THE COURSES ARE GETTING MORE AND MORE AMAZING
Many consider Grandmaster Wong's courses ridiculously cheap compared to the benefits
Question
Your courses like Shaolin against other Martial Arts get more and more amazing though they cover many basic techniques! It is simply mind blowing that whenever I think "Oh yes I know that", it turns out to be a big surprise.
Why is that I keep on being amazed, amused and blown away even when taking so called basic courses?
-- Sifu Roland Mastel
Answer
The main reason is that I keep improving both the contents and skills of my teaching. Another reason is that these new courses are devised to meet expedient needs. The third reason is that due to my wide understanding and experience, I am able to choose the most suitable material and teach it in a most effective way for the purpose in question.
For example, there is at present an expedient need for students to handle Boxing and Kick-Boxing because irrespective of what martial arts they practice, most martial artists today spar like Boxers and Kick-Boxers. Hence, I have devised two new courses, Shaolin and Taijiquan against other martial arts.
Both the techniques and skills in these two new courses are very basic. In fact, they are of a lower level than the techniques and skills taught in the basic Shaolin 16 combat sequences and the Taijiquan 12 combat sequences.
However, because of my wide understanding and experience in combat application, I know that what students need are not advanced skills and techniques, but confidence and experience in meeting opponents who use a fighting art very different from what they have been accustomed to. In fact, if the skills and techniques are too sophisticated, they may become a hindrance instead of an aid. Therefore I choose more simple skills and techniques, which are more effective.
I also teach these skills and techniques systematically and progressively, paying more attention to skills than to techniques, as it is actually skills that students need when fighting against Boxers and Kick-Boxers. As the techniques used by Boxers and Kick-Boxers are simple, relatively simple kungfu techniques are sufficient to handle them if our students have good skills. Indeed, sophisticated techniques would slow down the acquiring of these skills.
Although the skills and techniques are simple, there is much profundity in their application. For example, a small difference between using "Bow-Arrow Thread Bridge" for blocking or for threading can bring a big difference in result. If you use it for blocking, as many initiated practitioners would do, you expose yourself to a Boxer's punches. If you use it for threading, you hit a Boxer as he launches forward to strike you.
The teaching is systematic. First, students learn to keep a Boxer at bay. Next, they deflect, not block, his strikes. Then they cover him adequately. Only when students have ensured they are safe, they counter-attack the Boxer.
The teaching is also progressive. First, students practice at low speed and with little force. Next, they practice at normal speed and with normal force. Then they practice at high speed and with much force. In their counter-attack, the progress gradually from striking to felling, to chin-na and to kicking. With systematic and progressive training, students can benefit in an hour what others may not obtain in many months of random and haphazard premature free sparring.
So, although you are an advanced practitioner, you may still be amazed, amused and blown away by such a basic course. You are amazed, for example, by the effectiveness of the systematic and progressive teaching methodology; you are amused by the fact that such simple skills and techniques can produce better results than sophisticated skills and techniques, and you are blown away by the transformation of students in such a short time from a position of uncertainty and nervousness to a position of confidence and efficiency when facing Boxers and Kick-Boxers.
-- Grandmaster Wong Kiew Kit
Many courses items are introduced to meet expedient needs, like how to counter pin-downs
The above discussion is reproduced from the thread 20 Questions for Grandmaster: Choy-Li-Fatt and Kungfu against Other Styles in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum.
LINKS