Inevitably there have been some changes in my approach to my Wing Chun training since I decided to return to weight training. The extra demands on my time mean that some adjustments to my routine were necessary, but there are also changes taking place to my body.

The Effect Of Weight Training On Wing Chun

The first change is in how my body feels when I train Wing Chun. Previously I'd usually felt relaxed, straining and shaking Siu Lim Tau legs aside, but now my shoulders ache and get tired more. The weight training is doing that. When I, as a lot of weight trainers do, train in the gym, I do the exercise to failure so that the "gains" are greater. If your muscles ache the following day, this is a cause for rejoicing because then your muscles will grow more as they recover! The downside is that when I pull my elbow in during Siu Lim Tau the strain on my shoulders is more painful than before. This is not a show stopping problem, just something that causes discomfort.

Likewise, when I'm chi sauing for any length of time, my shoulder muscles suffer. I'm predicting that this is a temporary problem just from past experience of weight training. The next-day-aching is the goal but eventually your muscles get so used to the exercise that this aching disappears and you "plateaux". This is why weight trainers vary the exercises and routines they do; so that they can get work their muscles in a slightly different way, and getting the next-day-ache is a signal that you've pushed yourself. I'm thinking that after a short while my body will have been conditioned enough that there won't be any aches the following day and I won't have such painful shoulders when I do my Wing Chun.

Optimising Your Wing Chun Time

The second change is a sad one really. In doing more exercise I've had to sacrifice Wing Chun time. Instead of doing  an hour of Wing Chun every morning, as I did for the first 6 months of this year, I'm now doing just 2 sessions per week of maybe 30 minutes each. This is just to fit 3 mornings of weight training and two mornings of cardio combined with Wing Chun (the cardio serves as a warm up before my Wing Chun practice). I've experimented with doing some Wing Chun after weight training, but that is just laughable! My muscles are so exhausted that there is no way I can do anything with precision! I never noticed that before.

Actually, this was a sad change as I've now found a room that I can practise in at work in my lunch hour. This is excellent news because it means that I can virtually reinstate that lost Wing Chun hour. It appears that you can have your cake and eat it. I can weight train and train Wing Chun. Even on my weight training days, my muscles have recovered sufficiently by lunchtime so I can then train. I've just done 20 minutes of Tsum Kiu in the Secret Room and boy do I feel better for it. Scared the **** out of the secretary when she came in for some paperclips though...

Over the past few weeks I've been practising one particular thing over and over again to improve my coordination. The meaning of coordination changes from one subject to another: in football I suppose coordination might be specific to the ability to do things like run, pick up a ball and pass it quickly. In Wing Chun, the coordination I'm talking about is the ability to put combinations of techniques together in a smooth and flowing manner.

The combination I've been practising is this:

• tan da (tan sau block and simultaneous punch).
• yan jeung (palm strike) with the tan sau hand. Other hand becomes a guarding wu sau.
• pek jeung (chop) with the other hand. Other hand becomes a wu sau.
• Repeat on the other side

All the strikes are performed against an imaginary foe directly in front of you. At first the movements may seem strange and you might feel uncoordinated. It's important to break down the movements and perform them so slowly that you perform them correctly. Speed is not important at this stage. Only when you can perform the movements correctly should you try and speed things up. There's no point in being able to do lightning fast strikes with sloppy technique.

You may never find yourself in a position where you can use a tan da - palm strike - pek jeung like this, but that's not the point of the exercise. The aim is to become familiar with the transition between techniques with alternating hands. The fact that you can flow smoothly from a palm strike with one hand to a chop with the other means that you will be able to flow easily from a punch with one hand to a palm strike with the other (more or less!).

I remember when I first started WIng Chun, I felt really awkward doing even simple tasks like punching with my left hand. It felt awkward, simply because I'd not done it enough times. Through repetition, though, you can build familiarity with a particular technique so that you can use it at any time, quickly and efficiently.  Through building familiarity with how the technique feels, you can know when the technique is appropriate to the situation you find yourself in. Without that familiarity, you may find yourself trying to showhorn a technique into a situation that just doesn't fit.

