Good afternoon.

 

Since I have been teaching almost non-stop for the last few weeks it has meant that, despite my best intentions, I simply haven’t had the opportunity to post. I will be, therefore, trying to get you caught up with all the recent events that have happened.

 

To start with, on last Thursday I taught the class in Bromley. As you know I do not teach beginners, and teaching class is the exception rather that the rule. However, I decided to check the class to see how the students were progressing and make sure that they were making the most of their time in class. It was with this in mind that I decided that they would have the same traditional Chinese style class that takes place at my weekly teacher training. (Although all the schools and classes are taught in the traditional Chinese method some classes are invariably harder and more traditional than others). The class started with the special breathing method that the ancient masters used to improve both the energy levels and build the health. Combined with this was the fact that the students had to stand in the stance, using the appropriate force to build up the legs stronger and more dynamic. This only lasted about 20 minutes, but unless you have trained this regularly you will find that it is very hard to do this correctly for even 3 or 4 minutes. Anyone can roughly stay in the stance, but very few people actually stay sunk in it in the correct position while using the right muscles (and consequently they gain very little from the stance even if they do it for many years).

 

The class then did 2,000 punches (bringing my weekly total to well over 20,000). As I believe in making the most of the time available, this was followed by detailed theory of Wing Tsun, allowing time for the muscles time to recover. The theory behind the art is all too important - without this it is impossible to know what you are actually trying to achieve and how to achieve it. It is one of the things that saddens me most about the current climate; everybody wants to learn the techniques and be fast and strong etc, but hardly anyone takes to time actually study what they are doing and the background to it. The teachers and I are doing our part to try to change this.

 

The last part of the class dedicated to improving techniques that have been taught in the last few weeks. These were trained at full speed and power, with different dimension on the applications. After this, there would normally be a break for 5 minutes before the second class started. However, I wanted the students to go for a run (incidentally I forgot to mention that when the teachers did the 12,100 punches they also went for two runs – 1 before the punching and 1 at the end of the training). No techniques are of any use if you don’t have any stamina behind them and running is the basis of every martial art. I have to confess the students did not have an easy time; I tend to run at quite a fast pace and they had to run up the very steep Bromley Hill (twice!). When they arrived back in class they had a 5 minutes cool down and then spent the next 40 minutes training the forms, making sure that they corrected their mistakes. This was followed by another application and we ended with another 1,000 punches.

 

No-one ever said that learning Chinese Kung Fu was easy, and nor should it be. It requires time and dedication. However, after the class I could see that each student really felt that they had achieved something. It also just goes to show, you never know what you will miss out on if you don’t attend class. If you consistently make the effort, no matter how tired you are, it will pay you back far more…

 

Sifu