I must admit, that I borrowed the headline "Is Experience Overrated?" from Mike Mahler's latest online magazine issue of "Aggressive Strength". One of the many interesting resources you can find via Twitter! At one point he writes: "You might think it impossible to not get better at something after accumulating years of experience, yet proof of the opposite is abundant."
Let's look at the trainer team at Wing Tsun Kung Fu Vancouver. Everyone is living busy lives, often struggling to make the right choices of dividing time between family, the job or business, other hobbies and activities, and going to group classes as well as taking private lessons. Now between classes, lessons and attending seminars, you could think enough is enough, right?!
But many find it excitingly challenging, even or especially after many years of training, to explore the art within the martial ART of Wing Tsun Kung Fu. A great chemistry within a group, having lots of fun sweating and training hard, can produce its own driving force. Some members of our trainer team are still very young while others see already the silver lining of the big 60 on the horizon. It's never too late or too early to find passion in your hobby.
It can be a great motivator for your life in general, to experience the exhilarating success of mastering new levels of skill. For some it's very rewarding, to discover and preserve a century old Kung Fu system, once made famous by the late Bruce Lee, and just recently "re-discovered" by many through the Yip Man movie.
So, over the past months we scheduled three bonus classes for all trainers, reviewing some of the instructor level programs. We first got together on Saturday, February 28th, followed by March 14th and March 28th.
Each instructor level (Technician Grade or TG) can be seen as the "black belts" of Wing Tsun Kung Fu. Chi-Sau sections are in the beginning kind of "two-men forms" of the tactile response exercises in Wing Tsun. These sections are designed to help cultivate reflex-like reactions. Each Chi-Sau section combines several scenarios of attacks, defenses, counter-attacks and counter-defenses. Among many other benefits the (in our opinion right) Chi-Sau training creates a sound structure, feel for the right timing, maintenance of balance while being pushed, pulled, attacked; a good coordination of food and hand work, punching power at the right opportunity and more.
Yet another effect is often overlooked. While you teach, you are not just helping others. When you have to answer questions, you may have never asked yourself, you improve your ability to explain, to generate visual examples. Each time you improve your own performance. You find better ways to articulate your teachings, thus improving your confidence. Facing a multitude of attacks you also sharpen your technical skills. How could there ever be a final experience?
Over the years you slowly become an expert, you begin to master your martial art.
"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field" - Niels Bohr
