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How to Accelerate your Wing Chun and Become a Machine
Contents My story Five tools to accelerate your Wing Chun Training 1. Raise your standards 2. Positive reinforcement 3. Train with the best 4. Train while you train 5. Invest in yourself
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Disclaimer
Throughout this e-book I shall be using the term Wing Chun, even though I am referring to all lineages or Wing Chun families. The term refers to Ving Tsun, Ving Chun, Wing Tsun etc. Under no circumstances do I take responsibility for any injuries that might result from training or sparing/fighting while trying to apply these ideas and concepts. This e-book is meant to give you some healthy tools and help you in your evolution as a Martial Artist and it is not meant to harm anybody in any way. It is your responsibility to use these ideas wisely and to act within the norms of society and without physically injuring anyone.
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Hello! My name is Bogdan Rosu, I am a Sifu and I help people get faster and better results in Wing Chun so that they get to those core benefits faster than they would normally expect. I’ve been doing martial arts for over 10 years. First of all I’d like to welcome you to this program. I’m really excited about it, because it gives me an opportunity to share with you some things I’ve used to make a difference in my Wing Chun Training. I’m here to give you some tools that will help you get the most out of every session of training. Get better results, using the SAME time and energy that you are putting into your training right now. I’ve used some of these tools for years to accelerate my growth from no ability to catching up and ultimately surpassing people that were training in the school years before I started. I will give you these really effective tools that can help you do just that. You will find that they apply to you regardless of LINEAGE (Wing Chun family) and I will give them to you absolutely for FREE. But first, I’d like to share with you how I came to study Wing Chun in the first place and I’ll tell you a bit about the people that really inspired me along my journey. I actually started out with this acrobatic style of martial arts. The advertisement said: Karate, Ninjutsu, Taekwando, Judo, Kenjutsu and Capoeira. After three years I moved something like a drunken stuntman from a bad Kung Fu movie. I became good at doing summersaults and flicks and tricks and a bunch of useless stuff, like… throwing ninja stars. I had absolutely no power behind my kicks or punches. I couldn’t fight my way out of a kindergarten using the things I learned.
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When I finally realized that I wasn’t getting any closer to my objective of becoming self-confident and learning how to fight, I decided to take up karate. There was this new school in town and I wanted to give it try. I eventually did more than that, becoming one of the best in the school. I loved it. I’ve spent three beautiful years in that school, increasing my power and stamina. But I still didn’t get enough fighting experience. We rarely sparred, focusing on technique and physical capabilities, just like most traditional karate schools. The thing that resonated with me most and one of the first things I learned from my karate sensei was that in order to change the external aspects you needed to improve your internal. So I started eating differently, thinking differently, and working a lot more to become one of the best. If we had to do 20 pushups I would do 25. I eventually became very strong physically, but lacked relaxation and fluidity in my movements. I felt rigid when it came to sparring. After three years, it was time for me to go to college. You can imagine the first thing I did when I got there. I started looking for a school to continue doing karate. I looked and visited several schools, but none of them really appealed to me. One year went by and I still hadn’t found a decent karate school. I was so frustrated. And one day, I go on the internet to check out some martial arts videos and I stumble onto a Wing Chun video. I remember there was this Wing Chun school in town and I went to check out the website. And then it happened. I read a few paragraphs in the site that instantly clicked with me. I had found MY ART. The paragraphs were: „In Wing Chun we meet a training method on a physical, psychological and mental level.
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… It is an unopened system of martial arts in which the powers of Yin and Yang (black-white, hard-soft, male-female, actionreaction) are in a total balance. The learning of exchanging and simultaneous operation of Yin-Yang creates an internal power that subconsciously balances everything in the normal life of the student. During the breathing exercises, the student can control and channel his internal power, the power that in China is called Chi. With other more advanced exercises he activates specific energy centers which make the student channel his Chi to the targets he wants to achieve. In very difficult and dangerous battles, he uses this power hitting his opponent on vital spots. The addition of emotional and mental power would make those strikes deadly. That's why the students are formed in a way that they never use those technics vainly or with selfishness.
The Wing Chun student is called to learn his internal powers through a path that he chooses on his own. He is called to stand up to many opponents and many enemies, starting from the biggest one ... himself.”
