After around 3 weeks total abstinence from Wing Chun due to a mysterious injury, I've started my training again. I usually go to class once a week, twice in a good week, and do 15 minutes training on my own Monday - Friday so a complete stoppage was really hard to take.

This morning I did a quick Siu Lim Tau and Chum Kiu (which I learnt just before I got injured) and it felt good! Thankfully, I could remember Chum Kiu in its entirety, so in that repect I don't think I've lost anything. Obviously, my technique is a bit rusty, and certainly my muscles aren't as strong as 3 weeks ago, but at least I'm back. All being well, I'm going to try to make all 3 classes this week.

The injury is still there but its symptoms have reduced. There's some swelling round my left knee (I hate joint injuries) and it hurts when I kneel down but both the swelling and the pain have reduced. I think it might be bursitis. My main concern was the pressure exerted on the knees when doing siu lim tau and also that exerted on them when turning in chum kiu, but my speedy routine this morning didn't cause any pain. So it's looking good!

I don't know how I've done this but I've got an injured left knee. There was nothing specific I can remember that might have caused it, but there's a definite tightness around the joint, especially when I squat. It doesn't hurt and there's no visible swelling, but I can feel it nonetheless.

Although it causes me no problems I decided not to go to my Wing Chun class tonight. Although this problem is related to my abstaining from Wing Chun, the decision whether or not to train with an injury is common to many disciplines. In this instance, my main fear was that there would be a mammoth leg training session that would cripple me or that when chi sauing I would make a sudden movement and twist it.

Of course there's the inevitable argument raging in my head:

me: you should go to class, we don't train legs often. You'll be alright.

me: but if we do a lot of legwork, I'm either going to have to grin and bear it and risk injuring myself further, or I'm going to sit out. Aside from the mental impact of feeling defeated by that decision, there would be the feeling of loss having paid my $14 for the class, half of which I'm not part of

me: and so on

But...I think it's important to ere on the side of caution. One of the me's above is possibly right in saying we don't train legs often so I could get away with going. But there's too much to lose if I knacker my knee in completely. I won't be laughing if I then have to miss a month or so of training. If I can just keep this drama queen hat on a bit longer the risks are just too high!

Anyway, the class started at 20:30 and it's 20:34 so I'm definitely not going. And just to seal the decision, I've had a massive curry for my tea. Not going.

Update: OK, after a little internet research I think I know what the Mystery Injury might be. Water on the knee/bursitis. Stupidly, yesterday I was seeing how far I could push the joint by kneeling on the ground and seeing how far I could sit on my heels. It felt tight, and I shouldn't have done that. And a couple of days ago in the gym I was doing the same, the idea being that I should try and loosen the joint up. Jeez, I'm a hazard! I think rest, cold compresses and anti-inflammatories are the way to go. Duh, I can't believe that I've gone and aggravated the injury!

OK I realise I'm getting off the beaten track here, I mean - MMA kick? Bas Rutten?? This is about as far from chi sau as you can get. But as I'm a fan of Bas and I think this video is interesting... here it is:

Fight Science MMA - Bas Rutten Kicks a Crash Test Dummy - More amazing video clips are a click away

But wait a minute. What's an MMA kick as opposed to a Muay Thai kick? By definition, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA duh!) includes Muay Thai so your MMA fighter may really be a Muy Thai fighter. There is no such thing as an MMA kick. And talk about a confusing report: earlier on the presenter says that Muay Thai fighters use shin bones but then to confuse matters in closing he explains that Bas is able to deliver such a powerful kick by, surprisingly, using his shin bone. Err... so like the MT kick then...? This is my first gripe.

My second gripe is that this isn't a comparison of different styles of kicking. This is a comparison of two different fighters and how powerfully they kick. Pit Bas Rutten against anyone and he will have a good chance of kicking/punching harder than them.

So are we to conclude from this stoopid video that 1) there is such a thing as an MMA kick and 2) MMA kicks are harder than MT kicks? This is just the kind of ridiulous 'pop science' that really riles me. It's presented by someone who is uninformed (not his fault) and unfortunately influences other uninformed people who will undoubtedly go off and regurgitate this rubbish.

But, crappy testing aside, what a kick! I'm glad I wasn't that dummy.

I'm trying to improve the strength and flexibility in my legs. I go to the gym every lunch time and Monday, Wednesday and Friday I do cardio exercises (the stair machine at the moment) followed by leg stretches. I spend 15 minutes on the cardio and then around 10 minutes on the stretching. It's nothing intense, in fact it's quite a tame routine.