Variations On A Theme

I've tried putting the focus on different things when I do this exercise, like the following:

• turning (as in Tsum Kiu) when using the technique. So with left tand sau, you turn to the left etc.
• picking one technique and increasing its power in that technique only. For example, put the power into the punch only. The difficult one for me to put power into is the palm strike  after the tan sau. It takes a concerted effort to make it look like I'm not just wiping something off!
• try and get a flow going so that all techniques are performed smoothly at the same speed, and there is no break between cycles.

After hammering the combination above for a few weeks, I'm amazed at the speed and ease I can now execute it. It now looks like I do kung fu!

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.

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

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!

Although the emphasis in my class is usually on good positioning via good footwork, good technique and not speed, I thought that today I would focus on hand speed. When I say hand speed, the problem isn't really that my hands are slow, it's that they are uncoordinated. There is a particular sequence of moves that we've had to practise a couple of times that thwarts me every time.

If you are executing The Move you start by chi sauing with both hands on the outside. When both hands are roughly at the same height, you perform a sharp jut sau with both hands to disrupt your opponent's balance. They should rise onto their toes as they are off balance and you take advantage of this by:

1. Covering both their hands with one of yours to trap them. They are both low after the jut sau, so this shouldn't be a problem.
2. Chop to the neck with your free hand.
3. Swap hands so that the chopping hand then traps their hands and the other hand chops their neck.
4. Rinse and repeat.

My sifu can do this with superb coordination and speed. I, on the other hand, can perform the jut sau perfectly so that my opponent is off balance ..... and that's it. There is no strike after that because I can't coordinate my hands. My partner gets off scot free.

The first problem I have is that I can't move my hands quickly enough from the jut sau to the first trap. The second problem is that somewhere along the way I need to chop with my left hand. I'm right handed and my left hand is really slow and awkward. This is not a good move in general for me!

So I resolved to practise something which I'm sure will help. There is a weights rack in the room at the gym where I practise and part of its frame is at a similar height to my opponent's hands. How fortuitous. This morning I spent 15 minutes on a very simple routine. I stand facing the weights rack squarely. One hand rests on the weights rack (mimicking the initial trap) and the other chops forward at neck height. The chopping hand then laaps down onto the frame whilst the other hand chops. Keep swapping hands in the way. I started doing 10 reps on each arm, resting, then another 10 reps. Then I just kept doing a total of 50, rest 50, rest etc.

At first when I chopped with my left hand, I was just flinging my arm forwards very awkwardly. After a few repetitions though, I became a little more coordinated. Towards the end the laap became crisper and snappier and coincided with the chop reaching its full extent. Nice! The left is still a little clunky, but I reckon if I spend 15 minutes on this every day for a week, it will make a big difference.

In contrast, my right hand when it chops makes it look like I've done kung fu before

My current wing chun training regime requires me to do my training before work just to be able to get an hour in every day. I get up at 6am and start training at 6:40 in my gym. Training so early has its pitfalls, so I thought I would list them here and also list my solutions to problems I've encountered.

Preparation Is The Key

To avoid stumbling around the house half asleep looking for stuff I need to take to the gym, I pack everything the night before. This includes:

• gym clothes laid out
• gym bag filled and ready to go
• packed lunch
• carb booster bar for pre-breakfast
• water bottle

Then all I have to do in the morning is brush my teeth, put my clothes on and go. In fact thinking about it, if I sleep in my clothes in my car, all I have to do is wake up and drive! Necessity is the mother of invention. Being ultra prepared in this way has the added benefit that I have no time to talk myself out of training. No decisions need to be made, everything is ready. Clothes on, brrrm brrrm.

No Energy

Because of the food famine we endure when we sleep through the night (the way I made it sound like a crisis comes from my earstwhile interest in body building, where any interruption in feeding is deemed an emergency!), our energy stores run dry quickly in the morning. For that reason, I think we should eat at least something before an early morning session. The problem is, if you eat too much or you eat the wrong food, you'll feel sick when you exert yourself. Enter the chocolate chip oat bar. This isn't the kind of food I normally eat, but it's small and light and delivers a lot of carbs quickly. Because it's processed food, my theory is that its glycemic index is high and the carbs will be absorbed and ready to use more quickly. For that reason I'm willing to eat this otherwise crappy food and put up with any sugar crashes that hit me. Porridge is my breakfast of choice but oats take longer to digest and I only have 40 minutes between digestion and action. Digestion to action: wow, this is the James Bond diet!

