Chi Sau is a major component in the Wing Chun curriculum. Chi Sau can become an obsession to many Wing Chun practitioners. One of the most significant ways to get better of Wing Chun Chi Sau is to put ‘Time in the Pattern’. But the big problem is that if you just ’spend time in the pattern’, you will be gaining very little in the way of advancement.

If you want to get better at your Chi sau, you need to train intentionally. Sometimes the best thing to do is to find a partner that you can work with, and is willing to help you work on areas of your Chi sau. Some of the things that you can focus on:

1) Lines of Force
2) Footwork
3) Coordination flows
4) Individual techniques
5) Facing
6) Centerline

It’s important to remember that Chi Sau is a total sum of individual parts brought together into one motion.

Hey All,

As a martial arts school owner, it is amazing to see the different types of people that come to visit the classes. Some come for their personal interest in either the Wing Chun or in the JKD, others for self-protection, others for health benefits and others still for the social aspect. Each reason is good and valid and knowing why you are there to train is probably the most important thing to know.

Every once and a while I get people who come in and are focused in wanting to learn, time has no real meaning, as focus, dedication and sweat drive them to learn and master a particular art or skill. Others come with a ‘Dim Sum’ or ’sampler’ mentality. I’ll train in this art for 2 months, then that art for 2 months, and dabble with another art off and on over a couple of years.

While I love variety, I think not really focusing on and trying to master something is more of a waste of time and leads to confusion or a false sense of skill and understanding.

Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘Wait a second, aren’t you a Wing Chun and JKD guy? Didn’t Bruce look at what was useful and disregarded what was not?’ You’re right in both accounts, but you misunderstand both me and Bruce Lee. I have spent the last 10+ years learning and focusing on Wing Chun, as an art in and of itself.  I have also been focusing on my JKD training for the last 3 years. When I train, I may only work one aspect of an art (Wing Chun chi sau, tai chi pushhands, kali stick/knife drills, weapons sparring, etc), and dedicate time in actually trying to understand the drill, the fine and broad strokes, and trying to refine my understanding and application of whatever I’m training.

Even Bruce spent hours and hours (hundreds or thousands of hours) working a particular skill, refining it, testing it, re-testing it, re-refining it. Then and only then would he examine it to determine if that skill or technique was part of who HE is and HIS expression of movement. This is what Bruce Lee meant when you ‘Accept what is useful, and disregard what is not.’

So, learning a drill in 30 hours is not mastery or understanding of the skill, nor are you able to make an educated decision on if the skill is useful to you or not. Rather what you have is the ’shell’ of the drill or a superficial understanding, nothing more. To help support this, did you know that scientists have proven that the average person will need approximately 1,000 hours to be ’skillful or advanced’ in a skill, but 10,000 hours of dedicated, focused training (not half-hearted training) to truly master a skill. So if you trained 3hrs a day everyday without missing a day, and actually focusing on learning and refining the skill, it would take you approximately 9 years, think about that.

So with that said, as the old kung fu phrase goes, ‘Be wary of the man who practices one technique 1000 times, and not the man that practices 1000 techniques only once.’

Keep Training, Keep Learning!

Hey All,

I hope all of you have been enjoying the Christmas Season (or Whatever you celebrate). As we come to the close of another year, I caught myself pondering. As a ‘Modern Martial Artist’ and teacher, I wondered if I gave my best in my teaching, training, and most importantly of myself to others.

We can at times rush through life, never really enjoying the journey that we are on, be it martial arts, music, marriage, family, work, etc. And in this economic down turn, we should start to focus more on the friends and family that we have, and not the things we wished we had. As I train and teach more, I find that my greatest enjoyment comes from spending time with my students, just talking and sharing in their lives as they share in mine. So many of us forget that while martial arts is what draws many of us together, it is the friendships and relationships that we forge in training that helps to make us a martial arts family and better people.

As we train, we need to ask, “Am I leaving a Mark on this World or a Stain?” And as martial artists if we follow the Wu Te or Bushido (Martial Virtues or Martial Code), we should be striving to leave a positive mark on this planet. As we train we learn to conquer our own fears and accept our own weaknesses. With this realization we should also see that everyone around us has fears and weaknesses. With this realization we should be more humble and compassionate to those around us, always trying to follow the higher road of peace, before being forced down the road of violence. It is so easy for all of us to take the easy road and knock people down (emotionally, mentally and even physically), but I ask, “Is it better to be Kind or be Right?”. Will ‘Staining’ this person’s life really achieve anything? Will mercy do a better job?

So as we come into a New Year ask yourself a few questions:

1. “Will I leave a Mark on this World or a Stain?”
2. “Will I strive to take the higher road and bring people up, or just knock them down?”
3. “Will I try and leave people the better for meeting me, or regret ever knowing me?”

Many Blessings and Best Wishes to you and yours in this New Year!

Keep Training, Keep Learning, Keep Praying,

Chuck

Hey All,

Just an update with what’s been going on since I last wrote you all.

 As I talk to various people, including my students, about self-protection (and not self-defense, I’ll explain the difference later), opinions vary, as well as the solutions are sometimes complicated. But when they ask me for my opinion, I keep telling them, ‘Keep it simple stupid.’ And then proceed to share my perspective of self-protection. Before I carry on, I want to tell you why I think self-defense and self-protection are two different things.

