Leo Au Yeung was one of the fight choreographers on the Ip Man movie set. Recently, he agreed to do the following interview.

Hi Leo. Thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview. How are you today?

1. Where did you grow up?
   I originally grew up in Hong Kong.
2. How did you come to be in England?
   I came here to study when I were 17.
3. How did you get involved in the martial arts?
   I always liked martial arts since I was 4 years old, however I didn’t know which style to choose or where to start. I was confused and did not know what to do until I met my uncle who had done Wing Chun for years. I showed my interest to learning kung fu and he introduce me to Wing Chun and suggested that I learn from Grandmaster Ip Chun as he is one of the best known Masters in Hong Kong. This is how I begin my Wing Chun training.
4. Can you tell us about your Wing Chun background? I understand you started training under the great Ip Chun. How was that?
   My first Wing Chun training started in 1995 and my first Wing Chun teacher is Grandmaster Ip Chun. The training was very enjoyable and I have gained quite a good understanding on what is good Wing Chun.

   After two years training I came to England to study but I go back to Hong Kong to train every summer. Every summer holiday I go back to Hong Kong and train for 6-7 days a week. I attended all the Ip chun’s classes no matter morning or evening class, he even give me the key of the gym, this means I can go there to practice if there had no class.

   In that’s period of time I learnt quite a lot about Ip Chun’s style because every summer there were a lot of foreigners came to Hong Kong to learn from Ip Chun, most of the time I am the only one who can speak fluent English therefore I did all the translation for him. For this reason I am not just learn Ip Chun wing chun, I also learn how he teach and the way how he see wing chun.

   I had done this for a few years until I started working in Preston, and I start to train under Master Samuel Kwok. Master Kwok just live about half hour from me, initially I just train once a week with Samuel, however for some reason we get on very well, may be we got a similar background and teacher, end up I see him 5-6 days a week again. I went to all his classes during the week and seminars every part in the country. After a year training I become his assistance, I help him to teach all the classes when he is aboard for holiday and seminars etc. I have done this for about 3-4 years until I got my new job in London.

