Surprisingly, I returned from the Wing Chun instructors’ course feeling deflated and disappointed.

There were tests of my knowledge and I failed some that I thought I would pass easily. Ha ha, a dented ego! Of course, this jolt is good for me. It’s made me look again at the things I thought I knew. The problem with practising things over and over again on your own is that sometimes you become blind to your mistakes. You stop seeing what you are actually doing and there grows a distance between how you perform a technique/form and how you imagine you perform it. At least, that’s how it was in my case.

So the course was good in that it has destroyed my complacency. It was good for other things too, like forcing me to look more closely at what I’m doing, even if what I’m doing has been practised to death. To examine it meticulously.

Although not billed as a chi sau day, I couldn’t just stand around and not chi sau with all those available seniors I’d not practised with before! Club members from all over the country were present, so there were a lot to choose from. Any spare moment I got, I asked someone to chi sau, and mostly with chi sau strangers. It’s much better to touch new hands than familiar hands when you get the chance. Of course I got beaten up by everyone I chi saued with! Interestingly, though, I found myself learning while chi sauing. After getting slapped a couple of times whilst using ‘wrong hands’ I had to adapt on the fly to avoid getting more slaps.

Wing Chun Instructors’ Course Learnings

It would be quicker for me to say that I need to work on everything! But here is a breakdown of the detail that I need to brush up on:

• Siu lim tau. It’s ‘basic’ I know, but there is so much detail in it that it blows my mind, like precisely what are the important points when performing a jam sau. You can do it, but can you define it?
• Tsum kiu. I didn’t expect it to be perfect as it was only a short while ago that I started learning it. Good job, because it wasn’t perfect.
• Theory. By theory I mean things like lineage etc.

My experience here highlights the importance of going to class regularly so that technique can be corrected. Though necessary, it’s not enough to only practise for countless hours on your own. You need to regularly attend class so that any problems are identified and any mistakes you make are corrected. You might think you are doing everything right, but you need an objective opinion, or as objective as you are going to get, from your sifu to verify that that’s the case.

So that’s 3 classes a week for me forever then!

Chi Sau With Seniors

On a lighter note, the chi sau with the seniors was excellent. I practised with one guy who was built like the proverbial but whose footwork was excellent. He moved really well. He was pretty strong with his strikes too, but had quite light hands. It turned out that he was a sifu himself and had had his own class for around 4 years. Knowing that, I wasn’t too disappointed in my (relatively) crappy performance.

Warrior number 2 had a very slight build and looked like he was only 20! But wow, he was all over me, dishing out 3 or 4 strikes whenever there was an opening. Excellent technique. He had very soft hands and proceeded to take me apart at his leisure.

Executioner number 3 was quite tall, same as me and was built well, but again he had very soft hands that applied no pressure when we rolled. Like the others, his footwork was so much better than mine that he was able to attack me from all sides while I clumsily turned to fend him off.

The footwork and softness of hands of those seniors was admirable. It’s good to meet up and roll with