The last two weeks have been horrendous for training, with last week being especially bad. Problems at work have meant that instead of being in the gym doing Wing Chun at 7am, I’ve actually been in the office working at that time.  And this is working without a break until 6pm. I’ve only managed one class per week, which I suppose isn’t too bad, but I really felt the absence of the morning sessions.

However, the crisis is over (for now) and I was back in the gym this morning.

More Cardio!

With my routine getting back to normal again, I’ve decided to change the focus of my training. Instead of dedicating my gym time exclusively to Wing Chun, as I have been doing for the last 5 months, I’m going to compromise and include some “proper exercise” too. My Wing Chun training doesn’t include any aerobic exercise and I think that that’s an important component to consider. My job is sedentary in the extreme and so I need a structured approach to getting aerobic exercise, otherwise I just won’t get any. Therefore, in the 90 minutes or so I have in the gym before work, I’m going to balance things out by reducing my Wing Chun time and increasing (err… starting…) my cardio time.

This morning, for example, I did the following:

• 5 minutes walking on the treadmill as a warmup
• 15 minutes on the stair machine for aerobic exercise
• 5 minutes doing pressups and situps for brick-like pectorals
• 20 minutes siu lim tau

For the sake of vanity, I thought I’d do something about getting my pecs back, hence the pressups! Well, the holidays are coming, after all…

Provisional Training Timetable

Here are my thoughts on how I’m going to split my Wing Chun training with my conventional gym training. Monday, Wednesday and Friday will be my cardio days, consisting of routines similar to that outlined above. As I get fitter, I’ll increase the stair machine time (or time spent on a similar aerobic machine). Tuesday and Thursday will be weights days. Yay!

The cardio exercise will be easier to combine with the Wing Chun because after 20 minutes of earobic exercise I’m merely out of breathe. In contrast, after a hard weight training session, my muscles are quivering like jelly and thoroughly exhausted. Imagine holding out your tan sau still after you’ve wreaked havoc on your biceps doing curls! This means that whatever Wing Chun I do on the weights days must come before the weight training. No problem.

Because I’m only doing two days of weight training, I’m going to do full body workouts on those days. Otherwise I’ll be training a particular body part only once per week.

Ha ha, I was checking my traffic stats just now and it appears that someone found my site after searching in Google for “chi sau does what”. That just cracked me up. To me, this sounds like someone who is completely perplexed by the whole idea of chi sau and just wants to know what its purpose is. I can imagine, and clearly see in my minds eye, someone watching me do chi sau with my partner, and wondering why on earth we aren’t actually hitting each other properly. Well, for at least one  person out there, here’s my take on Chi Sau Does What!

Chi Sau Is Not Sparring Or Fighting

Chi sau is merely an exercise in which you practise with the help of a partner to develop the following:

• correct technique (bong sau, tan sau etc). Yes, you may be able to defend against your partner’s attack but what hand is that? Are you using proper hands?
• good footwork – you move around in response to your partner to adopt the best position.
• range. This could possiblybe linked with footwork. I had a wake up call recently when someone pointed out that although I’d laap saued them deftly and snapped out a precision perfect punch, I actually couldn’t reach them. My fist was still a few inches short of their face, with my arm fully stretched and at the time I was thinking I’d been “successful”. I realised that for a while now I’d been thinking I could hit my partner when really I was out of range. Duh.
• sensitivity – you must be able to feel accurately what your partner is doing and respond automatically, and quickly, in the most appropriate way. Obviously, automatic responses can only develop from much practise.
• softness. Strength is not usually the best response, at least not brute strength. Better to redirect your partner’s force, which is especially important if your partner is stronger than you. It’s very interesting to see what happens when you try and maintain your softness when practising with a partner who does use strength. I’m still finding it difficult, because, of course, my ego gets in the way! My ego will not let me appear to come off worse against someone who is “doing it wrong”. Duh x 2. I need a mindset change. Every difficulty presents a learning opportunity, and in a case like this it’s better to remove emotions entirely from the equation.

Chi Sau Misunderstood

I’ve seen chi sau competitions on Youtube. The ‘competition’ aspect comes from the fact that you score points when you hit your opponent. So the chi sau tends to degenerate into a wrestling match. I say degenerate, but actually it starts out that way.

The whole idea of “winning” by getting a strike in is contrary to the chi sau ethos. Yes, there is some value in sparring, or even full contact practise, but that is different from chi sau.

Not many tan saus in ths one: