Proper attitude and approach to training

 I have visited many kung fu instructors , practiced with many , saw even more and among all these people I've met only a handful of people who understood and practiced kung fu on the right way . I cannot comment things I don't know , but what I know and understand is Wing Chun , at least I believe I do . There are so many different ways to practice any art and all these ways can be correct or incorrect which depends of the context of training its self, needs and desires of the practitioner .There is nothing wrong to practice Wing Chun as a hobby, health supporting activity , self defense ,sport or something else , but… practitioner should set clear goals and then adjust his practice according to what he wants to achieve . I have seen wrong approach in training so many times that I was sincerely surprised when I actually saw couple of people who know and do their stuff correctly. After a long analysis I have come to conclusion that there several major obstacles which prevents correct approach in training.First and maybe most important is intelligence. I deeply believe kung fu is an activity reserved for smart people. Kung fu is a complex activity and requires a fair amount of intelligence to be understood completely and correctly . Education is closely related to intelligence and it is important in process of learning and understanding kung fu principles and strategies and even more important in a process of transmission the art to the next generation . Intelligence and education or the lack of it is a source of all other mistakes in kung fu training .Tradition , precisely  blindly followed tradition can be ,not only an obstacle in training but major problem in survival of the particular style . Kung fu in order to ‘survive ‘ must change over time and adapt to changes in society and give answers to all challenges that might encounter and not only on technical level. “I do this because my teacher taught me , it is only correct , traditional way that could not be changed “ is a way not only to get wrong in training but also to make style inefficient and unfit for practice for most if not all the people . Basic principles of the style are foundation that should be preserved , everything else is changeable and did change over time . Accumulation of knowledge and experience should lead to changes in approach and structure of training and technical foundation of the style as well , If not , all the knowledge and experience collected over time will be lost and style will not be able to adapt and answer to any new , previously unknown problem . This will make practitioners unable to fulfill their goals and achieve higher levels of practice which will eventually lead to disappearance of the style . Like any other human activity , kung fu must grow , change, adapt , gain new knowledge, improve in all ways or die out , that is a natural law of things and nothing is excluded from that law, not even ”traditional” kung fuLack of critical thinking. If lack of intelligence is a father of all mistakes in kung fu , lack of critical thinking is a mother . Great majority of people , out of respect ,tradition, or some other reason never question what they learned and practice . The most obvious example happened after that lunatic attack in Taipei metro. Everyone started to show “knife defense” . Some “great names”, famous instructors demonstrated a lot of “techniques”, in fact they have demonstrated a way to be killed by an attacker. What is really bad , their students praise them for their knowledge and skill never actually asked them self if that is really working , is that a correct response  to real knife attack , never tried to practice under preassure and check for them slefs is that works or not .

Teaching incompetence , all the reasons mentioned above lead to teaching incompetence . Lack of knowledge and understanding , not only the style its self but lack of understanding student’s needs and predisposition will cause uniformed way of knowledge transmission where every student will be taught exactly the same. In kung fu every single student should be taught according to his physical and mental abilities and his goals and needs .
  Wrong training system is directly caused by teaching incompetence. Different people have different need and they cannot be taught identically .Often , wrong training method is chosen and set goals are impossible to  be achieved . The most obvious example is “CHI SAO” . Many people believe that chi sao is some magical tool which will help them to achieve great fighting abilities. In reality , chi sao is structural drill ,not magical tool and if someone wants to learn how to fight , then he must fight , there is no other way