IT’S A QUESTION OF PRACTICE

During class I always welcome questions. It shows that the students are thinking about what they are doing, and, using their already gained knowledge, they can see alternatives. Brilliant stuff I think, in it’s place that is. What gets to me is when I have just demonstrated the technique that I want the students to practice only to turn round and find them doing something quite different. They then utter; “Why can’t I do it this way? Or “What’s wrong with doing it like this? Etc. You teachers will know exactly what I’m saying. The answer to most of those questions, generally, is; “Yes you can do it that way” or “No, there’s nothing wrong with that technique”, etc. BUT!!! THESE ARE NOT THE TECHNIQUES THAT WE ARE PRACTICING NOW!!!! Just do as your told until you get the mechanics of the thing first, then play with it to suit you and the varying heights, builds, speed, power, etc. of the various people that you partner up with. My reasoning for this attitude is mainly twofold. A) The student is to lazy (or whatever) to try something a bit more difficult B) they are struggling to work it against the person that they are partnered up with at that moment. That can easily go the other way when they change partners when the original technique now works. At this point some of you out there might be saying; “Well why not let them do that now with this guy, then change it for that guy?” NO!! They have proven to me that the technique that they wish to do instead is already with them. They already know how to apply it. Leave that one for the moment and practice a new skill. That’s why we are here. Most of the time they can eventually apply the new technique against almost anyone. If they would just persevere and get it right. What a lot of people seem to forget, especially the ‘Realistic Self Protection/Defence guys, is, this is training. We are trying to develop our skills. Widen our arsenal of techniques. All those guys that believe that you only need a couple of good techniques well practiced generally end up with a wake up call when ‘old faithful’ lets them down. It has happened to me. If all you have is a hammer, then every problem is a nail. You can’t pre-emptively strike everyone. You never always get the chance either. Try the techniques in class under controlled pressure, see how you do. This is the best place to make your mistakes, not the street. Regardless of how you train, everyone has a handful of favourite techniques anyway, but you still have a plan B should it all go wrong. And remember, you train WITH your partners, not ON them.

Please let me know your thoughts on this guys, as I still make mistakes too.

Paul.

TRADITIONAL IP MAN WING CHUN KUNG FU

Wing Chun focuses on close range fighting. It strives to overwhelm the adversary at the very first opportunity, rendering them unable to retaliate effectively. Of particular advantage to practitioners of this system is the ability to respond instinctively whenever one’s limbs are obstructed or in any way pressed, dragged or jammed-up by an opponent. This high-level skill is developed and enhanced through the training drill known as Chi Sau (“sticking-hands”), and when trained to an advanced level, can even enable the Wing Chun fighter to attack and control when the eyesight is obstructed. The hands literally learn to “think for themselves”, thus further adding to the ability of the Wing Chun practitioner to work the close range effectively.

Thursdays 6.30-8pm at the Pilmeny Youth Centre, Leith.

for more information on this and other classes please check out our site; www.combatarts-scotland.com

 

 

Change now!!!

There is one thing that 99% of “failures” and “successful people have in common-they both hate doing the same things. The difference is successful people do them anyway.

CHOOSE BETTER

It’s amazing how life will organize itself around the standards you set for yourself. Some people think they’re the victims of other people’s behaviour, but in reality, we have control over how other people treat us. If you tolerate disrespect, you will be disrespected. If you tolerate being underpaid and overworked, that’s what will continue for you. Why tolerate this? Are you not better than that? Don’t you want more out of your life? As the saying goes; “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.” Sometimes life can be a struggle, an uphill battle to get what we want, or where we want to be. Just like a runner hitting the wall, we must push on for the reward, for growth. Hitting the wall isn’t an obstacle, it’s an opportunity. When you hit the wall in your disciplines, training etc., realise that’s when you are separating yourself from your old self. You are moving up to the next level. Don’t compare to anyone else either. View yourself as your toughest competitor and you’ll multiply your results much quicker. In order to do all this we must stay awake during our days. Most of the time shit happens to us because we spend our days ‘sleep walking.’ We are not aware of what’s going on and our ‘stuff’ doesn’t shove you in a direction; they nudge you ever so slightly over time. You have to make good, conscious, choices to get where you want to go. We all come in to this world the same; naked scared and ignorant. The life we end up with is simply an accumulation of all the choices we make. In essence, you make your choices, and then your choices make you. Every decision, no matter how slight, alters the trajectory of your life. You alone are responsible for what you do, don’t do, or how you respond to what’s done to you. The difference between becoming fabulously rich, happy, healthy, or broke, depressed, and unhealthy, is the choices you make throughout your life. Nothing else will make the difference.

Remember this; You cannot see what you don’t look for, and you cannot look for what you don’t believe in. Believe in yourself, you’ll trust your judgement, you’ll trust your choices. Make them good.

Paul.

GRATEFUL CHANGES

The past explains how you got to where you are now. But where you go from here is entirely your responsibility. The choice is yours. Like a broken record, you can keep on playing the same old tunes of the past; re-living past injustices; feeling sorry for yourself for past mistakes; all of which just keeps re-affirming and programming failure patterns and negative feelings which colour your present and your future.

Or, if you choose to, you can put on a new record to affirm and re-programme yourself with success patterns that’ll give you a good, positive attitude which will help you do better here in the present as well as put you on the right path for an enjoyable future.

A simple place to start is to make yourself a gratitude list. Make a list of, say, around 5 things that you are really grateful for. Not things that you feel you should be grateful for. Ideally make this list last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Also, ask yourself two questions; 1) What have I done well? 2) What is do I like about me? Put this on a post it and stick it on your bathroom mirror so that every time you brush your teeth, wash your hands etc., you will see it.

