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.

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