Nino bernardo

The wing chun encyclopedia

by Nino Bernardo

People sometimes ask me who I would most like to have trained with. My honest answer is always: “Nobody.” That´s because I was lucky enough to have Wong Shun Leung as my sifu. Three decades after first meeting him, I´m still trying to unpack some of the information he gave me.

At my seminars, I sometimes compare the wing chun that my sifu taught me with an encylopedia of techniques, training methodologies, games, drills, attitudes and attributes. Although the formal syllabus is relatively simple, there´s an amazing amount of information built into the system and a huge amount of depth to it.

When I ran the Basement in London, between 1984 and 2000, I spent a lot of time experimenting with the encyclopedia. I was lucky that a number of very talented martial artists came through the doors at one time or another. One of the experiments we would do is reverse-engineering into the system and out of it.

Reverse-engineering is something that is very typical in industry. If your competitor brings out an amazing new product, the idea is to take it to pieces, study the mechanics, put it together again, then take it apart again and so on. Once you´ve worked out exactly how it works, you should be able to build your own version without breaking any copywrite laws.

In martial arts terms, reverse-engineering works like this. If someone from another system shows me a cool move, I can break it down and study it. If I look deep within the wing chun encylopedia, I should be able to find some similar mechanics. I can then put them together and adapt the move into my interpretation of wing chun.

It also works the other way. If someone finds something they like within wing chun, they should be able to break it down and rebuild it in their own system. I´ve personally trained boxers, karate experts and others who have become obsessed with the ability to hack into someone else brain through chi sao (sticky hands). Some of them have then been able to rebuild this incredible skill into their own style, often followed by a certain degree of success in competition.

Reverse-engineering works because chi sao is a game that can develop certain attributes in those that play it. These attributes might include tactile sensitivity, the ability to send false information to someone else through our body mechanics and an intuitive sense of space. Someone interested in reverse-engineering should see the techniques of chi sao as a way of developing the attributes, rather than an end in themselves.

Although chi sao is one of the most interesting parts of the system, the drills within wing chun are another important component in the encyclopedia that shouldn´t be neglected. There are a number of classic drills, but I’m very interested in the way that these can be creatively put together to make new variations on the classics and even entirely new drills altogether.

In some of my recent seminars, I’ve asked my students to create their own drills with a partner. They need to practice them until they can do them ambidextrously on both sides. They then split up and start working with a new partner. Each partner has to teach the other the drill that they have developed.

One risk of this exercise is that it can overload students’ brains. The trick is to switch your brain onto auto-pilot and let your body remember the exercises. For this reason, I enjoy meeting up with my senior students from the Basement from time to time as their arms flow into old drills that we developed in the past.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that it’s very difficult to describe these drills on paper. That’s because the feel of each drill is the most important part and it can’t be conveyed just through words. If anyone wants to learn any of these drills, games or training methodologies, I can only suggest that they come and pay me a visit in Ibiza or come to one of my seminars.

Nino Bernardo will be available to discuss these ideas in further depth at his regular seminars in London. Further details are available on www.ninobernardo.com

Nino Bernardo´s next column will look at developing wing chun as a personal development tool