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!