When you use the term ’self-defense’ it brings to mind all those ‘martial arts’ moves we’ve been trained in or seen in movies. This is a very limited in my mind. It only addresses one problem, what to do when you have a physical threat. Also, the idea of ’self-defense’ implies a passive or reactive state, and not a proactive or active state. And we all know that action is quicker than reaction. With ’self-protection’, this opens a more broad view of the problem. This brings into action things like ‘problem avoidance’, ‘environmental awareness’ and ‘body language’ to name a few. Also with ’self-protection’ this does include physical tactics to protect yourself as your ‘last line of protection’. Also as you may note that ’self-protection’ does not imply a passive or reactive state. In my opinion self-protection is a state of mind, body and spirit where self-defense is limited to a physical realm.

When I first wanted to address self-protection to people, I wanted something that was not limited to any specific gender or athletic prowess. Something that if only taught in one day could yield usable tools and continually refinable in everyday life. I needed something that would be easy to remember. So after much research I developed ‘The ABCs of Self-Protection’(c). With this, I had a program that interestingly enough can be taught to anyone, and used by anyone. What I am going to share with you are some concepts from my system.

One of the biggest tools you all have is your ‘awareness’ warning system. But this is also the one that we seem to ignore the most. I’ve taught people that you should always know who and what is around you. If you don’t like what’s around you change it. Trust your ‘gut’ or ‘little voice’. We seem to ignore this signal because we think we are being ’silly’ or ‘nervous’ or we don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. When I taught this, I tell people would you rather be wrong about your ‘feeling’ and be able to laugh about it later or ignore it and get into trouble and if you survive the situation say, ‘ I wish I listened to myself.’ Regardless of what I know in martial arts, I will always choose to follow my feeling than have to say, ‘I wish had ….’ Here’s a personal real life case in point:

I was in Montego Bay, Jamaica with my wife, as we got ready to cross a street I noticed two guys at the corner, one guy was showing his buddy a 6 inch straight razor he had. I noted their descriptions and wrote the incident off as the ‘Hey check this out…..a buddy showing his latest ‘toy’ and said to myself, ‘Welcome to Jamaica.’ There were other tourists around and crossing the street so we continued on.

As we walked down the busy street, one of the guys (the one without the razor, I’ll call Mr.’One Blood’) came up from behind and came to my side saying, ‘One blood, ire, blah, blah, blah….’ complete with hand jesters. Through all his jesters and talk I didn’t slow down a single step. My gut was telling me, ’something’s up’. I noticed immediately from my research and training that this guy was doing the ‘interview’ process and setting me up, I quickly changed my handgrip on my wife (this later became a signal she’s gotten to know that I don’t like what’s going on, as well as tactically it allows me to get my hands free even is she tries to clamp down on me). So I brushed him off quickly and started to scan for his buddy. As Mr. ‘One Blood’ started to fall back, I noticed Mr. ‘Razor’ following about two people behind us. I quickly turned my wife around and we started walking back the way we came. I did my best to keep one person between us as we passed Mr. ‘Razor’. While walking back I saw Mr. ‘One Blood’ leaning on a post watching and he said to me, ‘What’s wrong man, you scared to go down there?’ As we kept walking past him I replied, ‘No, but I’m not that stupid either.’ I quickly got us back to a location that had more security and police wandering and told my wife, ‘We’re going back to the cruise ship now.’ She saw the look in my eyes, and said, ‘okay, but what happened? What’s with that guy’s comment?’ I told her that I would explain everything once we were on the cruise ship. I later told her the whole thing and she was shocked to find out.

So to make a long story short, I trusted my gut, I had my training/research which just reconfirmed what I was feeling. I later found out that in Jamaica pale skinned redheads are very ‘valueable’, and wouldn’t you know it, my wife is a pale skinned redhead. So if I didn’t trust my gut/instinct and ‘ruined’ or outing to Montego Bay, we could have been mugged or worse. So, I’ll take the slight possiblity of being ‘wrong’ to live and play another day.

So to make a self-protection a short list ‘Awareness’ is key. If your feelings are telling you something isn’t right, assume it’s not right. Change it, if it’s someone you’ve met and your feelings are telling you something isn’t right, get away from that person, remember it’s better to disappoint someone or hurt their feelings to keep safe, than to negate your feelings and worry what they think only to be in danger later.

Until Next Time,

Keep training, Keep Learning!

Hey All,

I was teaching a little while ago, and while we were working on a very active pushhands drill, everyone was doing fine and enjoying the training. I left the room for a minute and hid two rubber knives under my icegear shirt (a body tight athletic shirt) and reentered the room. I then when on to do pushhands with one of my students. Everything went well, until I pulled out the rubber knife (without his knowledge, or awareness of the others). I then continued to push and ‘cut’ him a few times before I raised the rubber knife in front of his face. When he recognized that it was a ‘knife’ his eyes went big and he froze for a second or two.

I then stopped the training session and explained to my students, remember your context when you train. If it’s a game (or sport) that’s great, but if it’s ‘practical self-protection’ or ’street protection’ know the difference. And if you don’t know, either ask the instructor, or better yet, always assume it’s street. While you don’t have to ‘break’ limbs or go for ‘illegal’ targets, be aware of them when they are available.

Until Next Time,

Keep training! Keep Learning! Keep Praying!