I'm
sure everyone has heard of the old saying of no pain, no gain, probably one of the most used
motivational phrases and
at the same time one that's often misinterpreted.
I'd like to spend this time examining what it truly
means, and the fact that I've experienced both ends of
the spectrum, hopefully I can help set people on the
correct path.
Let's
travel back in time when I first started training in
the days before I met Sifu Fong. Back in the
days, when I was just a beginner in Wing Chun, I would
train for hours, just like many who are reading have
also done. Some of the exercises we did were
conditioning exercises, not to name everything, but
drills were referred to as bong lap drills as well as
gates. The bong lap drill was simply lop sau
drills, but back in the days, you would whip your
motion so hard as to clash with your bong sau.
The fact that we were doing bong sau incorrectly was
bad enough (shoulder pain), but at the same time we were simply
clashing bong against bone with the inside whip
motion. Well, it doesn't take a genius that
literally everyone who did this drill would end up
with Popeye arms, and fortunately the jao that we used
would help heal. But back then, this
seemed like the right thing to do, condition your
arms, condition your body, no pain, no gain... sound
familiar. If that doesn't sound painful enough
we also had another drill referred to as gates,
basically one person punched, and the other would do a
combination to practice flow. Well, the
combination, resulted in the defender pak sauing the
hell out of the attackers arm. I do recall that
when I did this drill for the first time, the bruising
on the arm was so bad, that you could literally see
purple to green on my skin from the beat down. Fortunately I had some level of awareness
not to do this drill anymore and fortunately, after
some time, I found Sifu Fong who eventually set me
straight. While these are only a handful of
examples, yes I was foolish, if not stupid at the time. The no pain, no gain mentality still seems
to thrive in today's society. While we see
glimpses of slight changes here and there, it seems
that the all or nothing mentality will continue be
what the majority will seek out.
I
recall just several years ago, while attending a
martial arts dinner, I heard several practioners
talking. I overheard one of them say that training today
just isn't the same as in the old days. The
gentlemen gave an example, of in the old days, when
they would spar, if they had a chance to break, they
would go for the break, that's how you learn, from
pain. If you got hit by a solid blow on the
face, that's not your partners fault that your fault
for not blocking. I'm like yeah, that makes sense,
not. If you take the simple saying of no pain,
no gain and simply attach a clause to it, what it
should add, is what you do to your body today, will
eventually come back to haunt you in the future.
That along with death and taxes is only guarantees in
life.
No
pain, no gain doesn't mean you need to hurt yourself
to get better. It simply means that if you want
to be good, you need to pay the price by practicing.
The key thing to training is to train and train
consistently. It does you know good to
hurt yourself in training, and waste precious time
recovering. Its not to fight through pain,
its not to punish your body, its to develop skill and
keep building on it. In Wing Chun you need to
gain a high level of awareness in order to get
better. When you practice drills like chi sao,
your not feeling for the changes that you sense on
your opponent but the changes that you feel on
yourself. After teaching for a long time, and
even as often as I have stated clearly to my students,
listen to what the body is telling you. Yet,
without doubt people are not use to the concept that
yes, this feels right, but shouldn't it hurt or
shouldn't I be sweating, as if either one is
validation that their actually putting some form of
effort. Keep this in mind, often you see people
do training exercises in martial arts, and yes they
can do allot when they are young and put the body
through quite a bit, but when they get older, when
things finally catch up to them, they've damaged their
body so much they can't even train when their older,
or even worst do basic physical functions like walking
or holding their hand without shaking.
The
way I look at things, if you love what you do, you
train so you can do it for a lifetime. You don't
want to end up like today's athlete who's thinking of
retiring at age 30, due to whatever physical injury
they incurred. You don't want to be the martial
artist, who at age 50 can only talk about his training
and his battles in the past, and can barely
walk. Good Wing Chun, or should I say good
training in anything that you do means that your skill
constantly increases regardless of your age, with no
limits set. So next time you hear no pain, no
gain make sure you choose the path of consistency.
In
the end, while we get older our memory somewhat gets
worst, unfortunately the body's memory never forgets
what you do to it.