I've started my new Wing Chun training routine. This refers to the practice I do on my own, not the class I go to once a week. I say once a week, but on a good week I can get down there twice and in rare weeks three times. I think that as long as I can consistently maintain once a week, I'm going to improve, albeit more slowly.

So in addition to the formal classes I attend, I practise on my own 5 days a week, Monday to Friday. I choose those days simply because I get to work inordinately early to beat the traffic, and I want to do something constructive with the free time I have before I actually start work. I have maybe 45 minutes before the fisrt of my colleagues start to trickle in and I am not going to practise with an audience! Ashamedly, I only use around 10 of those minutes practising. Here's the breakdown:

Wing Chun Timetable

I know - two days where I do nothing! I know that the time I spend training is pretty short but I think it's a good base and I know I'll get better gradually doing this. The key is consistency.

Who am I trying to fool, I should practise more! A mere 10 minutes a morning is pretty shameful but I have so many other things vying for my time that I can't spare much more. I'll have a think and see if I can juggle some things around. It would be helpful to know how much everyone else trains...

When I chi sau it's like my feet are rooted to the floor. Even when my partner attacks I might move backwards but rarely do I deviate from that straight line between us. We face each other and trade blows! Duh. I know that I should create angles, move to the side when it makes sense to etc but at the moment you can have handwork or footwork but not both.

When it was drawn to my attention by one of the seniors that we should use our footwork more, my steps became exaggerated as though I was overcompensating. And because I was concentrating on my footwork and not my hands, I got slapped. Obviously the ideal is for the whole body to move as one; hands, feet and posture working together but before that becomes natural in chi sau, I need to practise this on my own.
I've been trying to think of exercises/routines I can do. So far I've come up with:

• forget the hands and just move backwards, forwards and sideways randomly whilst maintaing correct posture, stance and hands up in wu sau
• pick a focal point and move around that as though it were an opponent. This is much trickier. At work there is a pillar that I use for this before my colleagues arrive. I move forwards and do a kwan sau. Move sideways and go into a bong sau and then just mix it up randomly. There are pause between movements while I think of what to do next and the movements are very much broken down into discrete actions, but that's only until I become more familiar with the exercise and it becomes fluid. Wing Chun shadow boxing!