Wing Chun Sydney, Australia

…” WING CHUN DOES NOT TAKE A BACKWARD STEP”…

Bear with me for a moment, guys.

We all invest a fair bit of time and effort into understanding the theoretical aspect of Wing Chun, but time and time again the English language fails us. Because of this, I advise us not to take words and language too seriously, and that we need to think deeply and translate what we are told into a form we understand.

Part of this is the fact that, as my Sifu, a Cantonese-born and raised gentleman would say, Chinese does not translate to English on anything more than a best-guess level.

In many cases of everyday life, this best-guess is close enough for an almost complete understanding, but when we are talking about some pretty abstract, obscure IDEAs, the kind that make up most of Wing Chun thinking, it is the bits that get “Lost in translation” that matter the most.

For example, there is a segment of the Kuen Kuit that is frequently used to frame the Wing Chun approach to engagement; it goes…

…” WING CHUN DOES NOT TAKE A BACKWARD STEP”…

… how do we read this?

Wing Chun has 6 FORMS, of which 5 of them involve some manner of leg movement, and of these, all 5 have a “Backward Step”.

The IDEA that what it implies is relentless forward momentum is, to say the least, unsupported by the practice we spend so much time on.

There will be some people who agree with me and some people who disagree with me, and that is the point; it becomes opinion and not established theory.

As individual students, we are free to have any opinion about the validity or not of any theory, but as teachers, we have some responsibility to get our water from the same well.

I am not blame-free here; I will frequently think that i am simplifying things by saying that the most important things are to stay calm and control the space.

I know exactly what I mean by this, but it leaves a great deal of wiggle room for anyone listening.

How calm do we need to be to achieve staying calm?

On a scale from zero to ten, where zero is as cool as a cucumber and ten is pulling our hair out, where is calm?

Is it a 2, a 4, perhaps even a 6 in some situations?

Do we wish to pin our health and safety on such a wide range of choices?

This is even more pronounced by the word relax; boy, do I dislike that word. Apart from having numerous usages, we also have that range thing going on.

If you are interacting with someone who tells you to relax, are they suggesting that you are working too hard, or are they implying that you are becoming hysterical?

I know that context matters, but when was the last time you thought, “What context should I be measuring this comment by”?

We are emotional creatures, especially when we feel threatened or even just confused.

I intend to do a couple of posts on clarity of message, especially about such areas as being calm, staying relaxed, controlling or even making space; where possible, I will use Chi Sau to demonstrate and explain things so that we can then replicate the lesson and translate the IDEA into something we can individually understand.

Years back, when I did guest demonstrations at other people’s Kung Fu schools, I would start by saying…

… I am thinking of a colour, the colour red, picture it in your mind’s eye.

I am thinking of a sound, the sound of a bell, picture it in your mind’s eye.

I am putting my hand into a bucket of water, warm water, picture it in your mind’s eye.

I would give it a few minutes and then…

I would then show them a patch of a weird shade of red material and ask, “Was it this colour”?

I would show a picture of a bell on a toddler’s trike and ask, “Did you hear this bell”?

I would show a photo of a bucket of water and ask, “What temp is this water”?

VIDEO

“ THE PUNCH YOU DON’T SEE COMING IS THE ONE THAT KNOCKS YOU OUT”, 

In the last two posts, we covered the negative impact of an Adrenalin dump; there are positive aspects to be sure, but as they happen simultaneously and we can only focus on one aspect at a time, let’s stick where we are.

We also observed that it is impossible to react to a surprise attack, a “Sucker Punch” if you wish, for the simple reason that we do not see it.

I know there will be people who disagree with this, to whom I say, “Close your eyes and let me punch you” I will not hold my breath waiting for takers.

But with regards to this point, there are many times in the middle of any fight where people do not see incoming punches; to this end, there is a saying inside of the Boxing community that goes…

…“ The punch you don’t see coming is the one that knocks you out”…

…and no one knows more about punching and being punched than a Boxer.

