If I were to learn a martial art for self-defense...

I have been attending a teaching course, the most recent one being about effective presentation skills. One of the recent assignments was to do a 10 minute talk on a topic of our choice.

I decided to do a talk about Wing Tsun Kung Fu. It was a combination of powerpoint slides to outline the history of WT, a short demo of the four principles of combat and strength, and a worksheet/handout.

One of the pre-presentation questions on the worksheet was to complete the following sentence:

If I were to learn a martial art for self-defense, I would want it to be...

These were the answers from the group:
- non strength dependent
- easy to learn
- proven effectiveness
- non-violent
- easy to apply

And also a footnote: *in an unfit person

Does your training fit with this small survey of answers?

Happy training!

Non-coding Wing Tsun

We have millions of base pairs of DNA, yet only 22,000 genes or so from so-called coding DNA. The rest of the DNA? Initially termed "junk" non-coding DNA by some.

We may not yet understand the function of this DNA yet, thereby calling it junk. Some researchers have looked into the splicing characteristics of these regions of DNA, magnifying the number of possible genes a-hundred-fold, all with different functions at different times of need.

A comparison, hopefully not too much of a stretch...


We have many ways of expressing WT, yet perhaps only 108 or 116 movements (for the sake of argument), in a form.

Do you understand every single movement in the forms? Not just the obvious punches or palm strikes or ____-saus, but every single movement from every single angle at every single moment?

Or how one movement can lead to the next?

What about how multiple different movements can either form into or result from multiple different actions?

Do you understand the non-coding portions of Wing Tsun Kung Fu?

The third formless form

Happy 2011!

For the first time, I have learned something from a movie that actually made me think about Wing Tsun Kung Fu.

Well, it was a movie about... you guessed it - Wing Chun. Kung Fu Wing Chun (功夫咏春):

If that doesn't work, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MADTyp5dBA
[Updated 2014 October 21st with updated youtube clip]

Although it started off with a bit of silliness (as per many Chinese movies), and contained some wire-fu, I actually enjoyed it more than older movies such as "Wing Chun" starring Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen, the Prodigal Son, Warriors Two, or Stranger from Shaolin. Nothing so far beats Yip Man (2008) with Donnie Yen though, even with the fictional storyline. I don't watch these movies to critique the Wing Chun Kung Fu itself or for a realistic documentary, because these are films... for entertainment!

Anyways, in 功夫咏春, there is a scene where Ng Mui starts teaching Yim Wing Chun. Ng Mui has Wing Chun mirror the Siu Nim Tao form, and explains about how something so simple can contain so much. She then explains how the Chum Kiu form helps train the bridging arms and turning forces of the body.

When it comes time to tell her about Biu Tze, she doesn't show her a form. In fact, she only says that it can be used for long bridging, and stressed that it does not have a form, and evolves as needed.

Interesting!

Ultimately we want to be formless, to become Wing Chun (the kung fu, not the lady herself). "Formless, shapeless, like water... etc." - Bruce Lee

Sure, Biu Tze has some different "moves", like the hook punch, elbows, etc. And it does help train body movements in a vertical plane, amongst other things. But all in all, it's almost like a form of freedom with the goal of freeing the Wing Tsun to a point of formlessness and directness.

Over-thinking a simple comment from a movie? Perhaps...

Here's to a good year... in life, as well as in Wing Tsun Kung Fu!

Journey to soft pliable effective power

You may have heard before that in martial arts, softness wins in the end. I agree with this point. But, any softness should be backed up by good structure. To develop a soft, pliable, effective power, do you think it is better to start out strong or weak?

It may be easier to develop softness from a strong but stiff structure, as opposed to starting out weak and then adding both pliability as well as strong effective power. At least at the beginning. But then again, like most things, both paths have good and bad points.

I am influenced by my preference for subtraction over addition, for example as it relates to art sculptures. I have always enjoyed cutting or carving by subtraction (wood or soapstone carving), rather than building or molding by addition (clay-work).

When strong?

In the simplest sense, when we start out strong, in order to develop the desired pliable softness, it is done through subtraction. Have you seen photos of GM Kernspecht before his WT days?