5. How did you become involved in the making of the Ip Man movie?
   One of the Ip Man movie investors is a Wing Chun enthusiast. His intention in making this movie was to demonstrate the ‘real’ Wing Chun to the rest of the world. For this reason he searched for some top class Wing Chun instructors all over the world and he found Master Samuel Kwok lineage. At the end he contacted Samuel and asked him was anyone could recommend to him to choreograph the Ip Man movie. He was looking for someone with the requirement of having a very good understanding of Wing Chun and able to demonstrate the art in a more traditional manner. Master Kwok straight away thought that I would be the most suitable candidate, firstly because he has true confidence of my ability in Wing Chun. He believes that I am capable to represent him to choreograph the movie. On the other hand beside Wing Chun I also know a wide range of martial arts, so it really helped when making the comparison between Wing Chun and other styles.
6. Can you tell us about your experiences working as a fight choreographer on the Ip Man movie?
   Off course our biggest challenge was how to made Wing Chun look good on the screen, as you know most of the Wing Chun moves are very small and simple. Therefore sometimes we have to exaggerate the movement a bit, or we have to close up the movements, in order to make them look impressive on screen. However, we still have to keep the accent of Wing Chun. In the end we still spent over 7 days to choreograph just 3 mins in the movie.
7. How can I get a role in the next movie you choreograph?!
   If you are serious you could send some of your detail to me e.g. picture and video of you, you martial arts background, may be some video you doing some wing chun or other martial art. I can help you to give them to the movie producer or director. Who knows may be you will in Ip man 2.
8. Did you spend much time with Donnie Yen/Sammo Hung? How were they?
   I only meet Donnie very briefly but the impression he gave me is he is very passionate about martial arts and he is a very professional action actor.
   Sammo is a very easy going and humours person. He just like a ‘big brother’ to us, he always looks after his crew. For example he would always buy us breakfast in the morning, in order to keep us warm. Sometimes he would ask his wife to cook something the night before and he would bring it to us in the next day. Moreover he would always be the first few to arrive on set, so he would really set a good example to the rest of the crew. I really respect him and it is a pleasure to work with him.
9. Although I’ve not seen the full film yet, I’ve seen some of the Ip Man fight scenes on Youtube and love them! Do you have a favourite fight scene?
   My favourite would be the fist fight scene when ip man fighting in his house and when Donnie fight one against ten Japanese.
10. I believe that there are 2 more Ip Man movies planned. Will you be working on those?
    As far as I know they still working on the script and the story at the moment, so it is still early to say will I get involved yet but of course I will if I have the chance.
11. How much do you train each day/each week?
    I train about 1.5h per day, however in my opinion martial art is not just about how long and how hard you train, it is more important how correct you train. I have come across a lot of wing Chun practitioners who have trained for years but they still don’t know some fundamental concept and principle of wing chun. I always tell my students how many years you had been training doesn’t mean a thing. What is the most important is how correct do you train.
12. Do you have a favourite martial arts movie?
    I would say all Lau kar leung’s movie, eg the 36th Chamber of Shaolin , My Young Auntie and Mad Monkey Kung Fu etc . Firstly he is the grandmaster of my Hung Gar, secondly all the actors who acted in the movie are martial artists, there are no special effects or computer graphic etc. In my opinion those are ‘pure’ martial arts films. Of course the more recent one is Ip Man.
13. Do you get to meet up with Ip Chun often?
    Ip Chun is my first teacher in wing chun of course I will see him from time to time, I tried to see him every year but I cannot really made it because my my job etc.
14. You run a martial arts school in London. Tell me more…
    The objective of our school is to teach first -rate traditional Chinese kung fu. I only teach kung fu to a small group of people, because I believe quality is more important than quantity. Especially in Wing Chun, for me half of an inch difference is dead or alive. I pay attention to every single detail, even one finger is out of place is an mistake for me. I am not teaching martial art for living, this mean I don’t need to run my school like a business or factory, my first priority is train my student up, not increase the number of school.In wing Chun it is important to have correct body structure and arm position .It just takes an inch out of position to have a negative impact on a student. In larger classes you don’t have the opportunity to notice or correct this and over a period of time this becomes a habit with the student. This flaw becomes apparent when the student goes onto Chi Sau, giving more opportunities for an opponent to hit. It is sad for me when I chi Sau with some wing Chun practitioners who have trained for years only to find they have not covered the foundations properly.

Again, thank you Leo for taking time out to tell us more about yourself. The following is a gallery of photos that Leo took whilst on the set of Ip Man.

Ip Man Movie Photo Set

Leo is currently teaching Wing Chun, Hung Gar and Tai Chi in London. Check out his website for further details

Just How Popular Is Wing Chun?

Most articles I’ve read that question which martial art is the most widely practised have answered that it’s Wing Chun. I’m not sure that this is the case though, and I don’t know where they get their statistics from. I know that if online resources are anything to go by then Wing Chun is one of the less popular martial arts. There is only a small provision for WC practitioners in the form of forums, blogs, general information on the internet etc. Invariably, if you do find a generic martial arts forum, there is very little on offer for Wing Chunners.

Just out of interest, I thought I’d do a bit of ‘keyword research’ in the area of martial arts, using some keyword tools. They give you counts of how many times a particular phrase has been searched for by the general public in Google. Here are my findings:

Although “Wing Chun” doesn’t attract as few searches as Tae Kwon Do and ninjutsu, I’m disappointed all the same.  I thought Wing Chun would be more popular. What do we make of these statistics? Personally, I think that the number of times something is searched for in search engines is a good indication of that subject’s popularity. If you look at sex, for example, (hey, I have to do my research ), we are talking 37 million searches for the same period! And that subject is pretty popular. So you can see that there is a rough correlation between the volume of searches for a topic and how popular it is.