But it is not just punches; we can watch an M.M.A. Bout where someone gets K.O’d by a kick to the head; how is that even possible if you see it coming? Picking our hands up to face height are always quicker than getting a foot up to head height.

And it is not just combat; people walk into lampposts.

I have taught martial arts for decades, and I understand the need to be positive and develop self-belief. But self-denial is not positivity. 

We all naturally think from a personal perspective; in our own movie it is always us and never them, even when we watch sport.

Think about it, if your favourite sports team is playing a match that does not go there way, do you say “We lost,” or do you say “They won”?

Did I lose the fight, or did he win?

We do ourselves a disservice if we ignore this in our approach to training.

Any decent sports coach focuses more on eliminating faults than on teaching new skills; they know that when we eliminate unforced errors, our chances of success increase. Because when we remove the things that make us lose, the only possible result is a win.

Understanding what “NOT” to do is always a winning strategy, and it is never negative to admit these failings.

Let me pose a choice.

Assuming that we cannot avoid a violent confrontation, which result would you prefer?

1. We exhibit extreme skill and ability,  kicking the living shit out of our attacker but unfortunately take significant damage ourselves.
2. We find a way to nullify the threat with minimal effort and zero damage.

These choices may be the bookends, but they are the only choices.

There is no “RIGHT” answer, only a personal answer; mine is and always has been #2.

In the example I gave where I was “Slapped” out of nowhere, it is easy to see how I set myself up to fail. Once I admitted this, which was not an overnight thing, by the way, I began removing these errors from my thinking.

There is a problem with training, all training, in every style, in that our partner never attacks us; to do so they would be putting themselves in harm’s way. No training partner presses forward the way someone who means you harm does.

We cannot change this; it is a nervous system invoking a survival protocol. As a result, we tend to step in to make up the missing ground, ground that will not be there in reality.

There are two things we need to do to prevent this from becoming a mechanism that will become self-destructive.

1. Accept that this is normal and adjust our mental self-marking: success is never based on hard-hitting a willing partner; who cares if we cannot quite reach them in training?
2. Do not press forward.

The vast majority of people who study “Non-Competitive” martial arts are training to deal with someone picking on us, we will, by nature of the situation,  be reacting to some form of attack, and we will, to some degree, be caught a bit flat-footed when it comes.

Probably not the bookend of a “Sucker Punch”, but beyond doubt its younger brother.

Most of these situations are levelled out by remaining calm, and controling the space; it is only when we achieve this that our training can give us the edge.

Let’s talk about this and find ways to integrate this into our training, starting tonight, and let’s initiate the “Good Bad Guy” protocol.

The best martial arts system in the world fails if we are unconscious, either knocked out or just not paying attention.

OUR ONLY REAL OPTION IS TO WATCH SOMEONE ELSE DO EVERYTHING WRONG AND THEN FORENSICALLY EXAMINE IT.

On Thursday evening, we tried to work on preparing for and dealing with a surprise attack. It soon became obvious that you can only work on dealing with a surprise if you are genuinely surprised, and not just pretending.

As soon as we attempted to create a surprise scenario, our onboard computer tried to cheat. Even when it is completely make-believe, we fail at creating scenarios where we get everything wrong; we unconsciously add in subtle ways to solve or preempt the problem. 

Our only real option is to watch someone else do everything wrong and then forensically examine it.

This is not the problem it may appear because all training is a form of gathering information to be assessed, stored, organised, then retrieved for use further down the line in a different place at a different time, under different circumstances.

All training happens to someone other than the guy in the middle, a different version of ourselves.

The real skill is in how well we transpose the information to serve the current situation.

When we watch others fail, when we have no skin in the game,  we do not try to lean away from telling it like it is, from brutal honesty.

Let me recount a personal experience.

