The Hardest Technique to learn!
In the beginning, martial artists were able to learn this technique easier than their modern day equivalents, as they used to practice their arts in real life situations significantly more frequently than today.
What is ‘The hardest technique’ to learn; well we believe it understands your fear! Within our Wing Chun training, our Sifu's (instructors) actively encourage us to go and experience this aspect of fighting / training or what ever you want to call it.
Fear is a very individual experience, and it will affect and change a martial artist's outlook and ability to use what they have learned in these high charged situations.
How can one learn to utilize their fear? We are not saying you should be able to control or remove fear from the fighting equation, as fear is a very important part of our martial arts arsenal of techniques. Understanding, utilizing and knowing what happens to yourself when these feelings and sensations begin to well up through out your body, is another technique that needs to be learned by any martial artist. In addition, one cannot be taught to you in drills or standard training within your comfort zone of your style or club of martial arts.
We feel this energy channeled correctly can give a practitioner of martial arts the sharpness and edge to deal with any situation. However, not training, or understanding this aspect of martial arts and any fight situation, can lead to one losing in these real life situations, as you can loose what you have been taught, freeze and not adhere to the basis’s of your chosen art. The fear aspect will take over and rule the techniques you have learned. Therefore, a martial artist needs to train in this area, as well as the traditional attack and de fence moves learnt in your lesson or classes.
How can you train in this area? You can encounter real life situations where you can experience theses emotions and feelings. However, in the modern world this is not acceptable. Therefore, a martial artist needs to create this situation him or her self. The best way our Sifu’s (instructors) and we have found to do this is to visit other styles of martial arts and spar with instructors or senior students.
The visiting of other clubs unannounced is not aimed at starting an inter club war, to close the clubs down or even show or prove who, is the best martial artist. It is to gain knowledge of fear. When you decide to go to another club, you start to get all the aspects of fear building up inside you. The butterflies in your stomach, you go quiet before hand, you are more introverted than normal, these are some, but not all of the pre fight aspects of fear that we have encountered. We have sparred within our own club, from light to very heavy sparring, with no protective gear worn at all, but this does not produce the same feelings inside you, nowhere near the levels of fear that arise from visiting another club unannounced.
Why are these levels of fear flowing through your body? Because you do not know what is going to happen when you get to the other club, as they could decide to do anything and you have to be prepared for this and these levels of fear are flowing through your body, and you need to be able to understand and utilize this energy.
When you first begin your sparing at other clubs, it is to gain the understanding of what happens to yourself in this type of situation, and how this then affects the sparring situation that follows. Later on, when you have been through this situation a number of times, you recognize the fear and understand what it is going to do to you, how you and you alone can utilize this energy that will pulsate throughout your body. Then when the sparring (or fight situation in real life) begins you are comfortable with this energy flowing throughout your body, you fully understand it and are able to utilize this added energy to give you the edge.
In our quest to learn this, the hardest of all techniques, we have come across a varied response from other martial arts clubs in letting us spar with them unannounced, from yes to getting very upset that we have come round to their club or association, some of these no's have been surprising, as these clubs have prided themselves on dealing with real life situations, and then have not taken the opportunity to test and try out this aspect of training, within the added safety of their own club, and easily out numbering us, only two guys wanting to go round and improve our martial arts. Us guys from Wing Chun coming around to your clubs is not a dishonor to you or your association we are only trying to learn this aspect of the martial art, which we feel cannot be learnt in the safety of our own club / association. In fact, it should be taken as a compliment that we are coming to your club to try to better our skills and learning. What we are trying to do is understand the fear and the energy this gives you before and during the sparring.
Paul and myself (Peter) and the rest of the guys from Wing Chun who have been accepted into other clubs to learn this aspect of the martial arts journey, thank you for letting us understand and to be able to utilize this aspect of any fighting situation.
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