CC

Are you a carbon copy of your instructor? Is this what your wing chun instructor wants to encourage in you and his class? I should hope not.

Do not seek to mimic your master. Seek what your master sought.

Your teacher should encourage your different expressions and interpretations of wing tsun, as long as you're not deviating from its principles, as well as encourage questions, criticisms, and observations. We are not bees, we are not robots. Self-defense and the act of fighting is always in a constant state of flux, and by mimicking what you've been taught instantly puts you at a disadvantage as you've completely ignored this concept of flux.

I think this is where I disagree w/ the one and only Bruce Lee and his view of classical kung fu. The kung fu is not classical - only the teaching methods. Kung fu in itself satisfies the principles and fills the gaps that he believed were missed...Instead, the principles were missed by the teacher and the gaps produced by his instructors teaching methods.

Interestingly, I do find that there's a lot of Bruce Lee carbon copies out there...anyway..I'll save that for another time.

The point for now, is that you should observe to see if your instructor fosters an environment of synergy - bringing together what you've learned (your self discoveries, observations, etc) with what your instructor knows to solve future problems during training..rather than hearing him say "no this is wrong", "this is right", etc etc.

Until then.

Are You an Effective Person?

7 Habits of Highly Effective People - By Stephen Covey

Altogether - the 7 habits take a principle approach, where all habits originate from a principle-based perspective to life, rather than a behavioural one. Much like Wing Tsun.

Interestingly, the author explains that "we" (as in society) have developed a mentality over the years of correcting behaviour, of doing what needs to be done to get results, whether that mean take communication workshops, motivational seminars, creating contests to increase competition to get a desired result. The idea here is that we've taken the approach that if we "work harder", "throw money at it", "tell it/him/ourselves what to do" that we can get results - unfortunately, this is not true.

Why? because it's all external. Changing one must come from the inside, from our own principles, from our own imagination of what we want to be and where we want to go. That drive, in itself, is what is required for real change. If that is not there, no matter how much external pressure is placed, the results are not obtained or do not last.

Same goes with Wing Tsun. You gotta wanna do it. You have to internalize everything. It's a mistake, in my opinion, to confuse your library of "emergency techniques" with actual Wing Tsun skill. Yes, one can teach you the double knife form, yes, you know the wooden dummy form, yes you've been taught by Bruce Lee - the point is, if you don't internalize your goals, your perspective, your "end in mind", Bruce Lee can't teach you sh*t. Your collection of all the technician programs is a waste of time.

So as an exercise (firstly, you have to want to do this exercise, and you have to truly want to be good at wing chun, and not just want to learn the "cool" stuff), try "internalizing" chain punches. Make it a part of you. Make it your only resource. Examine the hell out of it. Use it as your only solution. Pummel the concept of chain punches into to the point that chain punching is just "seaping out of your pores."

Do it right, I suspect, you'll have just exponentially increased the effectiveness of chain punching.