Quite some time back, when I was still in the workforce, a bunch of us took a break to get some fresh air. As is common with workmates, the banter soon became a revolving round of take-downs, everyone was into it and taking shots at each other, including two women in the group.

For some reason, one of the women stopped laughing, and I asked her if there was a problem.

She just looked at me, as I thought she had not heard me, I stepped closer and asked, “Is there a problem”?

Woooshh, she slapped me across the face and stormed off.

The crew found this hilarious and almost peed themselves, I, however, just stood there like a stunned Mullet, frozen, but aware that under different circumstances this would be SOOO BAD.

When asked what had just happened, I genuinely had no idea. I had not seen the slap coming in.

Every day is a school day.

We all know that fear or anxiety can cause an adrenaline dump, but it is so much more than that. Physiologically, anxiety and excitement are remarkably similar. Both activate our sympathetic nervous system, resulting in an Adrenalin dump and resultant fight, flight, or freeze response.

I had an adrenaline dump because I was having a hoot,  I was humouresly excited,

I did not see the slap coming in because I had adrenaline-induced tunnel vision; the slap came from outside of my field of vision, which was not helped at all by my stepping in and shortening the focusing distance.

When we assess any situation, we should look from two specific directions.

1. How could we have stopped that hit from landing?
2. How could we have avoided the situation/position where we got hit?

If we look at my experience, there was simply no way for me to deal with a strike I did not see, and no way for me to see it.

I tried to find a video of a surprise attack on YouTube, but there are none; to be expected because this type of video does not attract advertisers.

There are plenty of videos pretending to show how to deal with one, but if we are honest…..

Direction #2: How could we have avoided the situation/position where we got hit?  This is the work, and it reminds me of the immortal Mr Miagi: “Best defence, don’t be there”.

Seriously, though, anything that can prevent the introduction of Adrenalin into the system is a step in the right direction, as is having more time.

Talking of time, Uncle Albert told us that time and space are different sides of the same coin.

How do we achieve these goals, and how do we integrate them into our information chain?

This is the way!

… training is training, and violence is violence, and ne’re the two shall meet.

Let’s talk about engaging the opponent.

Here is the thing, as far as training goes, that is all anyone can do- talk about it, because there is simply no way we can simulate the emotional and physiological changes that we will experience when facing violence.

This is not a Wing Chun thing, it is not a Kung Fu thing, it is not even a Martial Art writ large thing, it is simply what is…

… training is training, and violence is violence, and ne’re the two shall meet.

In my first 20 years in martial arts, I was involved in combat sports, and even the most robust sparring session pales in comparison to an actual bout for the same reasons.

Variables in our mindset, emotions and physiology.

Every experience of violence is one of a kind, but there is a constant, and that constant is ourselves, and that is where the work needs to be done.

On us being the best us we can be and working hard to maintain it.

Engaging the opponent comes in two flavours, imaginary and real.

The imaginary we can work on, while the real we can only ever experience.

Working on the imaginary is, of course, a mental practice, a thought exercise where we build a scenario and look for possible solutions, which we will then use to direct our physical training.

BUILDING THE SCENARIO.

Are we defending or are we attacking? 

Keep it simple: who throws the first punch and why?

I have helped hundreds of people with their training, and the consensus is that the other guy throws the first punch, often after a heated argument that boils over.

Think about this situation, it does not begin with the conscious thought of engaging in violence, even if it goes south quickly, this was not the aim, in fact, we may not have even started off arguing, just exchanging opinions, so when the violence happens, there will be some measure of surprise.

It is dealing with this surprise that will determine the outcome far more than any Kung Fu training.

What does surprise do?

First up, we have an Adrenalin dump, [the consequences of which are many and varied, so do some research], our heart rate will instantly jump to somewhere north of 200 b.p.m.

This is why this data point is important.

For a deeper dive, check this out, 

This is quite a headful, so I will leave it here for the minute, but it should be obvious that if we are surprised, we may not get over it.

On the brighter side, if we do not get surprised and can turn the tables on our attacker, you can bet the house that he will be surprised.

More to come, stay frosty.

THIS CREATES A DIFFERENT APPROACH, WHICH CREATES A DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDING.

How well we perform any act is never a reflection of the level of our training; rather, it is a direct representation of the level of our understanding. 

The last post was the first instalment of a packet of information that, if delivered in one shot, would more than likely miss the target, if you did not read the last post, read it before this, then take a break and read this when the dust has settled.

If we digest the content of these two posts before Thursday evening training, it will leave more disk space, more R.A.M. and more processing power for the work we will do on the night.

Previous post.

We want to get the thinking done before training because we will be hitting things throughout training.

To our missing brethren, if you are thinking of coming back to training, even if it is just for a catch-up, this would be the week to choose.

What is a ‘Theoretical Physicist’?

Very few people, myself included, have a deep understanding of what they are, what they do, and how they do it, most of us ask ourselves, ‘Do they just make shit up out of thin air’?

This is a tricky one to answer for a layman, while they do make shit up, it is not out of thin air, they make shit up from an atmosphere that is thick and deep with well-established and accepted facts.

And what they come up with, these new IDEAS or CONCEPTS are constructed from elements of that atmosphere and are measured against that atmosphere.

Before they can come up with something new, they must know and understand everything old.

As Carl Sagan humorously pointed out “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”. 

 When we are only ‘THINKING’, we need to build a solid environment in which the thing we are thinking about exists, even if we only build it in our heads.

How does that relate to this thing we do?

Like it or not, we need a complete and concise understanding of the physical nature of the environment before we can approach the non-physical aspects of that same environment.

This is the bit that all students, and I do mean ALL STUDENTS, because, at one point in time, everyone that became involved with Wing Chun was that guy, get the wrong IDEA.

The environment we need to understand is not the physical aspect of Wing Chun, and therefore, the non-physical aspect becomes the non-physical aspect of  Wing Chun.

The environment we need to understand is VIOLENCE.

To a very large degree, Wing Chun is the non-physical aspect of violence.

The reason statements like this can be a bit difficult to deal with is usually because we approach them with the wrong Mindset.

The most important thing to understand about Mindset is that different Mindsets bring about different patterns of thinking, IDEAS that make perfect sense in one Mindset makes no sense at all if we adopt a different Mindset.

Thinking that Wing Chun is a fighting style creates a different Mindset than thinking Wing Chun is a Self-defence system.

This creates a different approach, which brings with it a different understanding.

The work is the same, but the goal, and frequently the results, are very different.

HOW WE FEEL CHANGES WHAT WE THINK.

WHAT WE THINK CHANGES HOW WE FEEL.

THEY BOTH CHANGE HOW WE ACT.

What message are we sending ourselves if we are trying to engage an opponent at medium to long-distance?

Hi Guys, and visitors.

This coming Thursday i want to go over the place of kicking in Wing Chun and the place of kicking in a self-defence situation.

This post is a few years old but it does the job I want it to do, and in accordance with Wing Chun’s Principal of “Economy of Movement” it is easier than writing a new post.

As you guys all know I believe that the most important attribute for a Martial Artist is honesty.

So honestly…

…does kicking have a genuine place in a Close – Quarter Combat style such as Wing Chun?

Let me clarify this when I say kicking I am talking about using our leg or foot as a primary attack weapon.

My teacher, Jim Fung {Chuen Keung} was an astonishing kicker and I witnessed some spectacular demos of his ability over the 17 years I trained under him, refer to the picture above to get some idea.

The thing is that kicks like the one above are, by my Sifu’s own admission, NOT Wing Chun.

He did them for the show, to attract more business because it was the type of thing new students wanted, and he always wanted new students.

Kung Fu Movie stuff.

But he was good at it.

