Friday 19 October 2012

Robot wars

Think you've mastered lap sau by the time you get to intermedate classes? You haven't.
When you start rolling with guys who have been training for many years you realise that your technique is loose.
I can see that my strikes are not always perfect centre and sometimes my bong is collapsing. This is especially true at speed. I hadn't noticed when rolling with beginners because their technique was equally loose. When you do it with experienced students, though, their consistency of shapes highlights the inconsistency of your own.
The same goes for chi sau and, by extension, everything else you do in wing chun.
Experienced students can replicate the same shape over and over again with amazing precision.
Roll with advanced students, especially those who have been training seriously for 10 years or more, and it's like trainng with a robot.


Ask these guys to throw a bong forward 100 times in a row and they will do it almost identically every time. How do they do that?
I think the answer is simple repetition. Do it over and over and over again and your muscle memory will be so strong that your body will be pre-programmed.

I had to take a week off from training recently so I decided to try to use any spare time I had to make myself more robotic. I knew my tan was weak so I practised the bong-tan move 50 times a day. When I went back to chi sau the next week, it had made a significant difference. It made me realise that practising the form is incredibly important.

Make your form robotic and all of your shapes will be consistent. I'm going to go and run through it a few times now...   

Wednesday 5 September 2012

Nerve endings

I'm not someone who lets nerves get the better of them. At least not often. I do get nervous, of course, it's just that I feel the sensation in my stomach, or a slight tremble in my hands, and then do whatever the activity is that is causing it - public speaking, asking a girl out, a job interview - anyway.



As I was going my grading last week, though, I was affected more than I'm used to. It was because the physical manifestation of nerves - the shakes, butterflies, a squeaky voice - can usually be overcome with a deep breath and a cough. And once you begin speaking, you forget your fear and your confidence grows.

But at the grading, it was control of the body that was being assessed. So the nerves causing my limbs to shake were actually causing me to perform less efficiently than I do when nobody is watching. Usually I can chain punch, side punch, arrow step and first form to my heart's content. But usually, I haven't got Sifu watching every move I make and writing things down as he does so.

As I was chain punching, I could see my fists needed to be higher but as I tried to correct, I could tell my form was suffering. I side punch really fast usually, knowing to whip the hand bac faster than it goes out. At the grading, I was slower and less fluid. I know my stance needs to be wider - I've been working on it - but it was still a little narrow on the day because I was concentrating on so many things and forgot to make a point of moving my feet further apart. I do the first form most days with my elbows the correct distance from my body. At the grading, they were too close and I knew it.

I passed the grading - and with a good mark. The second highest in the class. The thing is, I know I could have done it better because, usually, I do all of those things better. I felt the nerves and I was affected by them.

It used to amuse me when athletes went through their little routines whether it be Rafa Nadal lining up his water bottles, long jumpers rocking back and forth while spreading their fingers, Linford Christie always being the last one down in the blocks or basketball players touching hands with all of their teammates every time they hot or missed a free throw. I put it down to habit or superstition.

Now I see that they will do anything they can to rid themselves of nerves. Concentrating on something as trivial as lining up labels seems insignificant but it is vital mental preparation if it helps you to relax.

I'm going to work really hard on emptying my mind while doing the first form in the hope that whenever I do it, whether before kung fu or anything else in life (it might look a bit weird in a bar before I ask a girl out mind), it removes the nerves and allows me to perform as if nobody was watching.

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Tuesday 21 August 2012

Dangerous . . . to myself

There will be a grading in a few weeks and I’m hoping to move from beginner to intermediate standard. Sifu says this will make me dangerous rather than just a danger to myself, as I am now. I hope this becomes the case as I think right now, I’m in a vulnerable position when it comes to fighting. At this point I have a lot more confidence when it comes to confrontation but I’m pretty sure my skill would fail me if it came down to it. If some big snotter started swinging at me, my first thoughts would be ducking, covering up like a boxer and running – just like it would be pre-kung fu. That’s because when it comes to the wing chun simultaneous intercept and attacks, there’s still a pause in my brain as it tries to work it all out. It’s only a short pause but it’s plenty long enough for the other bloke to land a haymaker while I’m thinking about it.


