Wing Chun Vlog 3 - Got a Uniform — Myriad Misadventures

I finally got a uniform. And did wing chun too I guess. One thing I’ve noticed about wing chun is that the school I’m going to seems to have a more structured curriculum than other places I’ve been. Or at least more obviously structured. The benefit of that is that the classes often build on each other, calling back to or adding to things from previous classes. And that’s how we started my first class in uniform.

Class had the normal conditioning. These wing chun classes seem to do conditioning more consistently than JKD and tai chi do. The main ones seem to be planks, pushups, and squats. And sometimes we’ll do some cardio or other ab exercise. But so far we’ve done at least some of them in every class. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it. Conditioning is important for martial artists. One day I’ll write about it.

Then after the conditioning we went into building on stuff. We started with some rotation practice. IIRC we had done some rotating just by itself before and in this class we did a partner drill where our partner had to push our hands and we had to rotate in that direction. Then we moved on to punches.

In earlier classes we had done the three blocks with a punch and in this class we added a rotation to them. This built on both the technique that we had done earlier and the rotating that we had done in this class. Next we did the block/punch combos with a partner, first with the rotation from earlier in class and then with a bit of a step. Actually blocking a punch and countering gave the techniques a little bit of realism that they don’t have when you’re doing them in the air.

Finally we took that whole rotate/block/punch technique and put it into a slightly longer self defense. We started with that tan sau and then turned the blocking hand over and did an arm bar. More building. Wing chun class so far seems like Legos. We’re learning things early on. They’re the really small Legos. Then we’re putting them together in later classes. Those are your Lego creations. How’s that for an analogy? Alright pretty weak maybe but I tried haha.

I’m still pretty bad at wing chun (although probably better than I am at tai chi) but I’m still enjoying class. In particular I’m enjoying the stronger focus on conditioning and how well he class seems to build on itself, using things from previous classes to do new things.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you on my next trip. Don't forget to click the links below and follow to stay up to date on what I'm doing and where I am and to see all the pictures and videos from my trips.