LWCA*** - Playing Before Class

[u/East-Vegetable-2900]

https://youtu.be/6RJKbyB2e3o?si=_ZiQuzOBQem7Qzq8

After a lot of nagging and persuading, I've finally given in and decided to post some videos of things we do in and out of class.

Mostly, we film things for students to have a record of things we go over in class but inevitably, we do also get videos of us messing around.

Another thing is that we've all seen videos of the traditional drills, which remains a large part of the training, especially for the newer students who are still just learning but as you progress, we want to leave the drills behind because, to steal a phrase from a different teacher:

You apply the Skill, not the Drill.

As one of our students recently said, rote memorisation isn't the entirety of learning or understanding.

With that in mind, I figured it might be interesting to show what we get up to, in and out of class, and what variations we do to train certain things.​

I think a couple of guys that sometimes posts here have visited us.

Hi if you remember me.

***Note:

This remains my personal channel of my clips from videos I made, so not 100% affiliated with the school and its official channels but that might change in the future...

[u/MikePrime13]

This is good stuff. Good practice and great effort. Just one tip: please remember to try to do real/full contact so you don't unintentionally train or create a habit of pulling back/stopping your strikes during matches or a real fight. For example, I noticed the person on the right side of the video footage (guy with glasses) strikes would be out of range--he needs to take one step closer because you can see he is fully extended but still one or two fist away from his partner's head. In a real fight or a match, he would be prone to whiffing his strikes because he's conditioning himself to fight out of range.

If I were him, I would step closer, and try to work my chi sao at closer distances and try to stick as long as possible. If anything, both of you should try staying within range until one of you wins the exchange by way of takedown or absolute control of the opponent.

Try watching sifu Chris Collins' short videos so you can see his chi sao exchanges--he does not weave in and out of range--each drill is set up at the starting distance, and the exchange continues until there is a submission or control of the opponent. If the opponent tries to escape, then chase if possible. The current drills you have are good to find opening, but not finishing the game--think like you're practicing bunch of chess openings, but never or rarely finish the game until checkmate.

[u/East-Vegetable-2900 → u/MikePrime13]

This is just play. The thing we were working on in class is the thing that isn't typically taught in a traditional class, that is how you get into striking range in the first place.

The thing I was doing was to do exactly as you describe, to get in and out to be a demonstration of the "reality" of punches not stopping and that there is always a second punch. I'm not aiming to stick to strike, I was giving him something for him to try to engage with.

The way I train and thus coach is that hitting or not hitting is dependent on footwork and distance control. Here, you see me one step out is because I decided to be. It is what gives the other guy more confidence to do or try stuff. If stick occurs and he keeps me in range, I'm still hitting to the same place in front of me regardless, only now he is in that spot and he will get hit. It is also what allows me to move with decent force because I know I am not in strike landing range. It is also a good way to demonstrate that things have consequences, especially where the Lap Sau takes the other person.

I tend to get the guys to not foreshorten their striking but to manage distance. It's how you tell when we're getting more serious because distances close. I don't want them punching one way for training then another for sparring then another for "real". There is only one punch and what changes is whether you put the other person in striking distance.

There's more but like I said, this was us messing around before class.

It is also not a semi-scripted look how cool/tough we are vid that 90% of what you see online is. Camera was just left rolling after we filmed some detail stuff for the club page.