Leg Exercise Torture

A few times at my Wing Chun class the teacher has made us do a gruelling leg work out. This isn't sifu, this is some other senior who has some kind of compulsive disorder regarding leg torture! He administers the pain in the following ways:

• Gets us to do siu lim tau on one leg. So you stand on one leg with the other raised with thigh parallel to ground while tan/fook sau goes out and then swap legs when you change to jum sau/wu sau. Nasty.
• Stand on one leg with the other raised so that thigh is parallel to floor. Rotate the foot clockwise and then anticlockwise for an eternity. Then rotate the shin in the same fashion for another eternity. Then stretch the whole leg out so that it's straight. This lasts a bit longer, like an aeon actually.
• A vicious one this: face a pillar and raise your knee until thigh horizontal again or even pointing up a bit and lower leg just pointing down. Extend your leg so that the heel touches the pillar (foot is maybe 45 degrees to the vertical). This is the painful bit. Keep the leg in that position but relax the foot so that the heel moves away from the pillar and then hit the pillar again with the heel. The ball/arch of the foot maintains contact while the heel hits the pillar repeatedly. All this with the leg raised quite high (for me anyway).

He's fair about it though as he leads the exercise and sets a fine example as he is so supple.

My New Lege Exrecise Routine

These exercises really hurt. But... they hurt because I don't do any exercise at home or in the gym. So I've decided to rectify this by stepping up (ok - by starting) some strength/flexibility training for my legs. It's laughable at the moment: I stretch as usual (see above) but then I balance on one leg whilst holding out my other leg for a count of 10. The goal is to hold the leg stretched out horizontally but all I can manage at the moment is some patheic angle to the ground!

Jet Lis's Intensive Workout

Now, this is an inspirational bit of footage. Look at Jet Li around the 10 second mark. That's the kind of strength and control I want.

Arms Like An Orangootang

At the last class I found myself chi sauing with someone who was much shorter than I was. I'm 6'2" and have arms like an orangootang so really I should have had quite an advantage. And to start with I did. We started chi sauing and I guess we were compromising on the height difference so that our hands could meet, but surreptitiously he would lower his hands and I would follow. Before I knew it (and I didn't realise until my partner pointed it out), my hands were much lower than they should have been. This was good for him, but my shape was all wrong and I could no longer take advantage of my super long arms and height.

Accommodating Your Partner

I find that I, and for that matter many people, have a tendency to accommodate their opponents. How many times have you simply followed your opponents hands, even if they are off centre and the best thing to do is simply go forwards down that centre? I think that to a certain extent this is a natural human response. Someone leads, the other follows. In hypnosis, the hypnotherapist matches the subject and then leads him or her (think pacing and leading). That's it - I was hypnotised goddamit! And maybe I'm not joking... In chi sau your unconscious mind takes over your actions: you no longer break things down into components and say to yourself "she's punching forward so I'm going to pak it". The pak isn't instinct, it's a learned response that over time has become an unconscious one. And following hands is an unconscious response to your opponent's actions.

Unlearning Unconscious Habits

The trick is to observe what you are doing when you are doing it and stop it. It sounds so simple, but as you know, it is the hardest thing to do. Correcting unconscious routines that you perform on your own is hard enough. You tell yourself before you start a form that the way you've been executing your gang sau for the last 2 years is in fact wrong and it needs to be completely different. And over many re-iterations of the form you can keep correcting it until it becomes a new unconscious pattern. But that's learning in the comfort of being undisturbed by an attacker who is trying to knock your block off. It's much harder to stop ingrained habits with a distraction like this.

Of course it's hard work. That's what makes it so good.

Pattern Breaking

I've just thought of another example of people accommodating their partners hands during chi sau. Changing from inside to outside and vice versa. This is an often performed transition and you become so familiar with your partner doing it that you eventually stop seeing the openings there. When he/she makes that switch, it's an ideal opportunity to strike. Sometimes the switch is so sloppy they leave the centre wide open anyway, but because we are so used to the transition taking place, we accommodate it. Did I say 'we'? I meant 'I'. Except that I've started to wait for these moments of change to strike. Now, I'll just roll with my partner and wait for them to do somethig - anything - and then strike myself. And it seems to work.

There's a subtle distinction between using force and... using force. Up to this point I'd been under the impression (ok, it was my mistaken belief) that you shouldn't use force/strength under any circumstances - unless you were finishing off you're opponent. I realised at a class today that it's not quite as simple as that. And yet it's not much more complicated either.

If I'm face to face with someone and I try to push them out of the way, this is bad. I'm using strength to overcome them. But if they are walking backwards already and I simply add my weight to their movement by guiding them backwards a little faster, this is good. Similarly if someone charges towards me and I charge towards them, that's two equal and opposite forces meeting in the middle - bad. Bang bang. If someone charges towards me and I slip sideways and then my deft push adds to their momentum to send them on their way - in the same direction - good.

