And before the book What is Real, I listened to the Tao of Wing Chun. Good book. Interesting stuff.
Description: “Wing Chun is the most popular form of Chinese Kung Fu in the world today, with over four million practitioners. The art as it is presently understood has been handed down from teacher to student for more than three hundred years.
“Until now, no one has ever stepped back and taken a critical look at why this art’s techniques are presented and performed the way they are. This book, by Wing Chun master Danny Xuan and martial-arts authority John Little, is the first to decipher these techniques that until now have been encrypted within this art.
“Xuan and Little reveal how Wing Chun was designed holistically, based on the laws of physics, human nature, and biomechanics. It was also designed with economy, efficiency, and productivity in mind. Unlike other martial arts, Wing Chun doesn’t focus on making a person larger, more rugged, acrobatic or animal-like; rather, it focuses on making optimal use of one’s own bodily structure and power potential by applying the sciences of biomechanics and physics. Thus, it is possible for males and females of all ages and sizes to excel in this art.
“he Tao of Wing Chun provides a readable, authoritative means of cultivating personal protection skills, enhanced flexibility, improved coordination, greater stamina, and physical and mental fitness while simultaneously cultivating humility, focus, determination, self-confidence, character, camaraderie, and deep inner strength. Foremost, this book offers the reader the means by which to apply Wing Chun principles in daily life.”
Here are a few of the many good quotes from the book. I like these because they evidence that we need JJ Gibson’s Ecological Approach to training: direct perception is valid; “nothing in the intellect was not first in the senses,” as St. Thomas Aquinas said; we are animals; we move through a physical and ecological world; etc. And, metaphysically, individuals are real; abstractions and averages are not real (or at least not in the same way).
“Wing Chun training does not prepare the practitioner for specific combative situations or environments because these can be endless. Every opponent, situation, or environment will be different from the one that you practiced for at your Wing Chun school. Every sparring occurrence or fight will be different from the previous one, just as every chess, football, or hockey game will occur differently from previous ones. You just cannot replicate it. To think that a fight will go down exactly in the manner that you had trained for it or that you will know ahead of time what your opponent will do is simply wishful and unrealistic thinking.” –Chapter 7
“The danger inherent in this [following preset sequences] is that the student will then be programmed to respond mechanically rather than intuitively. The purpose of a drill is to repeat an action until it is ingrained in the practitioner’s neural system. This way the student needn’t go through the slow process of thinking, but rather lets his subconscious mind automate the desired action. However, if a student is drilled to respond in a certain way, and the opponent doesn’t follow the sequence of the drill that the student has been practicing, then that student is out of luck. “ —Chapter 7
“Fighting is the art of managing both force and environment.” —Chapter 13
I also like that the book discusses biotensegrity (in chapter 10).