Also, when strong to begin with, it is easier to overcome any weaknesses during training, if the softness is not yet trained properly. While training this way may not be as effective in the long run, doing so would at least give the trainee confidence in being somewhat successful in the meantime. It buys the trainee time while the proper strength and softness is developed.

The bad point? The same... relying on the brute strength too much and forgetting to develop the effective pliable power.

Remember the first WT principle of force? Free yourself from your own force.

When weak?

In contrast, when we start out weak, we need to develop both the softness at the same time as effective power, which requires strength at some point as part of the equation. This developmental approach requires both addition and subtraction throughout the path, which might be a bit much to juggle at first. Also, when weak, there is nothing to backup any failure of applying the softness correctly. And thus self-confidence may suffer.

When training, if there is no structure to begin with, then working on softness can often result in collapsing (of whatever little structure there is to begin with). It may actually result in giving way too much, with bad consequences.

The good point? Having a truly empty cup starting from scratch, and building the essential tools and backbone from the very start.

Which is better?

With this all in mind, is one journey better than the other?

Ideally, via these two different paths, there should be a similar end result, but only achievable with the right training methods.

What do you think?

In fact, what are the right training methods for these two different spectrums, and everything in between?
Are there different training methods unique to each person? Or simply different amounts of the same training methods needed?

Fear of failure

Sifu Ralph Haenel of Wing Tsun Kung Fu Vancouver held the 2010 year-end seminar at Si-Hing Philip Lee's Golden Monkey Martial Arts Studio. Sifu German of Calgary WT also attended, from one snow-laden city to another...

The seminar was entitled "Twenty-One Steps to Knock-Out Self-Defense Skills!"



Basic or advanced skills?

We learned many different exercises to aid our growth in WT. Some of you may be wondering if we learned any advanced skills? Well, to answer that question, I will borrow a quote from Sifu Ralph... "Yo!"

Although the motions of the various exercises from the seminar originated from a variety of different WT program levels, they could all still be considered "basic" exercises.

It's not whether the skills themselves are advanced or basic, but whether or not the practice of the skills is done in an "advanced" or "basic" way.

In order to practice any basic exercise in an advanced way, we must first embrace failure. Yes, failure!

Learn how to fail

Being advanced just means refinement and improvement in skills. And in order to improve, I think we need to fail, even purposely at times.

Here are three simple common pitfalls that hinder improvement and progression in our WT training:
1. Fear of failure
2. Reliance on strengths alone
3. Over-confidence and complacency

Of all of the various "aha!" moments I gained at this seminar, "fear of failure" stuck with me the most. But, as you can imagine, the above three points are inter-related and feed off of each other.

Students want to succeed. Teachers want students to succeed. We all want to succeed! Doing otherwise can be uncomfortable, embarrassing perhaps, not really a big confidence-booster.

So, what do we do to avoid this situation? One option: shy away from failure, revert back to our strengths in order to succeed, and then become over-confident and satisfied by our "extreme skills". Some of us are stronger, some may be faster. Some have great footwork, while others have a tree-trunk-like stable posture. While these skills are of course, beneficial at the beginning and helps build self-esteem (a good thing), it makes it difficult to improve if we use our strengths all of the time.

Fail in order to succeed

Another more useful option in the long run: analyze the failure in the scenario and discover what weaknesses to improve upon. In fact, try doing something wrong to check what you need to do to correct it. Failing itself is not the problem, but how we analyze and react to the failures.

It is okay to get hit in a training scenario. Better to experience this in a controlled training environment. We can't expect to succeed immediately after just learning a skill. We aren't going to perfect the skill after 1 trial, a dozen trials, a hundred trials, or perhaps not until 10,000 hours (as per Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers").

Next time you are training an exercise, try turning off one of your strengths every now and then and work on failing. Then slowly build a new-found weakness into yet another strength over time. And then cycle back again and again...

I gained a lot from this seminar, but I thought I'd share with you a small philosophical viewpoint in training WT, but yet hopefully still being a practical approach.

Happy training!

WT is WC is WT...

At the beginning of November, I traveled to California for a conference and vacation, and had the opportunity to visit Sifu Jin Young in Los Angeles, aka China Boxer. Some of you may have seen his teachings before at his youtube channel.


