Vignette # 3: Structure

This is a series of vignettes based on my passion, martial arts and how it seeps into everything I do. I try to link principles to certain day-to-day situations that you might find interesting. I am not trying to position myself as a “mister know it all”, and if you think it is the case, I am not going to hire a lawyer to defend my biases vs yours.

Learning an art or anything for that matter usually goes into a lot of structure.

Learning structures go that way: let me give you a little bit of background (where, when and why), let me explain and show you how it works (what and who) and now repeat after me (vocally or in the case of a physical practice, mimicking); finally, do it yourself and ask any question if you get stuck.

The movements follow a set of rules that are dictated by the situation (level of stress, anger, fear etc.), the environment (wet floor, open area, narrow space, bouncy floor, sloping ground etc,), the opponent (height, age, gender, whether armed or not etc.) as well as the style (parry, block, duck, weave, retreat, move torso or not etc.) and much more.

Whilst learning, the situation has to be as standardised as possible because it helps to create a baseline i.e. if a hook comes towards my face then I will memorise how do to deal with it irrespective of my opponent's size, technique or any other attributes. You cannot learn randomly (I did learn eskrima randomly and I know a lot in terms of width but not a lot in terms of depth except maybe for some knife applications).

That baseline is your gateway to creating form. Not a form as in tao lu or kata but form as in the proper answer to a particular question: it is an acquired and then ingrained response (or behaviour) to a stimulus.

Think of it as the shackles that are necessary for us to build good habits, good reflexes, good positioning.

At this stage, I have to stress this doesn't mean superpowers or mastery, it just means that with everything equal (without the particularities I mentioned above) you acquire a structure to build upon. The more you repeat the same conditions, the more fluent you become…and that has to be for both sides of your body.

The classes I took in wing chun were always meant to be done on the left hand side first (most likely the weakest in the majority) because if you had no time to practice the right hand side with your partner during class it was ok, you could pick it up later easily in your own time and your weak side would have become stronger.

The more you practice, the more solid your foundation is.

Then once you have become fluent, you slowly start to deviate from the rigidity of your learnings. You move away from your alphabet to construct words, sentences and full paragraphs.

At one point that is impossible to pinpoint, you transcend what you have learned…

If someone comes into contact with you at this stage, they might be fooled by your randomness, what appears to be a lack of structure. You have a lot of structure you can fall back upon but it doesn’t define you anymore.

I always say my baseline in wing chun but I learned so many things since I have stopped practising it in 1996 that what comes out of my body (and the situation) is what it is without a restrictive label stuck on it.

All that long intro to give some context because if we meet now, you may find me very random, not much structured, not at all methodical and that is just fine by me. I am also free from any corporate shackles and can be my own self.

I have been in hundreds of client meetings (5-600 most likely in the last 5-6 years) so I have experienced a lot of possible outcomes, I have been drilled in a lot of 5 these and 4 those, that grid and this framework etc.

I don’t want to use any of these things anymore but would rather free flow with my baseline and relate to my interlocutor from a vantage point of discovery and creativity rather than fixity and orthodoxy. I have had my fair share of structures imposed upon my thinking.

You can only express (in all situations) if you forget what you have learned i.e. you transcend it and go beyond the cookie cutter approach that made you reach the present level (which by the way means only anything for you).

By forgetting, I mean in the present situation but your muscle memory can always recall the very specific answer to a very specific question (Whilst I experienced 7 fighting styles, I only feel any level of depth with one of them though my body remembers each style's specific moves).

You cannot shortcut “doing the do” and start expressing freely. Free expression comes from a deep experience even it is a narrow subject.

At the end of the day, it makes you well-rounded but not superior. No-one has all the answers and it is insulting "today" to always refer to the security of "yesterday" and all the biases it brings.