Arms Like An Orangootang

At the last class I found myself chi sauing with someone who was much shorter than I was. I'm 6'2" and have arms like an orangootang so really I should have had quite an advantage. And to start with I did. We started chi sauing and I guess we were compromising on the height difference so that our hands could meet, but surreptitiously he would lower his hands and I would follow. Before I knew it (and I didn't realise until my partner pointed it out), my hands were much lower than they should have been. This was good for him, but my shape was all wrong and I could no longer take advantage of my super long arms and height.

Accommodating Your Partner

I find that I, and for that matter many people, have a tendency to accommodate their opponents. How many times have you simply followed your opponents hands, even if they are off centre and the best thing to do is simply go forwards down that centre? I think that to a certain extent this is a natural human response. Someone leads, the other follows. In hypnosis, the hypnotherapist matches the subject and then leads him or her (think pacing and leading). That's it - I was hypnotised goddamit! And maybe I'm not joking... In chi sau your unconscious mind takes over your actions: you no longer break things down into components and say to yourself "she's punching forward so I'm going to pak it". The pak isn't instinct, it's a learned response that over time has become an unconscious one. And following hands is an unconscious response to your opponent's actions.

Unlearning Unconscious Habits

The trick is to observe what you are doing when you are doing it and stop it. It sounds so simple, but as you know, it is the hardest thing to do. Correcting unconscious routines that you perform on your own is hard enough. You tell yourself before you start a form that the way you've been executing your gang sau for the last 2 years is in fact wrong and it needs to be completely different. And over many re-iterations of the form you can keep correcting it until it becomes a new unconscious pattern. But that's learning in the comfort of being undisturbed by an attacker who is trying to knock your block off. It's much harder to stop ingrained habits with a distraction like this.

Of course it's hard work. That's what makes it so good.

Pattern Breaking

I've just thought of another example of people accommodating their partners hands during chi sau. Changing from inside to outside and vice versa. This is an often performed transition and you become so familiar with your partner doing it that you eventually stop seeing the openings there. When he/she makes that switch, it's an ideal opportunity to strike. Sometimes the switch is so sloppy they leave the centre wide open anyway, but because we are so used to the transition taking place, we accommodate it. Did I say 'we'? I meant 'I'. Except that I've started to wait for these moments of change to strike. Now, I'll just roll with my partner and wait for them to do somethig - anything - and then strike myself. And it seems to work.

I had an interesting exchange with someone recently about how much to train. Interesting not so much because of what he said, but because of my reaction to it. This guys has a few videos of himself demonstrating Wing Chun and although I don't usually participate in all this 'social networking' business, in this instance I thought I'd reach out and connect with this like minded individual.

So I sent him an email via youtube complimenting him on his skill and asked him how much he trains and how he structures his training. I thought I'd offer him my training routine (however small!) first so he wouldn't feel shy about revealing his training secrets, but he politely avoided the question. What he did say though was this:

• never look at training in terms of time as Wing Chun requires a different kind of attention. The point he was making was that it's the quality of training that matters, not the duration
• He could practise for 15 minutes focussing on perfecting techniques, somebody else could practise for an hour and the two training sessions wouldn't be comparable

While I agree that quality beats quantity hands down, why not have both. Obviously, you need to be heading in the right direction for any volume of training to be useful. There is no point in training a technique badly over and over again - and that woul be harmful to your skill. But.... as my sifu always says: "More practice". How else can you get better? The more you practise - correctly - the better you get. This is how it works in everything.

I've just started learning Chum Kiu, and I'm damned if I'm not going to practise what I've learnt over and over again until I'm doing it in my sleep. And every class I go to I'm going to check with any senior around that I'm doing it correctly. This is how it works: you get taught in class, then you go away and practise it to perfection. You go back to class, what you've been practising gets corrected and when ready you get taught more stuff. But you need to put the hours in.

And it's not just techniques that get perfected through the hours of training. Where would my gung lik be if I zipped through my siu lim tau in say a couple of minutes? I've heard scary stories about how my sigung makes his students take a whole hour over siu lim tau on his residential courses. People shake, people feel dizzy, people vomit - but their gung lik gets stronger. OK I didn't hear of anyone vomiting, but they did shake and feel dizzy. And their gung lik grows.

More practice!

OK, I'm pretty bouyant at the moment. 'Bouyant' - what a polite understatement! At my Wing Chun class tonight I think I passed The First Test. Sifu asked me to do siu lim tau while he watched. He then asked me what the first section was for (developing gung lik), what the second section was for (developing fa jing) and what the final section was for (practising application). Though when he first asked me, I didn't know what the third section was for. Part of the test involves the student being asked what the application of certain techniques is. After being asked how to use a hoon sau  and another technique I don't know the name of (although I knew both applications), the penny clicked and I realised that the final section of siu lim tau is for ..... practising the application of techniques.

It was weird because it wasn't formerly announced that this was 'The Test', so I'm assuming it was. Sifu showed me and another student chum kiu, which we then practised over and over so I think I did pass the test. Thing is, I'm too scared to ask in case he says no and I have to stop doing chum kiu! What a coward. We did it about 20 times in class and then after driving home I've done it another 10 times just to get it to sink in so I don't forget.

I'm going to do it another 10 times before I go to bed, just to make sure, and then that's what my morning practise will consist of too. It's not quite accurate to say I feel like I've just started learning, more like I've just found the start of the path. But it required work to find the path. Look at me, now I've started learning chum kiu I'm talking riddles.

This is going to mean another revision to my training plan! I'm going to have to do chum kiu at least 2 days out of the week, but I also don't want to have to give up any of the siu lim tau I'm doing. Something has to give. I'm going to have to give up my job!

It's taken me a 2 years and 9 months to get to this point and to tell the truth, I wouldn't have minded if it took me much longer before I started the new form. I hate the idea of ascending the heights undersevedly. I know I've not ascended heights just yet, but you know what I mean. I want to have really earned what I get. If I'm not ready, I don't want to 'move up'. I want to practise more, get better, and move up only when I'm ready.

Gotta go. More chum kiu to do!

It's not actually the whole of chum kiu we did, just the first half. I'm over the moon regardless. Chuffed to bits. Ecstatic. Made up. Gobsmacked. Reeling. Buzzing, man.