Of course, some subjects just don’t lend themselves to being searched for on the internet, and I understand that. It could be that the martial arts is not something that people generally search for in Google. Perhaps they are busy outside actually doing it instead of reading information about it on websites. These statistics do, however, give us a useful comparison between different martial arts.

Wing Chun Popularity Predictor

I predict an increase in interest in Wing Chun. Why? The new Ip Man movie is sure to be a big motivator for people to find out more about the martial art that Donnie Yen showcases so well. Here’s a clip:

How can you watch that and not feel all fired up about Wing Chun? Whaddya mean it’s not real, it’s only a movie?! Check out more Ip Man fight scenes.

I’m grateful for what he and the film producers are doing for Wing Chun. Remind me to do similar keyword research one year from now to see what changes are evident in the rankings table.

Part of the reason for me starting this site was to bolster my enthusiasm for Wing Chun. I used to suffer a lack of motivation to go to class. Once I got there, I would have a ball – the problem was in getting myself to leave the house. It’s not because I’m lazy: quite the contrary. I probably have far too many interests and they are all vying for my time. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have arguments in my head on my drive home from work, one side putting forward the pros and the other side putting forward the cons of going to class that night.

The Wing Chun Demons In My Head

Check out the schizo banter in my head:

• “My Wing Chun is improving, I should ride the wave and go to class and get even better”
• “My Wing Chun is improving, so it’s not that important if I miss tonight’s class”
• “I went on Saturday, so I don’t need to go tonight (Monday)”
• “The house is a mess, I really need to clean it – and it has to be tonight”
• “I’m knackered after a gruelling weekend of booze, so I’ll stay in tonight”
• “I’m really motivated about making origami paper ducks so I should stay in and make the most of that motivation”

Sadly, the demons in my head were mostly on the side of missing Wing Chun classes. This is why I had to use different methods to boost my Wing Chun motivation.

Top Tips To Improve Wing Chun Motivation

The following tips are not specific to Wing Chun, but are universal. You can apply them to other areas of your life.

• Do more. Yes, I know that sounds odd, but the more I do, the more I like it. I’m sure you will be the same. Also, the better you get, the more encouraged you will feel.
• Look back and see the progress you’ve made. Credit where credit’s due, you’ve made progress. You’re further down the path than you were even mere months ago.
• Watch inspiring videos, with talented practitioners in them. Youtube hosts a smorgasbord of Wing Chun idiots – but there are also some geniuses too. Watch them and feel inspired.
• Project forward and imagine how good you will be in 2 years time. In 5 years time. If your future self could travel back in time, your present self would get its ass kicked big style. It might get dirty. Better your future bad ass self stay the hell where it is because it’s so damn dangerous.
• Be healthier. Drink less alcohol (I don’t mean become a monk), eat better foods, get enough sleep, do regular exercise. All these things conspire to make you feel better and the better you feel, the more you will want to engage with the world.
• Find other interests that complement your Wing Chun habit. For example, this website serves that purpose for me – and helps keep me interested. Interestingly, my classes often provide food for thought on this blog.
• Make contact with other people who have similar interests. I’ve emailed a couple of Wing Chun martial artists on youtube already. I’m not saying you should go and stalk these people too, but other ideas are to get together with classmates and practise outside of class. Our club has a regular class meal every month and its good to maintain regular contact with other members of our kung fu family.
• Vary your practice. I, for one, probably don’t change my routine as often as I should. There are so many things to practise; one model I might follow is to focus on just a few techniques for maybe a week and then choose different techniques for next week. This way my routine doesn’t become stale. Also, think about different ways to employ the same technique i.e. different applications. For example, take footwork.  I can practise the dummy form I know, but I can also improvise moving around a fictitious opponent and really concentrate on my steps. As a further variation I can then introduce some hand movements (gaan sau, kwan sau etc) to spice it up. Variety being the key not just to maintain interest, but to improve skill too.
• Make use of any friendly (or not so friendly!) rivalry that exists between you and your partner. For example there are two colleagues that come to my mind. One uses too much strength, and is sometimes quite reckless with his flailing fists. I use this  to spur me on to become better so that I can withstand and deflect his brute force attacks more subtley – in the Wing Chun way. So he motivates me to train more and work harder. The other guy has been learning Wing Chun for only a year but he has improved (and still improves) tremendously. I like this guy and think he has a good attitude. He really gives me a run for my money. I don’t mind as much if he gets the better of me, because he is using good technique and not brute force. Nevertheless, I still use the experience to motivate me to improve my skill. He is improving so fast that I really have to train regularly and be on my toes.
• Go to seminars/workshops and use them to spur you on. You don’t want to show yourself up in front of all those people you don’t know, do you? Get training!
• Prepare. You can do this on two levels:

