See it, feel it, do it

On May 24th of 2010, I had the opportunity to attend Sifu Ralph’s bonus outdoor Victoria Day class at WT Vancouver.

What more could I ask for? The warm shy sun sneaking out from behind the clouds, a slight cool Vancouver breeze, a fun and knowledgeable teacher, a helpful training partner… okay, enough extravagant compliments by moi!

The worst part of the morning though? After a quick 90 minutes, class was dismissed!

So, which secret deadly technique did I gain this time in Vancouver? Sure I can tell you all about our training of the intense jum sau, smooth gwat sau, viscious fak sau, go-crazy-on-you-sau, etc., but what would you really gain from a few short paragraphs about these techniques that need to be physically practiced?

This blog post is about Secret Deadly Technique #147: Visualization

In sports, you may have heard about the mental aspect of training being as equally or even more important than the physical aspect of training. But does this apply to WT?

I’m no sports psychologist, but just here to tell you what I learned and gained from a simple comment by Sifu Ralph when talking about a fak sau strike: “… like a heavy weight.”

Have you ever swung one of those hammers at a carnival? (or in Canada: PNE, CNE, Calgary Stampede… eh?)



I found that visualizing the forearm (from the elbow downwards) as a “heavy weight” helped adjust any inefficient tension in the forearm, wrists and hands, so that the shoulders, back, and body could do a lot more of the work.

So how do we become a heavy weight as a whole? Some examples:
- drop our shoulders
- fire our pecs, lats, back muscles
- tighten our abs
- bend our knees
- etc.
- in other words, sink our whole body

This is just one scenario to imagine. We can visualize anything of course.

Visualize …
- … the energy traveling from your ankles up the pathway of your body all the way to your fists
- … punching right through your opponent
- … whatever else you need to help your training

Here’s a photo to help visualize the great bunch of WT Vancouver that made it out to the Victoria Day bonus class (thanks to Sifu Ralph for the photo).



Happy training!

Next up…
Drills and training strategies