You can find the whole page on: http://www.garylamwingchungreece.gr/training.html I was hooked. I did some research and I was stunned to find out that it was actually Bruce Lee’s initial style. That blew away my belief about Chinese boxing being a weak art. I instantly called the Sifu and asked when the next lesson was and went there early. And that’s how my
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journey into the Wing Chun world initiated. And I haven’t looked back since. Now don’t get me wrong. Coming from karate and learning Wing Chun was a real struggle. There were times when it would be incredibly frustrating. I thought I was never going to learn to use Wing Chun. But I didn’t give up. Out of that frustration, sweat and blood I earned a skill. The skill to be able to help people get very good results in a very short period of time. And a great contribution to this came from my Sifu. My Sifu, turned out to be not only an extremely skilled martial artist he was also a really nice guy. He became my martial mentor. Sifu taught me maybe the most important lesson in my life. He taught me how to believe in myself. He saw something in me that I couldn’t see at the time. And I can never thank him enough. I would like to do the same for you. I don’t know what your story is, but I’d love to hear it and get to know you. And I am sure you’ve had the same satisfaction from learning Wing Chun. I am sure that your journey has been marked by the same strong emotion of learning and mastering a new concept, seeing the results of hard work and feeling like a new person. I am SURE you are just as in love with the ART as I am. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this in the first place. OK! I just wanted to give you a bit of insight into my background by sharing my story. I wanted to suggest that it’s always good to keep your mind and eyes open. And when you do, you just might find that one missing piece to the puzzle. It is said that the mind is like a parachute, it works only when it is open. So, I would like to urge you to do exactly that and open your mind to what I am about to say. You might have already come across some of the tools I want to share with you and I respect you for that. If they are new to you, I hope you can use them fully to accelerate your training
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and become a real fighting machine. You will find that they apply to all lineages and to all martial arts training. Wong Shun Leung, Bruce Lee’s mentor and Yip Man’s best-known student, liked to look at Wing Chun as a room full of tools. One would be proficient with some of the tools that fitted best to his character, personality and physical attributes. I am here to talk to you about the most important tool that you possess, a tool that, if mastered, will make the GREATEST difference in your marital art and in your life. That tool is your mind. Let me just point out something really important. Your mind is a bit like Facebook. Facebook is awesome, if you use it to serve you. It can help you communicate faster, get the right information and even grow a business. But if you don’t take control of how you use it, you will most probably become its slave. Most of us are slaves to our minds. Our minds can either help us improve our lives or keep us in a vicious circle, never being aware of the HUGE potential we all have as human beings. There is one really important distinction that you should be aware of. As you surely know, the mind is divided in two, the conscious and the subconscious. If we were to compare the two on terms of their capacity, the conscious mind would be the size of a golf ball, while the subconscious mind would be the size of a basketball. We use our mind consciously when we learn new things, process information and make decisions. Think about it! When you first learned Siu Nim Tao, you thought about the position of your elbows, you felt the pain in your knees and in accordance with what you were being taught you consciously made the necessary adjustments.
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Your conscious mind can hold ONE thought at a time. Don’t believe me? Try picturing Michael Jackson and an elephant at the same time! See? On the other hand, your subconscious mind is like this HUGE data-base. It stores and retrieves data, regulates your bodily functions like your heartbeat, maintains chemical balance in your cells, and keeps your body temperature at 36.8°C. It is where your self-concept is and where what is called ‘emotional power’ is being stored. By emotional power I mean that super human strength we use when we feel in danger, when adrenalin is being released in our bodies and time seems to slow down. We also call that ‘unlimited power’. To our advantage, Wing Chun teaches through Chi Zao and other specific drills how to use the subconscious to fight. We call that ‘feeling’. It is very easy to understand why one should not try to fight consciously, seeing that one can consciously hold only ONE thought at a time. While being able to fight without thinking, will make you like a machine. Fortunately, the subconscious is like a slave to the conscious mind. It works day and night, nonstop, executing orders and delivering the necessary information so that you act and react according to your dominating beliefs, self-concept and standards. That is why sometimes we feel stuck. In my e-book ‘How to Train your subconscious and access your internal power’, I will be going further into how you can use the subconscious while training to make Wing Chun as natural as breathing and will compliment that with my other e-book ‘How to build Self Confidence in Wing Chun’, be sure not to miss out on these two e-books! Now, let’s get to the core of the matter, the reason you downloaded this in the first place. Let’s start getting into the practical stuff, into the tools that you will use to step on the accelerator of your Wing Chun engine.