Stiff Myscles

I can barely move when I get out of bed because my muscles are so stiff. Then I have 30 minutes of more inaction while I drive to the gym near where I work. When I walk through those gym doors, my body is still asleep. To immediately jump into any vigorous exercise, or even Siu Lim Tau, whilst my muscles are so cold and stiff would be madness. For this reason, I take the warm up period very seriously. Personally, I like to walk on the treadmill for 5 minutes, starting at 5.2 Km/h and increasing the speed by 0.2 every minute. Then I do a low intensity 5 minute warm up comprising gentle stretches. After that comes a slightly higher intensity warm up that consists of different kinds of swinging kicks. This warm up takes around 15 minutes in total, and although I'm still coldish relative to my body's state later on in the day, I'm just warm enough to start training (gingerly) with less risk of injury.

Manipulate The Sequence Of Exercises

Even after that 15 minute warm up, I'm still nervous about attempting something strenuous like Siu Lim Tau. Siu Lim Tau puts enormous stress on your legs and shoulders if you do it properly and for the length of time I like to do it for, so for this reason I like to do Tsum Kiu first. Tsum Kiu is not as pysically demanding as Siu Lim Tau and I find that doing it at normal speed is good for warming up the body. After 15 minutes of doing Tsum Kiu, I'm pretty much ready for doing anything.

Think About Rehydration

If you're training for an hour, you really should drink during that time. There is a water fountain in my gym, but to use it I'd need to leave my cosy little room, walk past all the other gym-goers on their assorted machines, get a drink and walk back. Unnecessary interruption! Instead I just take a bottle of water into my training room with me and save on those many walks to the fountain. I combine breaks between exercises with taking sips of water, texting my girlfriend and sitting in horse stance. Time is money, after all.

And Balance Is Buggered

I don't know about you, but this early in the morning my balance is buggered. Some of the exercises I do involve me standing on one leg, or turning (as in Tsum Kiu) and invariably I fall out of the stance like it's drunken monkey style and not wing chun. Actually, I look more like this guy when he gets up off the floor. I get really annoyed with myself and sometimes punch myself in the head when my balance goes but I know it's important to just accept the fact that your balance isn't so good when you're still half asleep. Threatening myself with an iron bar just seems to make it worse, so I'm trying to be a little calmer about things.

If you were to ask me how much training I do, I would tell you I do an hour of Wing Chun every morning before work, I do Chi Sau 2 lunchtimes a week for an hour each and go to 3 classes per week. However, this is only the plan. The reality is often different from the plan. For instance, I might have an impromptu mid week drinking binge that makes one of my early morning training sessions unviable (or so uncomfortable I just don’t bother). Similarly, my training partner might not be able to meet up for chi sau (and in reality, hasn't been able to for 2 weeks now). I might also have to change my evening timetable around due to unforeseen circumstances, meaning that I can’t get to one of the mid week classes.

Because my real number of training hours may differ from my planned number, I thought I would keep a definitive record of how much training I really am doing. I was shocked at how few hours I estimated that I’d put in during my first 3 years of training (a pitiful 429). Hopefully I’ll have a more pleasant surprise at the end of this year.

In this post I will keep a record of how long I trained, what date I trained and what my training consisted of. In writing it down, there will be no hiding from the truth!

I have a dilemma, though. Do I include my warm up in my training time? Because I'm still stiff from getting out of bed so early in the morning, I walk on the treadmill for 5 minutes to wake my body up, then do a gentle 5 minute warm up and then a slightly more vigorous warm up. Should those 15 minutes be included in my total training time? They probably should, but for the purposes of this 'study' I'll just include the Wing Chun specific training. For that reason, my morning training time will probably be less than one hour. I know I'm selling myself short but that's just the kind of guy I am. Modest. Yet capable. Like Ip Man .

I'm not ruling out using an excel spreadsheet for this, given that on a good week there will be 10 entries! A 520 row table might just fit on a web page...

