Monday, September 21, 2009

The Basics

This post stems from a Point #2 from a recent post by Sifu Ralph at http://www.realisticselfdefense.net/blog/index.blog?from=20090920

Bruce Lee was obsessed about the length of a fight – even if it lasted minutes or seconds, it was always much too long.

Now, imagine if you could finish a fight without any fancy obscure secret technique from Biu Tze or Wooden Dummy or whatever. Would you like to finish a fight with: a) 10 moves, b) 1 move, or c) 0 moves?

Option c) would be great, giving us the least amount of potential contact time with any bone-jarring fists or kicks. Sometimes a fight can be avoided with verbal de-escalation.

But that might not always work, so you might be left with option a) or b). Any votes for b)? 1 punch. 1 kick. Or 1 “universal solution”, something you may have heard of before from WT. In an uncontrolled adrenaline-rushed state, that 1 move might be followed by a flurry of more attacks.

Now how does this relate to training? Back to the basics. This applies to any sport, line of work, etc. In CPR, as frantic as the situation could be, it’s always “back to the basic ABCs” (airway, breathing, and circulation). In WT training, there’s always time for chain punching, and Siu Nim Tao totally evolves as you go.

I’m not going to try and Chi Sau my opponent to death using part A of the lost section 17, sub-section 8. Oh I am human after all, and have feelings of jealousy and selfishness at times. I do like learning new things, but as long as I don’t become only a collector of techniques. I’d love to be able to have a solid punch stemming from a grounded root, which comes from training the basics often. After all, most if not all of the “techniques” stem from a temporarily inhibited attack.


Saturday, September 5, 2009

Speed Kills

Speed during martial arts training can be counter-productive. Huh? Isn’t it better to be faster? Besides that, doesn’t it look cool? What I mean here is uncontrolled speed without structure when learning new techniques.

(Gasp, I said techniques! We don’t learn techniques in WT, you say. We learn concepts! Yes, we do, but at the beginning we still need to learn movements and techniques, before one day transcending into a pure flurry of formless form… if you want to be philosophical about it.)

Back to the topic at hand: speed kills. When learning a new technique, it is easy to become impatient and want to train faster and faster and faster. However, if you’ve noticed, when the pace is turned up with an unfamiliar body movement, everything begins to break down. The wrong muscles begin to compensate for the lack of correct structure behind the movement. And basically, you can be lifted off your feet, or pummeled into the ground, your choice.

What is speed without structure? I would say that the best thing to do is to start out slow, and understand where your power is being generated from. Only then can you even begin thinking about increasing the speed of training, making sure that you still have your whole weight behind the technique. This way, the technique can be built upon until one day, it can happen with speed. (By the way, I would say that speed is just one dimension that is not necessarily required all the time.)

You can flail all you want at the opponent, but then it turns into the so-called “patty-cake” WT that people talk about, and rightly so. But imagine if you can just place your antennae arms outward and control your opponent right from the start. Knowing that there is meaning and oomph behind your “technique”.

So, let’s go back to even the basic movements, and work slowly at it to find out: what pressures you feel, where the power comes from, when you start moving, and why you are moving, etc.


Slow down!