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Tool nr.1: Raise your standards To give you a better picture of how your mind and body work together, let me tell you another story. I have snowboarded only two times in my life, yet in those two times I managed to learn something really useful. While going down the slope I noticed that If I looked at the snowboard and focused on my legs, I would fall on my ass, but the second I started focusing on where I wanted to go, my body instantly started to balance itself and do everything necessary to get me to my destination. All I needed to do was give it the command. It knew. It already knew what it had to do. That doesn’t mean that you think Bruce Lee and you will start delivering bone breaking kicks the next morning, you need conditioning and training. But, thinking and observing Bruce Lee, will give you a whole different standard of power, speed, accuracy and attitude. You now have a destination to work with. You have just upgraded your standards. Raising your standards is the first step to your martial evolution. What do I mean by that? Most people don’t have a higher standard or an objective they need to reach. The problem with that is that you cannot hit a target you can’t see. Your subconscious mind can take you to your destination, but it is guaranteed to do nothing for you if you don’t clearly and precisely feed it a standard. From there it will make the necessary adjustments in your life so that you can reach the new level you set for yourself. Picture this, it’s the middle of the night and you need to drive from city A to city B. You don’t have a GPS navigator and no map. All you know is the name of city B and that there’s a road between them. There are no street lights, you can only see as far as your headlights allow you to. The road is your subconscious. It already knows how to get you there. It will point out all the necessary small steps that you need to take. When
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you get to a cross-roads, you will depend on your own experience or that of others to make the right choice. The nice part is that if you get it wrong, you can always turn around and follow the right path. Don’t expect everything to work out perfectly from the beginning. Be prepared for Failure! One thing is absolutely certain. If you don’t consciously feed your mind a higher standard for yourself, you will eventually become stuck and make NO progress. You will find a way to keep yourself at the same level or even worse. Think about it! Has this ever happened to you before? Have you ever felt that you were making no progress? Until there was something that made you decide to work harder, to push yourself harder? Let me know! I’d love to hear about it! And I’ll tell you what was mine. This is a very useful tool to include into your training and into your life. But, it is not by any means a substitute for hard work. Yes, you will have a clear idea of what you need to do, but the key is action. Working, training and having FUN while doing so. You’re the one that needs to drive the car, to find that energy and discipline to drive it regularly. In the end, the more you drive, the sooner you reach your destination.
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Tool nr. 2: Positive reinforcement It is very common that practitioners, instead of beating up a punching bag, end up beating themselves up in the learning process. Picture this: you’re about to learn something new. Something that when you saw it, you thought, ‘now that looks simple’, and when you started doing it… it didn’t look or feel anything like you’d expected. So, you felt frustrated. And it’s natural. It always hurts when something you are excited about doesn’t turn out as you’d expected. But, that’s life. In my case, I had a very difficult time in the beginning. Every time a drill didn’t go as I’d expect it to I felt like cursing. I felt that I was never going to master that specific concept, and that I was making no progress, the latter was very close to the truth. Then, I remembered what I learned in my karate training. I started working on my interior to change the outcome. I changed my thoughts. So, I started thinking it was EASY. It wasn’t easy the first time, and it wasn’t easy the second time. But as soon as I let my subconscious mind work, I immediately started making progress. I mentally rewarded myself for each small step forward I made. I stopped thinking about the mistakes and started focusing on the improvements. Instead of getting upset with yourself for making a mistake, or taking longer than you’d expected to assimilate a new concept, just congratulate yourself for all the accomplishments you have made so far. Think of a small child. How does a child feel when you scorn him and point out all the things he’s doing wrong? He feels worthless. What will he do more of? He will continue to do bad things, of course. Instead, by focusing on the good things, the child will be more inclined towards doing more good things and it will be much easier for him to improve. Simple, isn’t it? It is simple, but it will not be easy at first. You need to make it habit. And when it becomes habit, it will make you feel so good
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about yourself. It will take your love for the art to a whole new level. You will have fun while learning. Positive reinforcement means adding a turbo booster to your car’s engine. What does that imply? You will reach you destination faster, and you will have much more fun on your journey. Just listen to that engine ROAR!!!
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Tool nr. 3: Train with the BEST This is probably the one single tool that will give you the fastest growth. Because, training with the best in your school will automatically make you set a higher standard for yourself. The first thing you should do is identify those two or three people that are the TOP in your school, besides your Sifu. Then ask for advice. People are usually happy to share their knowledge and experience. But, most of the time, nobody asks them. Almost nobody in the school dares to ask the TOP people for help. And it’s funny, because maybe one person will not want to help you. They may be afraid you will surpass them. That is a good sign. It means that you are doing a great job and they see the potential in you to grow. That still leaves a bunch of people that are willing to guide you. The key is humility. Being modest allows you to interact with a high number of people and get the most out of your relationships. You don’t need to do everything they say, because some advice may not apply to you. We have different bodies and different ways of seeing things. But having a few perspectives that are different from your own will definitely give you that small edge that will make all the difference in your training. Leverage, remember? That means that a small difference will translate into a HUGE result, in time. That’s what I want you to do! I want you to gain as much of these small differences as you possibly can so that you will feel a huge difference a year or five years from now. Time will pass anyway! The question is how much progress will you have made in that time. Where will you be with your Wing Chun five years from this moment? Will you still be struggling with the same problems, or will you be helping others improve their performance?