Update: I give up with updating this table! I'm now using this wing chun training record in an excel spreadsheet instead. It'll make totalling up the hours easier.

Bruce Lee's Biography

I'm currently reading Bruce Lee's biography by Bruce Thomas. The fact that Bruce is so famous and that he is linked to Ip Man and Wing Chun make his story fascinating for me. What I particularly like is his single minded focus on improving himself.

Reading this book in bed last night, I reached the point where the author was describing Bruce's life in the early 1960s in Seattle. At that time, Bruce was training more than 40 hours a week! I had to read that bit again. 40 hours a week. That kind of time investment equates to more than the average job. At this point in his life, Bruce was a student at University, and so could afford this kind of time investment but that doesn't take anything away from how big a commitment this was.

If I could dedicate 40 hours a week to Wing Chun myself, I think I would struggle to fill the time. At the moment, I'm spending a lot of time on Chum Kiu, but even an hour of that is mind numbing. I would certainly have to get creative with the exercises I currently perform and devise variations of them. This way I could get the core benefit of the principle being practised, and the variation would make it more interesting.

From what I gather about Bruce Lee's martial arts history, he spent 6 years training Wing Chun with Ip Man and then spent some time intensively studying other styles of kung fu, including praying mantis. During his teenage years he had almost daily fights, and these too would have contributed to his martial arts experience. When he started his own training school, I'm not sure that he was still seeing a teacher of his own. I know that he would travel around and look at other kung fu masters, see what they did, question them and then take from them what was useful, or refine it himself until it was. This knowledge and also the knowledge that Bruce Lee created his own art (Jeet Kune Do) implies that he must have done his own experimentation with martial arts and developed his skill independently of a teacher. Through trial and error with the students he trained one to one, he was constantly refining his technique.

It wasn't long before Bruce became keenly interested in building mucle for speed, power and endurance, so I'm sure that many of those 40 hours would have been devoted to working out for functional fitness.

To maximise my training, the first thing I must do is identify 'wasted' time in my daily routine, with a view to replacing it with training time. For me this is difficult because nearly everything I do has a specific purpose. I. Am. A. Robot.  There are some areas I can address though.

Sleepless Nights

Often I go through periods where I find it hard to drop off to sleep at night. I go to bed and I just lie there, restlessly becoming more awake with every minute, even though I was tired when I first went to bed. This is wasted time! One option is to put back my bedtime by one hour and in the extra time do some Wing Chun practice. I don't think this would make me too tired because some nights I've lain there awake for a few hours and I coped the following day. Going to bed later would probably have the benefit of making me so tired that I did sleep properly.

The Curse Of The Internet

I love the internet. I spend loads of time researching things and contributing to a few forums. While this is not wasted time, I could certainly cut back on the amount of time I spend on the internet without causing any serious detriment to my life. For instance, when I get home from work tonight at 6:45 I'll switch my pc on and check my mail, write some posts on assorted forums and then get ready to go to my Wing Chun Class at 7:45. That's an hour right there! I don't necessarily need to do what I do in that hour. I could actually rationalise my time and maybe just do that in work time (naughty, I know) and the nights when I don't go to class.

I finish work at 17:30 but stay until 18:00 so that I miss the rush hour traffic. In that half hour I use the internet. I could, instead, use that time for Wing Chun. There's hardly anybody around, so I can find a quiet place to practise without feeling self conscious. That's 2.5 hours extra a week.

As with many things, though, it's a balancing act. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights are free and I could train then, but I would have to sacrifice other things like working on my websites, cleaning the house etc. I can't just give up everything else and devote myself to Wing Chun. Unless I get married

Get To My Wing Chun Class Early

My Wing Chun class starts at around 20:15 and I get there at 20:00. Invariably there is a spare pair of hands lying around that I can chi sau with and I always make good use of them. Instead of taking this haphazard approach to getting extra chi sau practice, I'm going to ask my kung fu brothers (ha ha, that term makes me laugh!) if they want to regularly arrive 30 minutes early to practise. That's another hour a week extra (the Saturday class goers are a little more erratic with their attendance - I shall address this in another post!).