Nino bernardo

Seeing, hearing and copying

By Nino Bernardo

At a recent seminar, I asked students to watch and listen as I explained wing chun’s straight punch from the horse stance. I then wanted them to copy the movement. The results were fascinating.

The idea of the exercise was to check that the students were seeing what was really going on, rather than what they thought was going on. We would then check that they were hearing what I said, not what they thought I said. We would then see whether they were really copying the exercise as it was, or something else entirely.

In other words, rather than studying the punch for its own sake, we were using it as a springboard to check students’ abilities to see, hear and copy. I wanted to raise their level and make all three skills easier for them.

We had fun for a couple of hours with the exercise, working in pairs. Not everybody got it, but by the end of the session most of them did.

What was interesting to me was that one guy with no experience was able to adjust the punch of his partner until it looked perfect. However, a wing chun instructor couldn’t do it with their own partner. I called over the guy with no experience and he was able to correct the punch of the instructor’s partner, who was a novice with four sessions under his belt.

What became clear was that some people have a good eye, while others don’t. Some have a good ear, while others don’t. Some people are good at copying, while others aren’t. Sometimes, the novice will have a better eye than the instructor.

I think that a lot of martial artists get hung up on chi and other mysteries, when it’s really all about pure mechanics. We can only really grasp the mechanics if we can see what’s really going on, hear what’s really being said and then copying it. It really is that simple.

I always have a lot of fun with the newbies at my seminars. I like working with people who have no experience as they bring uncorrupted eyes and ears.

Wing chun actually means “beautiful springtime” in Chinese. Another translation could be “forever young.” I believe that one of the things the system teaches us is to see things with the eyes of children.

If someone is completely innocent, they will watch the world wide-eyed. They will cry when they are frightened. They live entirely in the present, rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Children are completely spontaneous.

I believe that this is the kind of mentality that we can develop through chi sao (sticky hands), the combat-like game at the core of the system. If we practice the game correctly, we can learn to condition ourselves so that we respond automatically to certain stimulus, without having to process the information with our brains.

In other words, we can develop a kind of auto-pilot. We can use this auto-pilot to enhance our ability to improvise under pressure, which is another amazing skill, just like seeing, hearing and copying.