Are you familiar with the expression "in the zone"? It's usually used in sports where an athlete, in essence, is so focused on the task at hand and executes it so well that he or she can really do no wrong. Everything you attempt works, everything you do succeeds..and nothing can set you off those tracks.
It's also used in weight training where you psych yourself up and constantly remind yourself of what your goal is so that all you need to think about is pushing that weight.
Nothing else matters.
People around you, the variables that surround - none of that matters or enters the equation. It's just you and the objective. And when you're in the zone...things go your way.
So how can you replicate this effect in your wing chun training?
Thinking back at what my Si-Fu describes back in the days of his wing tsun training, where you train hours upon hours in a row, on the same exercises and drills..where things just become a blur..you don't think about the movements, the techniques.. it's just a mesh of whatever is in front of you.
Whatever pain you were feeling numbs.
Whatever aspect of time you had, dissipates.
It's just you and the drill..in the present now.
Is that the zone? How do you elicit this into training, if at all? or are we so focused on the details that we don't really allow ourselves to?
I'm curious to know what your thoughts are.
Until then.
1 comment:
I've had this sometimes, when I'm really tired. I once had a training where I'd slept very little and had a really tiring day. We were doing a drill from lat-sao, where the opponent could choose from several attacks to launch, and you had to give the proper response, without knowing the attack in advance. I was so tired I really couldn't "think" too much about anything.
My teacher put on his gloves and started testing everyone individually, launching attacks. Despite, or perhaps because of my tiredness, I managed to respond to everything instinctively without "overreacting", and reacting fast enough. He even took me in front of the group after that to do the same excercise again, as an example of how it should be, and complimented my reflexes.
It made me think of the taoist roots behind Wing Tsun. The idea of "not deciding", just applying your principles instinctively is something which might actually benefit from turning off your "active mind" and just trusting your reflexes, but it's very hard to instill in other people, especially beginners. They tend to overreact, hesitate, etc. Creating a natural, flowing sense in your fighting is something which can't really be "taught" in a conventional way, because you can't really teach a mindset. All you can do is try to guide the other person's mind in the right frame, but it's not a straightforward A to B process.
This explanation might seem a bit jumbled, but I hope you can tell where I'm coming from.
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