During the last week, I've been Tsum Kiu mad. But I've changed my training tactics in a subtle way. Ordinarily, I would do the whole form in its entirety maybe 10 times in a practice session. This is not a bad way to go. Practising more is the road to perfection, after all.

Over the last week or so I've been really isolating small sections of the form and I've been focusing on those. For example, after the opening sequence of Tsum Kiu, we do 4 jun mas (turning).  Instead of doing 4, I've been doing 10 to really polish the technique. There are several places in the form where you can just keep repeating the movement more times than usual, and the places I've been focusing on are (in order performed in the form):

• 4 jun mas become 10
• 3 palm strikes become 11 (you need to keep the number odd to use the correct hand on the subsequent waahng laahn sau
• 3 turning bong saus become 10
• 4 stepping bong saus become 10 - or however many you can fit in the space you have. You don't need much space for the turning bong saus because you don't travel, but you are restricted by how far you can move in a straight line on the stepping bong saus.
• 4 dai bongs become 10 - or, as with the stepping bong saus, however many space restrictions allow.

I find that isolating and repeating movements in this way really helps to, firstly, scrutinise what it is you are actually doing and, secondly, to tweak it. Close scrutiny makes for better fault finding. If I've discovered that my turning bong sau needs changing, simply performing it 3 times as per the form is not enough to embed the "new way" into my muscle memory. I use the term"muscle memory" simply because it's an idea that most people are aware of, but there is more to it than that.

If I need to, I'll repeat the bong sau 20 times or more. Sometimes it takes that many repetitions to get it right and then get used to the feeling of getting it right. If I limit myself to only doing 3 turning bong saus per form, then I have to wait the entire length of Tsum Kiu before I get to practise the bong sau again.

Also, doing many repetitions gives you a chance to identify faults you'd perhaps not noticed before. Last week I couldn't make my mind up whether my upper arm was high enough in the bong sau. It went like this:

• bong sau 1 - look at that bong sau, it's the mother of all bong saus. I feel invincible. I'll just send a photo of my bong sau to all potential enemies. Maybe bong sau t-shirts to advertise my deathly skill...
• bong sau 2 - yep, not bad that bong sau.
• bong sau 3 - my upper arm is trailing down a little though, it looks a bit low. Hmmm.
• bong sau 4 - actually, I'm not happy with that at all.
• bong sau 5 - I'll raise my upper arm a bit and see how that looks. It looks better, but it feels weird because I'm not used to it being that high.
• bong sau 6 - same bong sau as last one. I'm not sure...
• bong sau 7 - I think it looks better. Maybe I'd got lazy and just hadn't noticed how low my bong sau had become.
• bong sau 8 - it's starting to feel more "natural". i.e. the more times I do it now, the more comfortable I'll feel with it.
• bong sau 9 - yes, now I'm sure this is the True Bong Sau.
• bong sau 10 - this is definitely better than my previous bong sau, which, it turns out, was a mere imitation of the mother of all bong saus that I've now developed.

It's good to have a little variety in your Wing Chun practice, but this exercise has more value than merely adding variety. Already, the close scrutiny encouraged by performing numerous repetitions has helped me to identify crapness and correct it. And not only correct it in the current iteration; the large number of repetitions allows me to get more familiar with doing the technique properly, so I'm more likely to preform it like that as a reflex action.

This idea of "isolate and focus" can be transferred to other areas of practice too. You can break down Siu Lim Tau into smaller sections and repeat those till you do them in your sleep. It's the same with the dummy, too.