Writing down exercises.

What is a good way to write down exercises? How do you keep note of your partner exercises?

Unfortunately i can't draw well, so sketching is too difficult.

Jeet kune do

I came along this
article.
In summary it asks the relationship between Wong shun Leung Vingtsun and Bruce Lees Jeet kune do.
It has an interesting passage from an interview of Jesse Glover (in English) . Go check it out.
I remember when i trained jkd.
The instructors teached themself from the book.
Since they did not understand Chi-Sao they abandoned it!!!
I can't say that i miss those days.
The article suggests to train WSL Vingtsun to improve JDK.
Interesting philosophy.
Instead of mixing i would advice to search for an authentic teacher.
For example J.Glover for jkd.
Or Philipp Bayer for Vingtsun :-)

Point of stagnation.

Now training for years, and after meeting many sparring opponents i came to realize that the hardest enemy is one self.

With a constant training and continuous attempts to improve myself i recently hit the barrier of stagnation. It is the point where it seems that everybody but me  is making progress.
All this training, all the drills aim to increase the speed or/and  power.

Yet, it seems that the point of stagnation is unavoidable. This critical point is the point where you put in work but you do not get any return. You could say that it could be worse. You train and you become worse (overtraining) . However i think that's not true. Stagnation is worse since it annihilates your effort. In overtraining, after a break one often sees an improvement or at least the continuation of progress. That's very different when you stagnate. Whether you stop or you continue it does not matter.

I think this point is natural and is achieved in any art one performs.
I was frustrated and had to motivate myself just to keep up. It was even so bad that i considered to stop.

My hypothesis: its the natural way in perfection. Mastering any skill, any art requires to somr stoicism despite continuous doubts about oneself.

Fortunately i did not. I am now over it and its hard to pinpoint to a single experience. What definitely helped me a lot was a change of environment. I went to Vienna for a seminar and my Ving Tsun was surprisingly good for my condition.
I quite enjoyed the very high level in Dietmar Christl school. (He has "students" training for more than 20 years! )
It probably also helped that i kept saying to myself that stagnation is over.

I remember one of the elders saying that after a point you have to train just to keep your level and improvement slows down.
So just keep training.

Menorca September 2008

Yet another full week of training in Menorca.

Language for the Body / One hour lesson at Philipps place

I am visiting my parents in cologne every 2-3 months or so. With 1 hour drive its not that far from Philipp Bayer's place, so naturally I wrote him a mail and asked whether I could come over on a saturday for one hour training.

Fortunately, Philipp had to cancel that weekend a seminar and had time for an hour private lesson.
I was a bit excited since its like "elephant and mouse meets for a training session".

Well I arrived a bit earlier so I entered the training hall and started to do chum kiu for myself. Apparently Philipp was already around but told me that he needs some more time "since he is on landing course to menorca". WTF??? Since he is a pilot he keeps himself trained with a flight simulator. Good enough, I thought and waited working myself on the dummy.

Once he came I was warm and ready. I asked him for pushing and chi-sao and so we started.
After probably 20 seconds he said to me that it is likely to get tiring.....
After 20 seconds more I thought that it was probably suicide to ask for a private lesson. I was dying...

I am taller and heavier than Philipp but could not reflect his forces in chi-sao.
It is fascinating to experience force that results from a good stance (of course
its also frustrating in some sense...)

I felt bad since we had to stop every 5 minutes or so ( remember: I was dying...)
and often I could not keep up the speed and the flow.
On the other hand Philipp was commeting "live" during Chi-Sao / Goh-sao what
was a good and what was a "suboptimal" reflex.

Something I found remarkable:

Unfortunately, during the lesson, it was often just too much for me to focus on *but* I was able to perceive all actions of Philipp.

I wrote a year ago that he is too quick to understand and follow.

Now, I think that the more you train the more you can understand all actions you see.
Even more, it is enough that you see it _once_ and you immediately "understand".
Somehow, after training you "know" the vocabulary and you can "parse" the observed behaviour.
Its like your body is learning a "language".

I have to think along this line of thought for a while.
Just some quick implications:

- I believe now that it is not enough to have a good / an excellent teacher.
To get the most out of it teacher and student should be able to enter a "body" dialogue.

- It is impossible to understand ving tsun without a "physical" teacher who will apply forces to you and who "conditions" your reflexes. (Think about it is impossible to "speak" a language without practicing with a native speaker.)

Menorca - May - 2008

Another week seminar with Philipp Bayer in Menorca.

The topic of this seminar: Fok sao and why your ellbow will still suck after 30 years..

I had some nice sparring experiences. Some eye openers and some teasers for the ego.

First, the teaser. I sparred with a pro this time. He was smaller and much more technically experienced than me. I noticed that I could nicely fight with him but it was !!not!! due my skills.
In fact I was in good shape because he was so skilled. Thats quite disturbing I believe.

Somehow my ving tsun worked because he was doing nice ving tsun that I could handle.
Thats like incest. Its a bad sign if you can keep up with some one but not due to your own techniques. Probably you should stop then since the learning effect is not as high.

A totally different experience was for me to spar with HIS student. I had severe problems and was punched several time directly into my face...ouch! This guy was taller and stronger.

I had the impression that due to his different physical attributes, he could my mistakes that other, physically inferior could not. I like to fight with the big boys. If you are David and you have to fight Goliath its getting much more about strategy as well. I enjoyed this!

And then in contrast there were "Fighters of the Void".
Its just you are training with these guys, you have dinners with these guys and joking around.
But in the fight they REALLY kick your ass.
Nothing works, could not apply a single technique and I was feeling like a ping pong ball.
That was so depressing but also eye opening since it shows that I am starting to "overfit" to a particular type of fighters.

After this seminar I decided to improve my first initial attacks AND start training more counter attacks.

Another interesting observation is that returning into the gym after your seminar is quite bad.
Its hard to getting motivated training with the under-average motivated student.
I guess I start facing my biggest enemy: my own arrogance....

What do you train at the Wooden Dummy?

Do you know what you are training if you do the wooden dummy form?

In the last private lesson I asked this and fortunately we went trough the whole form and Gerry (my teacher in Zürich) gave me his explanation of what each movement is about.

It appears to me now that I was less motivated training on the Wooden Dummy since I do not fully appreciate it. Training on the WD is so different than training with the long pole for example. The long pole is fun! You can work out and training with the pole really tires you physically. You feel directly if you do it right (you control the pole) or if you do it wrong (the pole controls you).

Trainnig with the WD is so different. You can train on the WD for years without doing it correctly since there is no feedback. In fact the videos I link to -- I think now that most of them are not good at all.

So whats the WD about? Here is a list of things coming to my mind:
Ellbow force and stance (the beginning of the form)
balance and structure of the whole body ( for example po-pei),
distance feeling ,
simultanous action (e.g. the steps done together with hand actions),
precision.

One of the most complicated thing in the WD is the huen sau. Its interesting that I think the pole helps making it stronger......aaah..the pole.. I love it :-)