1. You can prepare what you will train the day before you actually train. This means that you don’t run out of stuff to do halfway through. A few times I’ve been scratching my head thinking about what I should do next and instead of continuing, I’ve just left it at that and stopped training that day. Don’t give yourself time to think. Plan every minute of your training. Now I arrive at the gym and I know I’m going to spend 15 minutes on a warm up, 15 minutes doing Tsum Kiu, 20 minutes doing Siu Lim Tau and then 25 minutes on turning exercises.
2. The other level involves planning your training that week. Plan to go to class Monday and Wednesday and also to train one hour before work Monday to Friday. If you do this, you won’t give yourself the chance to choose the Inaction Due To Uncertainty option.

Motivational Success

The above tips have really worked for me, so I hope they’ll be of use to you. The thing I’ve done that has helped me most is restructure my training timetable. I used to squeeze 15 minutes in before work started, and think that that was enough. Now, I schedule in an hour before work and stick to it religiously. Because it’s consistent and substantial practice, I can actually feel myself improving and that makes me feel like I want to do more.

I’ve also started chi sauing with people outside of class and that helps with the training you can’t practise on your own.

Another big motivator is the upcoming Wing Chun residential. I don’t want to get destroyed by the daily 90 minute siu lim taus that are on the cards, so I’m putting the hours in now.

Let me know if you use different ways to motivate yourself and I’ll steal your ideas, publish them here and take the credit

As expected, Sammo Hung brings exciting fight choregraphy to the Ip Man movie. Donnie Yen puts on a great show of speed and accuracy when he takes on ten Japanese fighters at once. This is possibly the best  fight scene in the Ip Man movie, with Donnie Yen demonstrating his grappling and chain punching prowess. Towards the end of the fight, there is a shot of Yen chain punching a Japanese fighter all the way to the ground! Nice.

Other fight scenes see Donnie Yen fighting with a pole and a feather duster (a la Jackie Chan make-do style).

There are not too many fight scenes in Ip Man, owing to the fact that the film’s intention is to portray the events of Ip Man’s life. It is not supposed to be a non stop fight fest. Nevertheless, let’s cut the yada yada and show some Ip Man fights!

Ip Man vs Sifu Liu

This is more like friendly chi sau than a fully fledged fight, but it’s excellent nonetheless. I love it. The other guy didn’t stand a chance. Whaddya mean it’s not real?!

Ip Man vs 10 Black Belts

The title sums up the action and there are no prizes for guessing the outcome of the fight.

Northerner vs Kung Fu Schools

Check out the new kid in town. He fights his way through the towns top martial artists in less than 5 minutes. OK, I know it’s flashy, but all those showy moves are just too unnecessary and a waster of time and energy. What he needs is a lesson in Wing Chun Just Enoughness.

Ip Man vs Northern Kung Fu Stylist

Ip Man displays minimalist movement here when fighting the new guy in town. He throws some nice looking Wing Chun shapes. Feather duster mayhem ahoy! I hear that Ip Chun is thinking about introducing a feather duster form to complement the six and a half point pole.

Factory Workers vs Bandits

Having been forced to do one hour siu lim taus every morning, the factory workers are not the easy target those banditos anticipated.

Fight For Rice

These looks like the seeds of revenge being sown.