This week we did a drill simulating three attacks and set patterns to combat them. It’s the first time we have trained like this as, although common in other martial arts, it’s not a favoured way of training in wing chun as we don’t rely on patterns such as those I’m about to describe. We rely on shapes that can be used fluidly. Sifu wanted us to try this, though, as it was to train the process of recognising what type of attack was coming – the three we used were a straight punch, low swinging punch and a high haymaker, initially in that order but then jumbled up by our training partners. I was able to recognise the attacks well which was the idea of the drill. However, I did become frustrated when we started adding our own attacks

The drill would go something like this: Straight punch comes in – tan sau and punch, cover arm and punch, cover arm and chop. Low punch comes in – gan sau and punch, cover and back fist, chain punch. High haymaker comes in– high gan sau and punch, chop, cover arm and chop, low punch to the ribs.

Mine, though, would be like this: Straight punch comes in – tan sau and punch, think, cover arm and punch, think, cover arm and chop, and so on.

I’m hoping what intermediate level will bring to me will be the removal of those think pauses. Beginner has taught me the basic shapes and footwork so my strikes and blocks are okay. I don’t have to think about them too much now. I hope intermediate will teach me the intercepts and attacks to the point when it becomes automatic, too.

Right now, it’s not and that’s why I’m a danger to myself. With that bit of extra confidence that comes with martial arts training, if the big guy swing for me I might surprise myself and get a gan in the way. Seeing the way it opened him up, I could probably hit him back, too. Then, though, I would pause. Then I would get whalloped.


Thursday 16 August 2012

Why am I here?

When I signed the membership forms for my class, there was a section headed: ‘Why do you want to study Wing Chun.’ I scribbed down ‘fitness and self defence’ which, Sifu later told me, is pretty much what everyone writes. ‘There’s so much more to training than that,’ he said. Eight months in, I know what he means. If I was signing up today, I would write down just one word – focus.

Wing Chun is excellent for building strength and fitness and for defending yourself. But what I get most out of it is the ability to switch off to everything else I’ve got going on – work, relationships, money – and focus on one thing. That one thing is the training and it occupies my mind for the duration of the class and for hours afterwards. I can’t think of anything that I have to concentrate on so intently as I do with kung fu. I’m not in to meditation but I understand the idea to be relaxation by emptying your mind, often starting by concentrating on your breathing. Wing Chun relaxes my mind as I concentrate on my movements and the movements of the person in front of me, nothing else.


I concentrate hard because I have to. At 32, it’s rare to be taking up something completely new. Trying out a new sport cannot be compared to it if, like me, you are sporty already. Let’s take handball - I’ve never played it but I reckon you could stick me in a game right now, outline the rules and I wouldn’t disgrace myself. Because, you see, I play football so I can run and see passes and I used to play a lot of basketball and a bit of rugby so I can throw and catch. I’ve never played baseball either but I’ve swung a cricket bat and a tennis racket on countless occasions so I’m pretty confident of giving a ball a whack, even if the thing I’m hitting it with is a different shape. I know I’m simplifying but the point is, no sport involving running, throwing, kicking, catching or hitting is alien to me.

Kung fu, on the other hand, is different to everything else I know. I’m learning it from a starting point of zero and it put me off taking it up for a while because it frustrates me not to be good at something.
Now, though, I wish I had taken it up years ago because that lack of pre-knowledge and filling in that blank has been so rewarding. Many martial arts have a strong spiritual element to them. Wing Chun, however, is an art developed purely as a means of fighting. That’s one of the reasons I chose it because I didn’t think I needed any spiritual guidance. I thought I needed something for fitness and self defence. Being a complete novice, though, has forced me to empty my mind by concentrating on the art. It has given me focus and that, I suppose, is a spiritual thing.

www.twitter.com/PapermanDan