A selection of Sifu Jin Young's students in Los Angeles, California

I love visiting different schools. From seeing some of the youtube videos, I was looking forward to hearing his philosophy about training Wing Tsun/Chun.

I was not disappointed.

Sifu Jin takes his training and teaching seriously, and has a generous and passionate attitude towards teaching. His students were great to train with too.

Structure

His focus? (at least what I gathered from one group class)

Developing structure.

Ever since 2008, I have been working on developing structure via training in Calgary and Vancouver. So, it was great to see this theme repeated and repeated. Hearing about it from more than one lineage must mean structure is important!

He uses various very interesting and applicable drills to help students develop proper structure and familiarizing them with using whole body-chain movements.

Are you training with your partner?

Or are you training against your partner?

As emphasized repeatedly by Sifus Ralph, German, and Asad, I saw the importance of this point again during Sifu Jin's class. The drills we were working on relied on each partner's feedback and appropriate resistance. Each student not only focused on making themselves better, but made efforts to help their partners. There were no egos here!

Commonalities between lineages

The overlap of teaching throughout the different schools I have visited, including the visits to Ulm 1, 2 and Munich, reminds me about the commonality between different WT/WC lineages. Unfortunately, when comparing WT/WC schools, we tend to focus more on the differences rather than looking at the similarities.

It doesn't matter which lineage we are learning from, as long as the instructor: 1) Knows and applies WT/WC skills principles, and 2) Can teach it. Can the instructor teach and show students enough such that they can develop the skills to become a good practitioner, and perhaps even a teacher themselves as well?

Another commonality? The group class of 90 minutes was much too short, as usual.


An even more serious pose

If you are ever in Los Angeles, give Sifu Jin a message beforehand and I’m sure he’d welcome you to join his class.

Happy training!

Calgary Wing Tsun October 2010 Seminar

I was particularly excited leading up to this seminar by Sifu Ralph Haenel of Wing Tsun Kung Fu Vancouver. During the summer training with Sifu German Ferrer of Wing Tsun Calgary, my WT addiction had exponentially increased.

In seminar reviews, I usually focus on training themes and ideas. This time, I will also describe some different yet equally important aspects of training (and teaching) martial arts.

Commitment
It was great to see many people take time out of their busy lives to attend the seminar. Some switched weekend shifts. Others arranged time away from their children. Another drove from quite a distance.

In fact, the student who lives 6-7 hours away not only came for both the bonus class and the entire weekend seminar, but also drives regularly to Calgary each month for a morning of private lessons!

What does this say about the Wingtsun Kung Fu as taught by Sifus Ralph and German during classes and private lessons?

Quality.


Punching power

But, I can’t do a WT seminar review without mentioning something physically related!

Scenario as commonly laid out in WT seminars: you are unexpectedly facing an aggressive attacker. You have solid smooth footwork, a fluid upper body, limber arms, everything. You evade the threat, get into the opponent’s core, and punch!

Yet, nothing happens. Uh-oh. The aggressive attacker, is… well, still aggressive or even more so now. Yes, everything was there, except power!

Once again, the importance of training punching power was evident throughout this seminar.

To aid in this development, students were introduced to different training exercises that were done either fast or slow, and worked on either fluidity or structure. All of the exercises helped understand where effective punching power comes from and also how to generate it.

Awesome.

Remember the soft sardine strike?


Questions, comments?

One thing students may take for granted is the openness of teachers to questions and queries.

Sifu Asad always pauses often for any questions and feedback during classes and private lessons.

Sifu German is also more than open to any ideas and thoughts, with an uncanny ability to engineer (pun intended) different drills to make a point.

During any private lessons or group classes, Si-Fu Ralph always asks for any questions or queries. To back up that offer, he is able to explain an answer in different ways depending on the student’s understanding. During class, he walks around often and gives students constant feedback and suggestions on how to improve. Check out his recent blog post about teaching.

These three teachers also have another thing in common. To balance any spoon-feeding, they have also allowed students to grow and discover things on their own. The WT structure is built in such a way that this can actually occur!


2010
In my previous post here, I mentioned that 2010 would be a good year for WT, and boy have I been right so far.

Happy training!