So using strength isn't always bad. We did a couple of drills today that really made the penny drop for me. They both started with me pushing my bong sau against my partners fook sau. The bong sau actually changed to a lan wan sau (bar arm thing!) to do this and the action was merely to get a response from my partner - that response being his resistance. When he met my pushing bong sau with his own unconscious resistance, I could use his energy by rolling my bong sau on the inside into a tan sau. But because he was pushing back against me, I could actually help his arm go in that same direction with my tan sau, so the tan sau pushes his arm in the direction it's already going. This is the use of force that isn't bad. His fook sau is already going in that direction because he's resisting my bong sau, so it's ok for me to help it along with my tan sau.

Does that sound complicated? It's not at all, but of course trying to string a coherent sentence together that describes the movements is tricky. I really need to video these things to illustrate. But saying that... it's actually quite useful for me to articulate what we did, and write it down, because it aids my memory. Maybe I could do both

The next drill used the same setup. The old "bong sau pushing forwards against his fook sau to provoke the resistance that we can harness" trick. Sneaky like a ninja. This time, when I felt his resistance I had to lap sau it out of the way with my other hand, trapping his tan sau in the process. My lap sau is almost coming back towards me and I have to move to my left to get the angle (assuming my right arm is the bong sau). After the lap sau comes the punch of course, but the important bit is creating the space in which to punch.

These drills really illustrate the subtlety of wing chun. Redirecting energy, you have to love it. The pushing bong sau doesn't have to be that strong, and people invariably resist it without even knowing they are. This resistance is most accommodating of them, because without it the technique won't work.

Recently I was messing with my girlfriend (who doesn't do any martial arts) and we were facing each other, long wu saus touching at the wrists, I would pak sau and punch blah de blah. Well after a few goes, when our wu saus met, I could really feel her pushing against me. Of course she didn't know she was pushing until I quickly moved my hand away and her hand flew to the side because I was no longer resisting it! I'm always being told to stop pushing, and I know I'm much better than I used to be.

I wonder how much of your partner's energy you just don't notice. Energy that you could use to your advantage but is just going to waste. I know for a fact that I'm not yet tuned in sensitively enough. But then, who is?

On a side note, if you want to see numerous examples of how not to use strength, search youtube for chi sau competition. Some of that stuff is not that far removed from wrestling! It ain't pretty.

I like watching boxing. If it's on the TV, I can't help but put everything else down and watch it. I wouldn't like to box myself, the risk of damage is too great for me.

Muhammad Ali Vs Joe Frazier

There are two fights I watched recently on KOTV (Knock Out TV?) that now stick in my mind. The first was Muhammad Ali against Joe Frazier. Unfortunately I joined the fight late and saw only the last few rounds which were a bit boring to tell the truth. I probably missed the snappy energy of the first rounds because in those in those that remained, the two boxers were so tired that they were just staggering into each other, guards lowered and very little could you call 'good technique'. I couldn't help thinking that in these latter stages, a boxing match just doesn't resemble a real fight. I would wager that there aren't many street fights that last as long as that Ali - Frazier fight. But then, whoever said that boxing purpose was supposed to resemble a real fight? And don't get me wrong - after such a gruelling fight I'm not surprised they were staggering into each other.

I can't help myself. I was going to embed a youtube video of just the bit I've been moaning about, but got distracted by mucg more impressive footage of the fight from round 3 onwards! Damn you youtube!

That's not to say that an experienced boxer couldn't whoop my ass! Because they probably could. I think that the training a boxer undergoes is good for self defence. A boxing match, however, is far removed from a real street situation where nasty people pick debris up off the road to use as weapons and kick you in the head when you are down.

Naseem Hamed vs Kevin Kelley

The other fight I saw was Naseem Hamed vs Kevin Kelley and the thing that struck me about this fight was Naseem's precision. I dare say that precision was present in Ali's and Frazier's fight but I came in towards the end of that and probably missed it. There were a couple of occasions where Naseem was virtually crouching and staring intently at Kelley as Kelley snapped out a vicious jab. Naseem didn't even flinch as Kelley's glove reached its full extent a matter of millimetres from his face. But of course he knew he was out of range. That's something I really envy (obviously aside from the speed, power, endurance, oh and cut physiques that these guys have). The precision to know that you are a few millimetres out of range. The two opponents are so close, but each knows the limitations of the their own and the other's reach.

I can't be bothered trawling through all of youtube's bad quality footage of this fight, so here's the one where Naseem gets floored (just because it made me smile). You'll have to endure PN's obligatory ego self massage at the start I'm afraid.

Struggling With Range

This is something I really struggle with. Range. Half the time when I'm chi sauing with someone I don't even know when they are in range. I know that this kind of awareness will come with experience, but I wonder if there is something I can do to speed up the process. Perhaps stand facing a wall and alter the distance until I can/can't reach it with my fist. Stand facing a door at what I think is a distance that puts me just out of range and use my full reach to punch - hopefully not messing up my knuckles? Or just watch more boxing matches and learn by osmosis. All three I reckon.