Without starting a ‘Bun Fight’ over what is or is not Wing Chun kicking, because it really does not matter in the bigger picture, only results matter, surviving street violence is not an Olympic sport, no one is keeping score or awarding points.

However, if we claim to be doing Wing Chun then we should train Wing Chun.

Because ultimately it is not about Wing Chun kicking, it is about understanding the thinking behind Wing Chun kicking.

Those elusive ‘CONCEPTS’, that ‘Little IDEA”.

If, as we all repeatedly say, Wing Chun is a Concept Driven Fist Fighting style {KUEN} our theatre of operations is, at most, where we play Chi Sau, touching distance.

What message are we sending ourselves if we are training to engage an opponent at medium to long-distance?

I have always believed that Wing Chun is a ‘clever’ Martial Art, so let us take a clever approach to {sic} ‘Kicking’.

The video below was originally intended as the intro to a larger discussion on the merits of kicking, but I think that it is a good enough thought exercise to be viewed as stand-alone information, as a primer for the bigger picture of what is to come regarding how Wing Chun people use their legs in a violent situation.

As always, Y.M.M.V.

WHEN IT COMES TO ASS-KICKING, BE SURE IT AINT YOURS.

Even when all the ammo is gone, a rifle becomes a club and a pistol a hammer.

This post is still about Wing Chun and us.

 Things to keep in mind, and relevant to ourselves, are that all Militaries in the world teach unarmed combat, and that, in my opinion, the Navy and Air Force represent our legs, and the Infantry represents our hands.

Sometimes taking a very “Big Picture” view can really help us with the small details.

Before the creation of any Martial Art of any shade, there was a bunch of guys with no training looking to do no good.

This minor detail is important; it is beneficial if all the guys fighting together fight the same way, to the same end. The specifics are slightly different for different environments, but at its core, it is all the same.

This is the genesis of ‘Basic Training’, and initially, this is all there was: pick up a sword, swing it like this and off you go.

War was the ground troops/infantry of one country vs. the ground troops/infantry of another country.

And often they would march miles and months to do this.

The first really big leap forward was when someone put troops on boats to get them further faster and arrive in better shape, and keep the supply lines open.

And as Naval warfare evolved, soften up the enemy troops in advance of the Infantry/Marines landing.

As awesome and terrifying a thing that Navies have evolved into, this is still the most valuable asset in a war, to put “Boots on the ground” and keep them supported.

Legs and Hands people.

The advent of the Airoplane, for all intents and purposes, put the Navy into the Air and did the same job.

Think of WW2, despite all the bombing runs, it was the ability to drop thousands of Paratroopers /ground troops deep behind the front lines that brought Germany to its knees.

And of course, the airdrops, open supply lines meant never running out of ammo or food, which after all is what did poor old Rommel in down in North Africa.

Bringing it back to “Legs and Hands”, as powerful and varied as kicks may be, their job is to keep our bum off the floor and set up the final attack from the hands.

Killer kicks that can be seen, stopped, or even worse yet, countered, are a bit like dropping bombs on our own men.

We will cover this in training this week.

Back to big picture stuff.

Wars are fought by large groups of men with basic training and a couple of basic weapons, a rifle, a pistol and a knife, for instance.

We could think of this as our generic ‘Bad Guy’.

As the war continues and evolves, the training uses small adaptations or improvements of the basics to reflect the changing situation; no one learns two sets of methodology.

As the groups get smaller,  the training becomes more specific, and the weapons get more numerous, the smallest groups would be ‘Special Forces’, five or six-man teams that are highly trained in many disciplines, very heavily armed, usually the team will have at there disposal an underbarrel rocket launcher, machine guns, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, various pistols and hand grenades, knives, axes, garrots, and some secret agent shit.

And yes, they are trained and capable of killing unarmed, but why would they? 

We will get to this in a minute because this is us.

Firstly, take a minute to think about this: has there ever been a war, or even just a battle, even just a skirmish, where everyone was unarmed?

