Obasi Saga Continues - Obasi Talks!

Thanks to a fellow reader, I was forwarded this clip of Obasi sharing his thoughts on the recent events of crossing hands with Boztepe, Ng and Williams. If you haven`t yet, you can catch the whole story behind the Obasi saga and the corresponding video clips here.

So here Obasi speaks about what happened with Williams, Ng, and Boztepe and he makes a great point - that each situation was very specific within their own context and cannot be compared to each other.

Granted that`s the case, he does provide his own opinion on who he felt had some considerable skill or at least made an impression on him.

That said...does it matter what this guy says? It's not like he's a benchmark of wing chun..or is he?

Regardless of what he says, can we treat (from an observational level) this a rough estimate of the skill levels of the various teacher's Obasi has crossed hands with?

Obviously the best way to get a better read on his skills is to cross hands with him personally. Obasi, you game? ;)

Why Do You Practice Wing Chun?

In my last post, I asked you how you’re able to keep your motivation up for the art. This time I want to take a look at the other end of the spectrum and ask you why you practice wing chun.

Well, let’s look at why I train.

Let’s hammer through the primary reasons – I consider this very wing chun specific:

I wanted to learn how to defend myself in a non-sport oriented manner

·        I wanted to learn a Chinese boxing system

·         The simplicity of wing chun makes sense to me

·         Wing Tsun (roots in EWTO) was perfect the balance between Chinese boxing and Western thinking/approach.

·         I hate training in the low horse stance found in other kung fu styles.

·         I’m not particularly athletic enough to do the high jumping spinning kicks

·         My teacher was the only person that I’ve experienced that could actually apply wing chun in a combat situation as opposed to many other teachers that just show off pretty katas, forms or their trophies.

·         My teacher kicked my ass the first day in class. Where do I sign up?

But let’s go into the next level of benefits I get when training

·         Wing tsun training teaches you to let go of that ego (getting hit and allowing to get hit does that pretty quickly)

·         All the demos I did with Sifu back in the day and the classes I’ve helped, teaches you public speaking skills and being sociable.

·         It  develops self-confidence  (especially when you start noticing the moves start working)

·         It creates a level of physical awareness that other sports/physical activities cannot develop (eg. rootedness, structure, sensitivity developed from sticky-hand training)

·         Relaxation under pressure is huge. There’s always an underlying nervousness under high pressure situations (either physical confrontation or even in a board room negotiation setting)..but it’s not a panicky nervousness..but instead a “Let’s do this” type of nervousness.

Now from an even broader perspective as to why I train wing chun..

·         WT builds character.  WT is not particularly easy to learn, in my opinion. There are other combat arts out there that can get you up and running in terms of just fighting much more quickly.  Wing Tsun forces the body to work in counter-intuitive ways and your mind/reality has to get around that.  It certainly has its challenges and experiencing those moments build character.

·         You (Me) need a life beyond work and loved ones! Wing Tsun adds that other dimension to your life, developing you into a well rounded person.

·         It opens your social network. You meet a variety of people in class, all great people from different backgrounds.

·         It adds to your social value. Think of yourself as a product worth X amount of $ (I know, horrible example, but please bear with me..), adding wing chun to your menu increases your value – you know how to defend yourself, it creates character, self-confidence, ability to relax under stressfull situation, to be more sociable, etc – altogether it contributes to raising that $ value.

So now I ask you, why do you train?