller) or their groin can still run into the knife-edge of your hand.

Thinking back to UFC 8 or around that time, Mark Hall (a highly ranked TMA black belt) fought a sumo-wrestler brawler type. Sumo guy gets ahold of Hall and something like the above happens. Sumo guy's nose is all over the place; Big John stepped in to stop the fight due to blood loss.

[Sagacious Lu]

Its a different school of thought.

If you learn to throw a solid boxing type punch, you can damage whatever you hit; whether you are a 148 lbs or 248 lbs. Its simple; its effective and quick to employ.

If you learn to throw certain kinds of strikes from the traditional arts, the power comes from using a hard part of the body to strike a soft target or making someone move into a strike. By themselves, most of these strikes may not be impressive.

I don't think it's a different school of thought, I think it's just nonsense. I've practiced a lot of different strikes in the past, including (but not limited to) hammer fists, elbows, back fists, back of the wrist, and knees as well as a variety of kicks. Some strikes hit harder than others, some are only effective against specific targets, and some are (IMHO) just a bad idea. Regardless, if you're at all athletic and train regularly it shouldn't take long to learn how hit hard- remember, I may box now but I learned how hit hard in a kung fu school. It's not kung fu that I have a problem with, it's this bullshit about it taking years to learn how to throw a competent strike.

[Tom Yum]

Regardless, if you're at all athletic and train regularly it shouldn't take long to learn how hit hard- remember, I may box now but I learned how hit hard in a kung fu school. It's not kung fu that I have a problem with, it's this bullshit about it taking years to learn how to throw a competent strike.

I agree.

It doesn't take years to learn to hit hard.