I’ve started doing my Wing Chun training in the gym near where I work. I don’t like an audience, but I’ve found a room that never seems to get used when I’m there. It’s ideal. Unfortunately, the lights seem to be on a timer/motion senser. This means that after five minutes of there being no movement in the room, the lights go off. There are no windows, so the room is plunged into darkness. Any further movement switchs the lights back on.

Guess who uses that room to do their siu lim tau in? Yes, of course, it’s me. So five minutes into my siu lim tau form, I find I’m in the dark. This, ordinarily wouldn’t be such a bad thing. In fact, I find it quite calming and restful to do siu lim tau in the dark. Except that I time my form and the watch that I hang in front of me doesn’t have a dial I can see in the dark. Calamity.

So this lunchtime, I nipped out and bought a clock that displays the time using bright red LEDs. Problem solved. The fact that I’m buying ‘special equipment’ to aid my Wing Chun training motivates me all the more.

Despite the inability to time my siu lim tau this morning, I still managed to stretch it out to 30 minutes, so I was really happy about that. I must say that my knees are really stiff after that, and it takes maybe five minutes of gentles walking to get the stiffness to subside. No pain, no gain.