Happy new year everyone! My apologies as it
has been TOO long since I’ve last posted.
The second half of 2013 has kept me away from my blogging adventures but
I’m back and boy do I have a post for you today..
Well, many of you may know this guy, Victor
Gutierrez of the WT lineage (now no longer with the EWTO). I always liked his stuff and here’s a cool
youtube clip that I particularly enjoyed showing off to people who aren’t
familiar with WT.
You can see he’s quite aggressive, yet his
attacks flow well.
But then I saw this clip of him now.
Without any additional context to this
video, I have to say I’m absolutely disheartened by what I saw. RUBBISH I tell you.
It’s really a shame.
And if a guy of his WT caliber produces
crap like that..what’s to say for the rest of us normal folk?
I don’t know if he’s intentionally trying
to wrestle or if this is what his WT looks like a free sparring environment.
The guy is also clearly tapped after as
well.
But let’s assume worst case scenario and
that he was trying to use WT but fell into a wrestling mode. You can quickly
see how fast your energy dissipates during a free sparring situation (not even
a real fight!) and you can see how easily the ‘strength reflex’ kicks in.
I think both of these factors are
absolutely normal and also why I feel there’s a lot of value in sparring.
I don’t think our class does enough of this
and yes, while there are great arguments against sparring, I do think that as a
conditioning exercise or drill, it has incredible value.
If for some reason, we can preach a form
that utilizes a pigeon toed stance as something that builds wing chun structure
or we can justify all the merits of doing tan sao at such and such an angle and
holding it there for a certain period of time, yada yada yada – why is it we’re
so quick to ignore the merits of free sparring?
Like with any drill, sparring has its
weaknesses, builds bad habits, etc but at the same time, it also brings about
many other benefits (adrenaline, uncooperative partner, reveals how fast the WT
skills fade, etc).
I’m curious to know your thoughts in the
comment section.
Until then.
