Eye Opener

Last night’s class was a real eye opener for me. Sifu asked us to start the class by doing siu lim tau, but just as I was preparing to start he told me to correct the others. I was gobsmacked. This was something I had never done before. It’s hard enough getting your own form right, let alone correcting others. Usually the more senior members go around the class correcting students but this time the burden fell on me.

At first I thought I just didn’t know enough to be able to identify where other people were going wrong. And in many ways I don’t. For example, I found it really hard to assess whether my colleagues’ stances were correct. So I left them alone! I saw a few shoulders tensed and sloping, so I adjusted those. Interestingly, mistakes increased as time wore on. More on this later.

Correcting Others Helps Me

I can see that my correcting others is a twofold exercise. They get my input on where they are going wrong and can correct themselves accordingly. But also, it’s an exercise for me. I have to think more about correct structure and form. Seeing the form from this new angle helps. Previously I’d only experienced siu lim tau internally; I had my own personal experience of it. Last night, however,  I was seeing siu lim tau from the outside. The more I think about it, the weirder it seems! But, at the same time, there is unmistakable logic in asking a student to correct others.

An Increased Responsibility

Another consequence of this task was that I felt a responsibility I’d not felt before. I couldn’t just dismiss my task and only pretend to do it. Sifu spots things like that and chastens you for not correcting the student and then corrects the student himself. I had to embrace the task and try to do it well. Last night’s siu lim tau took maybe 10 minutes and the interesting thing was that as time wore on, my friends’ shoulders started becoming more tense and more ‘distorted’. The fuk sau shoulder would either be further forward than the other one, or lower. Of course, this gives me a perspective I didn’t have before. Now I can see a pattern emerging.

As time wears on, your muscles get more tired, and you make more mistakes. But you might also lose track of how the correct structure feels and deviate from it because you’ve been immersed in the form for so long. It’s much easier to sense change than sense something that hasn’t changed. For example if there is light pressure on your skin, after a short while you begin to not notice its presence. As soon as the pressure changes, you become aware of it. Both these factors conspire to distort your structure. Because I’ve seen this pattern externally in others I can now be aware of this pattern in my own siu lim tau.

Sifu Is Cleverer Than He Looks

One things for sure. Being asked to correct other students has made me feel a responsibility to really know my stuff, to become a better practitioner. Sifu knows what he is doing. The invitation to the instructor’s course, the assigning of responsibility to judge others: it all encourages me to do better, to practise more, to read up on things. I’m sure this has the same effect on my peers, too. I now have a responsibility not only to improve my skill, but to be able to help others improve theirs too. Sneaky, very sneaky.

This must be a well trodden path in my club that I just wasn’t aware of in the past. I’m really impressed. What a great way to motivate people to work harder.

One of the people who goes to my Wing Chun class lives and works near where I work so we decided to meet up recently in our dinner hours to do some chi sau practise. This is just the extra practise I’d been wanting to do for a long time. We decided to do a couple of techniques that we’d learnt in the last class.

The problem with learning a new tecgnique in class is that we leave the class thinking “wow, that was a really good technique” but then a week with no chi sau practice goes by and in the next class we either can’t remember how to do The Move or we do it clumsily and ineffectively. When given something new, we need to practise it over and over until it becomes instinctive or subconscious. With the bright idea that my friend and I had, we can now do that.

It turns out that we are both free on Tuesday and Thursday lunchtimes, and what we’ve planned to do is do some free form chi sau on Tuesdays and practise what we learnt in class on Thursdays. That way we get the best of both worlds.

Usually I go to the gym in my lunch hour every day, and as well as being a welcome break from work it also keeps me fit. But recently I couldn’t help thinking that if only I could do an hour of Wing Chun instead of going to the gym, I’d improve much more quickly. The trouble is, I can’t really practise in the office and I don’t relish the thought of all the spectators at the gym. This new turn of events is perfect though as we go to his house, 5 minutes away, and chi sau in his living room. That’s nearly an hour of chi sau twice a week – extra.

Now it should only take another 20 years before we’re as good as sifu!

I’ve heard people call Wing Chun Lazy Man’s Kung Fu. I know, shocking isn’t it? They haven’t experienced the pain of doing siu lim tau on one leg for half an hour and can’t appreciate the inner strength involved in maintaing a posture for a length of time. Usually the classes I go to involve just this kind of strength – gong lik.

Last night though, sifu had other ideas. Last night was Wing Chun Cardio Workout Night, and it was designed to improve our footwork.