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If you are one of the best in your school, I congratulate you and I think you should be very proud of yourself. I would advise you to train with the people that have the qualities you are missing. And you know exactly what’s missing, don’t you? For example, if you are strong but rigid, training with a person that is lightning fast and relaxed, will certainly help you speed things up. Here’s the best part! That person will automatically learn from you and become stronger. Isn’t that awesome? You learn to be fast and he/she learns to be strong. If you would like to have more patience, train with a beginner. If you would like to be softer, train with a girl. They are usually very soft and fluid. During this process, the best person to get advice from and train with will always be your Sifu. He or she will be the one that can give you the best advice and feed you whatever you are missing. Training like this will give you an opportunity to work not only on your skill, but also on your self-confidence and the way you interact with others. When you become self-confident and you have excellent people skills, you will have more opportunities in life and get the most out of it.
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Tool nr. 4: Train while you train Use your time wisely. The fact that you show up for training doesn’t necessarily mean that you are fully taking advantage of your time in the school. Train while you train! That means being mentally in the school and focusing on improving whatever you are working on. Your time in the school is very precious. It’s where you have all your training equipment and where you can constantly get feedback on what you are doing. I would come early, train on the wall bags or wooden dummy, and be the last to leave. My Sihings (older kung fu brothers) would kick me out, so that they could close up the school. I got so much out of that extra time. It fed my Wing Chun and the more I fed it, the hungrier it got. Think about it! Most of your colleagues spend the time that ‘is required’ of them. By coming early and leaving late, you get at least half an hour for each session. That means an extra training session a week. Provided you go 3 times a week. That will give an edge over your ‘kung fu brothers’. I would like to encourage you to become a Wing Chun overachiever and get the best ‘bang for your buck’. You are spending time and money in the school. By taking advantage of the school and the time you spend there you maximize your results. While training karate, I learned a great method for doing this. Before starting, I would say to myself: ‘I am now in the school. I am leaving all my concerns and all life related problems at the door. I am now 100 percent focused on my training and on improving my capabilities. I am leaving here relaxed, refreshed and better than the last time’. This method puts you in a proper state of mind. You decide from the beginning to focus on what’s happening in the school and break away mentally from any problems you may have outside. The outcome is that you will have better performance and you will find better solutions to your problems once you go back to face the world.
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Will you manage to do it perfectly the first time? Maybe. But, it will probably take some conditioning for it to fully benefit you. So, make it a habit to talk to yourself in an empowering way.
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Tool nr. 5: Invest in yourself We live in the best time to be a Wing Chun practitioner. The world is booming with high quality information that we can use to improve. And I personally think a GREAT way to develop your self is to get the best quality information. There is always something new to learn, regardless of lineage or martial art. I personally bought all the DVDs related to my lineage and several books unrelated to my Wing Chun family. They now serve as visual ‘textbooks’ for my training. You are not going to remember everything. I would recommend buying DVDs related to your lineage, reading ‘Look beyond the pointing finger: The Combat Philosophy of Wong Shun Leung’ by David Peterson, subscribing to Wing Chun Illustrated, or checking out Gary Lam’s DVDs which can give you a very deep insight into Wing Chun. This is the next best thing to training with the grandmasters themselves. Note: I do not receive any money for mentioning these sources. I just think they are great tools and that you should fully take advantage of them.
Additionally, watching Wing Chun videos on-line can help you better understand what you are doing and compare what you are learning to other methods of fighting.
In conclusion, a change in results is a change in mind set. A change in mind set, means a change in habits. My invitation to you is to make it a habit to talk to yourself in a positive way, to take full advantage of the time you train, to learn from the best and raise your standards of training
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and of course the standards of how you live your life. My invitation to you is to upgrade everything you are doing so that you have more to give and more to look forward to. Until next time, I wish you all the best and I look forward to hearing your success story.
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About Sifu Bogdan Rosu Sifu Bogdan Rosu started his training in the fighting art of Wing Chun Kung Fu under Sifu Evangelos, being one of his private and indoor students for several years; while, in parallel studying for Bachelors in Hospitality and Tourism Management.
A brilliant student both in college and in the fighting art, he stood out even from the beginning as one of Sifu Evangelos' most talented students, showing high potential not only as a fighter but also as a teacher. Through diligence and attention to detail, his path to attaining the martial knowledge was faster than usual. Due to his previous experience in Shotokan Karate, he was able to compare Wing Chun to other fighting arts and see the logic and simplicity of the system. This allowed him to better grasp the concepts and accept them as being natural reactions in fighting and in everyday life. In May 2010 he finished both his degrees, with outstanding results. His objectives include spreading the knowledge gained from Sifu Evangelos, thus allowing others to access their full potential as martial artists and individuals.
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