Was there ever in history a siege where the defenders did not take up anything and everything as a weapon, even olive oil and human feces?

Has anyone heard of any pirates leaping from ship to ship with nothing in their hands except perhaps their dicks?

No one in any man’s army ever goes on an active combat mission alone or unarmed, so why is any soldier/warrior trained in empty-hand fighting?

Even when all the ammo is gone, a rifle becomes a club and a pistol a hammer.

Why ‘Empty Hands’?

Because everything has gone to shit.

They have lost their mates, lost their weapons, support is not coming, and they are more than likely deep in Indian Country.

This is where we need to think like true soldiers/warriors.

If we are unarmed, it is about survival and escape, not domination and definitely not winning.

And if we are behind enemy lines, in deep shit and on our own, we cannot afford to be nice or take prisoners.

The takeaway from all of this, and what we will work from, is, as amazing as our kicks may be, they are only there to support our hand work, defence or attack.

Also, the ‘Empty Hand’ martial arts styles are for getting out of trouble quickly, decisively, and effectively without any hesitation; it’s not fighting.

Hoping to achieve relaxation by thinking about relaxing is just an “Are we there yet” moment.

I have just finished an interesting solo with Saleh, like all of us before him, he does not quite realise his own skill level, that’s OK. After all, once we develop it, the skill is there whether we know it or not.

A question we all ask from time to time is “will this work out there”?

Why won’t it?

If we spend a minute to think about this, what we are really asking is “will I be able to behave ‘OUT THERE’ the same way as I do in here, so it is never about our skill level.

It is about learned behaviour, about composure and control.

The paradox of training for composure.

This is a bit of a brain twister and may need to be read more than once, if we are actively training for Composure then at that moment we are not composed, {if we are composed why are we trying to achieve it}and as such we have already failed and have zero chance of success because we have tricked ourselves into thinking that maintaining this state of non-composure will somehow lead to being composed.

If this does not make sense re-read it until it does.

Just like being relaxed, being composed is an end-state and not something we can engage in.

We become composed or relaxed due to other actions which, due to how we use language, especially English, appear to deal with the opposite condition.

Until we get this we will think that everything we are being told or asked to do is completely backwards from achieving the end state and find it difficult to engage in.

This can and often does bring about a level of cognitive dissonance.

We all know by now that if we are not mentally involved in the action we are doing we will struggle to get the outcome we are after.

Relaxation is the result of releasing, or at the least diminishing tension, as counterintuitive as it sounds, if we are not mentally connected to, and thinking about tension we will not become relaxed.  How can we release tension if we are not thinking about tension?

Hoping to achieve relaxation by thinking about relaxing is just an “Are we there yet” moment.

We need to build the correct mental architecture for the condition we wish to be in, which in this instance is composure.

As a starting point, it should be a given that we would only work on being composed if we think we are not composed.  DUH!

If we are thinking of being composed we will automatically measure our present state against our desired state, and no matter how close we are to our desired end-state not being there will create stress, which will just eat up whatever composure we have at that moment.

Here is where everything sounds backwards, If we are in a dangerous situation the only way we can remain composed is to not think about the danger we are facing, and the only way we can do that is to think about something else.

It is a bit like ‘Fight Club’.  The first rule of ‘Fight Club’ is not to talk about ‘Fight Club”.

Training for composure is Multi-tasking, it is about doing one thing and being completely involved with that thing, with the ‘intention’ of achieving something else, while also doing sometimes many other things.

This is not as weird as it sounds, there are many ways we do this every day, we do it when we are driving, for instance, and we do it when walking through the crowded city shopping district window shopping.

We fail because we are trying to turn these subconscious actions into conscious actions.

We need to think backwards, we need ‘Fight Club’ thinking.

The first rule of training for composure is that we cannot think about composure.

If you can unscramble this egg, it will make the work so much easier.