We can only grow as big as our thoughts. We are defined by our thoughts. We are the result of what we constantly think about all day long. What you think about most is what you are likely to become.

Stay positive and take responsibility for your own world and never project blame. If you do, you lose your personal power.

And smile a lot.

Paul.

Wise words.

“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.” – Jim Rohn

 

“If you don’t have the time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over.”  – John Wooden

 

“We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end to them.”  – Seneca

 

 

IT’S DOWN TO BASICS

Because of the boom in MMA and self defence/self protection classes, more and more people are starting to question the need for drilling basics. By basics I mean going up and down the hall (line work) punching, kicking, combinations etc. You know what I mean, the bit where some students find it boring and others struggle to keep up because they are unfit.   I believe that basics are a must!!!                                                

Given that people presumably make their own way into my class I have never really figured out why they can no longer seem to put one foot in front of the other when they first start. Nevertheless, some line-up work exposes those difficulties immediately and you can work on putting it right. Basics can help develop fluid coordination of movement.

I have found that when you pair people up straight away and try to get them to do a technique, they are far more concerned with, for example, getting someone to the floor than they are with getting the technique right. Now I know that ultimately, that’s what we are all more concerned with but the class is the place to try and get it exactly right so that you have half a chance of doing something half decent outside when the adrenalin kicks in. Make your mistakes in the class, not the street. Basics can help with drilling precision of movement.

A lot of Wing Chun is overly and unnecessarily complex because of instructors adding stuff in to either increase their syllabus, more gradings, or simply because they don’t know the complete system in the first place. However, while there may be a ton of techniques, there are far fewer basic postures, movements and structural positions that make them all work. Basics can help ingrain these simple patterns of movement. Drilling works. It’s why the military do it. Drilling means that once you can no longer rationally think and you lose control of fine motor skills, (adrenalin, fear, exhaustion), your body will do what it has been drilled to do. Drilling basics can help ingrain the basic patterns of combat structure and movement.

From what I have seen, a lot of styles will teach people to punch simply by holding up pads and having people hit them (I know I am generalising here and I do so to make a point). And that approach undoubtedly works. However, Wing Chun takes a different approach. What Wing Chun does (or is supposed to do) is break the punch up into its component phases of trigger, release, impact. Basics are only concerned with the trigger phase of a punch – with the alignment, relaxation, torque etc, needed to fire that shot out like a bullet. You cannot train the release this way as with no target, you need to slow the shot down immediately to avoid injury; and you cannot train the impact phase – that’s what the wallbag, pads and people are for. However, if you fail to put all three elements together, you’re punch will be weak. Basics are meant to be done as well as impact work, not instead of. Used in this way, basics can help develop genuine impact power.

Finally, it is my opinion that you need a degree of intelligence to train in a ‘traditional’ art such as Wing Chun because you need to be able to see the bigger picture. The Wing Chun approach to combat is basically to split it into tiny little pieces and attempt to perfect them all independently. So we have basics, Forms, Form based sparring, free sparring, Dan Chi, Chi Sau etc. all taught (at least initially) almost as separate units so to speak. But if you are to have any chance of using Wing Chun to its potential as the real fighting system, which it undoubtedly is, you need to be able to piece all of these separate elements back together again to make the whole.

You see some people who have just developed on or two of the elements, say sparring, but no Forms/Form based sparring – these people often believe, truly believe, that sparring is the closest Wing Chun element to real fighting. You get other people who do virtually no sparring (often within the same style as the previous lot) and concentrate on Forms and Chi Sau in the firmly held belief, that these elements are the closest Wing Chun elements to real fighting. Further, you get some clubs that have bought into the 90% of fights go to the ground nonsense and place their emphasis there; others believe that no one could get them to the ground in the first place and so ignore it and concentrate wholly on stand-up.

But of course the ‘truth’ lies somewhere in the middle of all these things. For me personally, most of my experience away from the class has come from doorwork, and in that scenario, ‘fighting’ is much more like Form based sparring, than it is sparring. Usually someone squares off, tries one big technique and you are required to deal with it and incapacitate as soon as possible – Form based sparring. But, although rare, I have ended up exchanging blows with people in a free flowing format – like sparring; and, although rare, I have ended up- rolling around on the floor with people ground fighting style.

The fact is that to be a good all-round fighter you need all of it and basics is to my mind one of the component parts of developing a good fighter.  Just don’t fall into the trap of doing basics just to be good at basics.

Train smart, train hard, then test, test, test.

Paul.

 

Guru Maul Mornie Silat seminar

Come and train with the great Maul Mornie here in Edinburgh on the 29th and 30th of October. the seminar will be held at the Police HQ, Fettes, Edinburgh. 10am-3pm.
If you are serious about self defence and martial arts, DO NOT MISS THIS MAN!!!!
Cost is £80 for both days, £45 for one.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Maul565

Please check out his clips, you will be impressed.

For more details contact Paul on; 07827314974
www.combatarts-scotland.com

A WORD IN YOUR EAR ;-)

Even if you are ‘predisposed’ to being overweight, you’re not ‘predestined’ to be fat. You may have learned helplessness through genetic determinism.

NEED TO STAY LEAN ON THE ROAD?

Fill up on low fat foods like fruit, nuts, or beef jerky.

Nuts are high in calories, but these are mostly derived from healthy unsaturated and not saturated fats. Fruit can be high in sugar, but eating it alongside a high protein buffer, such as beef jerky, helps to slow the release of Insulin and keep your blood sugar balanced. This also keeps you in a good mood.

Just go easy on the portions.