Footwork Exercise 1

The first exercise saw us pairing up with one being the leader and the other being the follower. The follower had to hold out a tan sau and the leader had to hold the other’s elbow and lead them in random directions and at random speed (direction + speed is velocity, but that’s a subject for my maths blog ). The follower had to …yes, follow, but also maintain the tand sau and not show any inertia. That is, as soon as the leader goes, the follower is right there following the movement. Whilst moving, the follower had to use correct footwork. As well as footwork, this exercise used the follower’s sensitivity too, so that the leader never had to push the follower too hard in the right direction.

Five minutes of running round the room in stance and using correct footwork left everyone close with heart rates clearly in the fat burning zone.

Footwork Exercise 2

In this exercise, the follower is at the centre of an imaginary circle using his/her bong sau and the leader is on the circumference with a hand (wrist contact) on the bong sau. The leader follows the circumference at different speeds and as the follower rotates/turns, they have to use correct footwork and remain in stance.

Footwork Exercise 3

Similar to the last exercise but this time each person is on the circle’s circumference with the centre between them. Outstretched wu saus meet in the middle and the follower follows the leader as they make their random way around that circle. At this point, those whose hearts hadn’t packed in did the last exercise:

Footwork Exercise 4

Two chairs facing each other.  The leader can go anywhere in relation to the chairs but the follower can only go round the outside of them. This means that the leader can go in between the chairs but the follower can’t. Leader chases follower. Proper stance, correct footwork, both must be used.

Eggbox Shite O’Reilly

I had an exceptionally good training class last night. The practice was good, but it was another event that triggered my euphoria. We did siu lim tau and then sifu split us up into two groups: one practising siu lim tau, and the other practising chum kiu. Towards the end of the chum kiu practice, sifu said very quietly that he wanted to see me and two others at the instructor’s course at the end of January! Eggbox shite O’Reilly! I had to ask the other two whether I’d heard right because sifu was speaking quietly. But I’d heard right.

The Instructor’s Course

Now, this news has an impact. I’m going to speak for myself now, as there is no way I can know what the other two feel. I can only assume they feel a little like I do. Firstly, it is a real vote of confidence by sifu in my abilities and I’m over the moon. It’s a way of saying “you’re doing well”. Secondly, it’s a good motivator too, because now I feela responsibility to the art, my sifu and his sifu to live up to the high standards. I was geared up before, but now I feel like training even more. I’m sure the others think the same. Maybe I should get some guest posts from them!

To be honest I’m thrilled that sifu thinks we’re all good enough to move forwards in this way.

To Be A Wing Chun Teacher

I don’t know what this course entails, but I wouldn’t feel confident enough to teach other people Wing Chun until I have a lot more experience. I would like to teach at some point though, and this is one more step on the journey. The thought of someone calling me ‘sifu’ makes me cringe! But that’s only because my skill is nowhere neear good enough. Yet!

I had a revelation this morning regarding my footwork practice. Previously I’d been ‘shadow boxing’ around an imaginary opponent, moving in, kwan sau, move to the left, bong sau etc, but I’d found it really hard. It was difficult to think of something spontaneous to do, so it was a bit disheartening to stand there thinking “what do I do next”. The attention to both footwork and hand movements was too much.

So this morning after the usual hiatus between discrete movements (which shouldn’t be so discrete!), I decided to break the task down to make it simpler. I decided to just forget the hands and concentrate on my footwork. There is a coat stand downstairs (this is at work before anyone else arrives) which I used as my opponent and practised my footwork around.

Moving to the left, moving to the right, advancing forwards – it was all so much easier now that I didn’t need to worry about what my hands were doing. In fact, I was quite pleased with how my footwork was without that distraction. I imagine that after a few practisces like this, a newb like me would be able to introduce hand movements, once the actual footwork becomes second nature (does it ever?).

Footwork Details

What do you look at to determine whether your footwork is correct? Well, I was looking at:

• balance – probably the most important. If you are off balance – FAIL!
• foot spacing – just make sure that your feet are spaced maybe a shoulder width apart.
• foot direction – usually pointing inwards, but at the most parallel. Certainly not splayed out like mine invariably are.
• weight distribution – I was keeping my weight fairly evenly spread between left and right foot, sometimes with more weight on the ‘back’ foot.

When you start doing an improvised footwork routine you might find yourself looking down at your feet a lot just to check that their positioned correctly – don’t worry. You need to reassure yourself that you’re doing it right for an initial period of time, until the movements becomes second nature, and the feeling of your feet and legs becomes more familiar. Eventually you’ll be gliding around like you were on skates, whilst keeping a close eye on your opponent.