Ip Man Ultimate Fight

You know Donnie Yen (sorry Ip Man) meant business when he rolled his sleeves up! There was never really any doubt about who’s fight this was. But wait – was that a spinning back kick that Ip Man did at 2:05? I don’t remember doing that in the forms! Love the bit where he uses the general as his own wooden dummy.

I’m feeling quite pleased with myself this morning because I did a half hour siu lim tau. I’m going to the Wing Chun residential course that my club runs in May and I was talking to one of the guys who had been to others in the past. He gave me scary stories about doing siu lim tau for one and a half hours, not just one time but every morning! This is a 3 day course so that’s 3 lots of 90 minute siu lim taus.

There is no way I can manage that at the moment, so I was stirred into action. My usual long SLTs last around half an hour but I don’t do them often. I usually do a few 20 minute SLTs a week so I thought I’d better start building up. From talking to other people who do long sessions, there seem to be some common ‘symptoms’ that you shouldn’t worry about if you are trying to extend your practice too. The following are quite common and don’t imply that you are a wus.

Meet Mr Shaky Legs

Around 20 minutes in, my legs started trembling from the strain. I thought it was a visible shaking, but when I looked at my legs in the mirror it was almost imperceptible. After a few more minutes the trembling became constant, which was a really weird sensation. I’m used to simply stopping whatever strenuous exercise I’m doing when I start trembling. For example, when bench pressing, you don’t go on much longer after the first tremble. So I think your mind is conditioned into expecting the exercise to stop when you start trembling, and indeed, there is a tendency to stop when this happens.

But you can go through it. I spent the last 10 minutes of my practice with my legs shaking constantly. It was a bit off putting, but I managed.

Sore Shoulders

Because I’m an anal pedant, I have to time everything so that I know that I’m spending the same amount of time on my right side as I am on my left. I don’t want one side getting stronger than the other, at least not through my dodgy training. So I spend 2 minutes extending my tan sau/fuk sau and then another 2 minutes retracting my wu sau. That’s why my siu lim tau lasts a little over 30 minutes. Of course, after 2 minutes of extending your tan sau/fuk sau and trying to pull your elbow in, your shoulders are going to feel sore. Don’t worry. That is the point. In time you’ll be able to pull your elbows in more and more, thereby offering yourself more protection whilst your arm is actually relaxed.

Resting Your Fist

While one hand is doing the fuk sau/wu sau cycle, the fist on the other hand rests at your side. If you’re not careful this fist will want to press against your side so that your side supports it. Ideally, you want to have that arm support itself and have the fist merely brushing your side, but on long siu lim taus, it’s OK to rest it a little before moving it away so that it’s no longer supported.

Can’t Walk Afterwards

Bit of an odd one this. After standing in that stance for over 30 minutes, when I’d finished I couldn’t walk. The first few times this happened I thought I was doing it wrong. I’m sure my posture is OK though, otherwise sifu would have corrected it in class. My thinking is that the more I do it, the easier it will get. Obvious, huh?

Anyway, after staying in stance for that length of time, if you are stiff I would advise a very gentle return to normality. What I do is just stand normally with legs relaxed but straight for a few seconds first. This in itself is a great relief after being in stance. Then I walk very slowly for a few yards and stop. Do that a few times. Then I bend over to touch my knees very slowly. Having stood straight for half an hour without moving, my back is a little stiff too. Then I stretch up and point to the sky. It’s important to do all these things as gently as you need to. My knees suffer a bit sometimes so I rub them for 30 seconds, front and back.

Over the course of around 5 minutes of gradually walking more and more and doing gentle stretches, I’m just about back to normal.

The Aftermath – Jelly Legs

Even now, an hour after The Trauma, my legs are like jelly. That’s normal when you push yourself though.

Finding The Time

30 minutes to do one siu lim tau is a bit of a sacrifice. I could be training all sorts of other things in those 30 minutes. But doing this kind of siu lim tau is very beneficial, so I need to find some balance. I don’t want to do it so infrequently that I don’t get stronger than I am, but I don’t want to do it so often that my other training suffers. I think what I’ll do for now is a few 20 minute siu lim taus and just one long siu lim tau every week.

Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method

I’ve just received my copy of Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method, and I’m salivating over it! I’m only on the first page, but this book is already stirring up concerns and uncertainty I have about certain aspects of martial arts training. Bruce  Lee geared his training towards being “fighting fit”. If an exercise improved his endurence, power or speed, he would perform it. I’m currently reading about the aerobic element of his workouts, and it seems that he thought this a very important part of anyone’s martial arts training.

Training Conflict

This contradicts my club’s philosophy on training in which “cardio workout” has no place. Don’t get me wrong, our training can be very physically demanding, but the exercises we do are in the traditional “standing on one leg until it hurts” school of pain. And also, I’m not dismissing the benefits that these kind of exercises bring. Our physical training comes from doing, among other things, 20 minute siu lim taus, standing on one leg whilst circling the other slowly, performing one legged siu lim taus etc. Yet many other wing chun practitioners include a lot of physical exercise that isn’t necessarily “martial”. Bruce Lee did massive workouts and was a great advocate of building functional muscles.

Personally, I’ve always loved doing exercise. From the age of 13 I would do press ups and sit ups every night without fail, and I used to sprint round my paper round. About 8 years ago I discovered weight training and so I replaced my daily pressup/situp routine with a more structured and rounded weight training plan. I’ve dabbled in other martial arts in the past (tae kwon do, tang soo do,  some weird made up style of kung fu and ju jitsu) and they all, without fail, placed importance on the physical exercise side of training. Strength and stamina are important in a fight.

At my club, the emphasis is placed squarely, even solely, on developing skill. Muscle power is taboo. In one way, this does make a lot of sense as the whole wing chun concept enables the smaller person to beat the bigger, stronger attacker. But surely there is something to be gained from training to become more powerful. I mean, Bruce Lee did it with great success. I’m in a quandary at the moment. On the one hand I want to continue training for strength and size (I know, pure vanity!) but on the other, my sifu discourages this kind of training. He says that all the exercise you need is in Wing Chun itself.

I used to accept that, and I used to think that Wing Chun included all the training I needed, but perhaps simply accepting without testing is a little narrow minded of me. I liked Bruce Lee’s approach. He questioned old masters and tested traditional ways of doing things. If something didn’t work, it was rejected. If it did work it was absorbed. Bruce Lee also spent a lot of time researching the benefits of different types of exercise and he kept what worked. Through his training, he developed massive amounts of power.

MMA Training

Look at the training that the top dogs in MMA endure. OK, I know that they are training for extreme situations, but they are living proof that the fitter you are, the better you will fight. And some exercises are better than others at preparing you for a fight

I’m not suggesting that Wing Chun students incorporate Wanderlei Silva snorkel style methods into their training routines…

… but I think training to improve endurance, speed and power is a good thing.

Call me cavalier, but I’m going to have a look around at other training methods. I don’t believe that Wing Chun is enough – from a training point of view anyway, and certainly not at my low level of skill. It may be enough from a skill/technique/efectiveness point of view, but something inside tells me that if I were to supplement my forms and technique drills with exercises designed to develop speed and power, I will fare better in a fight.

With that in mind, I’m going to be paying a lot of attention to Part 1 of Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method. It’s all about basic training and the table of contents includes sections on aerobic, warming up, flexibility and abdominal exercises, stances and footwork. But the two sections in Part 1 that have me drooling the most are those on power training and speed training. And there are 60 whole pages on those two subjects. If doing extra curricula exercises such as these will improve my power and speed, then I want in!

Interestingly, there’s a thread going on MartialTalk discussing weight training and Wing Chun training.

I’m reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” and I’m really enjoying it. In this book Gladwell discusses what the magical ingredients of success are. Contrary to popular belief, it takes more than just individual merit to achieve success. And we’re talking about success on a grand scale here, as in that of Bill Gates, for example.

Opportunity And Cumulative Advantage

Certain individuals are presented with opportunities not available to everyone. Taking advantage of those opportunites and working extremely hard generates more opportunities for them. The advantages gained accumulate. Gladwell describes Bill Joy‘s story. He was given access to computers in the early 1970s at a time when they were a rarity. He lived, breathed and dreamt programming and usually worked into the night. This was when he was a student. At that point it was just an interest. But when the personal computer market exploded a few years later, he was well placed to take advantage of it because of all the experience he had gained. He went on to co-found Sun Microsystems. Opportunity + hard work = success, simplistically.

However, taking advantage of even the most widely available opportunities that are open to everyone will give rise to more opportunities and more success.

Lucky Students

For example, consider a person who becomes interested in martial arts whilst at University. All that free time, it just makes you drool doesn’t it? A typical student has masses of spare time that they can use in any way they wish. They could easily train for 2 hours a day and ist still would not impact on VDT (valuable drinking time).

Now look at the favourable consequences of training so hard. Skill develops more quickly in the dedicated practitioner than in the lazy one, and so he or she is invited to attend courses that the others are not yet ready for. Access to more training! And so it snowballs. That extra training gives an advantage over those that don’t receive it. The dedicated student who trains more than their peers gets invited to seminars, demonstrations and eventually becomes their sifu’s chief instructor. Of course this privileged position leads to even more opportunities. And this all starts with one opportunity – the opportunity to train hard – that is available to most of us. OK, time constraints are a big issue for most of us, but are there some opportunities that you are not taking advantage of?

Training Is Like Being Given Money

Malcom Gladwell’s book and my recent focus on increasing my training hours has shaped my current thinking on training. I don’t want to miss an opportunity! I can see training as being like picking up money from the floor. Imagine the floor being covered in dollar bills. You can pick up as many as you want and stuff your pockets full of them. However, some people limit themselves to just picking up 2. A little time goes by and then they pick up another 2. Meanwhile, their friend is busy filling his pockets. This is how I see training. The hours you put in are the dollar bills on the floor. You wouldn’t just pick up a few bills and stop while there were more on the floor, would you? Similarly, why would I do only a little training when I could do more. With the bills, the more you pick up the richer you get. With training, the more you do the greater your skill becomes.

I used to do minimal training. A mere 15 minutes a day. I’ve easily changed my routine so that I now do one hour a day. The extra time was always there, I just didn’t take advantage of it. The more you train, the better you get. It’s so simple, and yet incontrovertably true. There is no way around it and there is no substitute for the hard work you put into your training.

Talent and natural ability? Give me someone who has “natural ability” and I guarantee that if I train three times as hard as them, I will get better than them. Maybe not by a factor of 3, but I will get better than them.

Wing Chun Opportunities

Wing Chun Residential Course

This morning I paid for my place on the upcoming Wing Chun residential course. It costs a lot of money but I can afford it and I would be a fool to miss the chance to train so intensely. I’m told that the formal training goes on between 10:00 and 18:00 but then attendees often chi sau until midnight, so that’s a big opportunity for improvement! Also, we’ll be covering Baat Jam Dao, the Wooden Pole, the Wooden Dummy and all three forms. These are things that are not covered in our regular classes. I’m kicking myself for missing these residentials in the past. I foolishly convinced myself that “slow and steady” was the way to go – i.e. attending only the weekly classes, but doing so consistently. Duh!

Chi Sau Before Class

One of the guys I train with can get to class nearly an hour before it starts, and I can too. We’ve arranged to meet up early and chi sau. That’s an hour extra! I can’t contain myself, I’m going to have to break something!

There Are 3 Classes Per Week

I used to play stupid mind games with myself. I’d say to myself, “Well, you’ve been to class on Monday, so you don’t really need to go on Wednesady too”. Duh! With that attitude, making 3 classes a week was near impossible. The classes are there for the taking. Why only pick up one dollar bill when there are two more on the floor?! Obviously, things will come up and there will always be unexpected events that mean we can’t train when we want. But barring exceptional circumstances: train, train, train!

I feel better for getting that out of my system. Thanks for listening!