Legal Ramifications

Students often ask me about the legal ramifications of using violence or force. This is a complicated issue as any of the law enforcement personnal will attest to. There is rarely a time that you can use force without legal ramifications… even in the “self-defense” scenerio. In FACING VIOLENCE by Rory Miller we find that seldom can you use the self defense plea without putting the burden of proof on yourself. You have to show a progression and the need to defend yourself with force. Take for instance you have e-mails or message room posts by an individual or individuals that provoke you or taunt you. You shouldn’t respond. Just copy them to use if further threats or issues arise. Anything you can get from them is useful in court. This is the real battlefield these days.

This is a need to read book for everyone in today’s world. Many of the Law Enforcement Officers that I am friends with have also stated the same.

Be Safe… Be Smart… Be Legal Minded…

Music and Kung Fu

Today I was trying to explain  why it is so difficult to learn kung fu from a book. It is like trying to play guitar from a book. Your fingers are where they are suppose to be, your picking and moving your hands correctly but it isn’t sounding right…. That is because your guitar is not tuned properly and you are off tempo or a mirad of things that could be wrong. You need a teacher with a mastery of the skill you seek.

When all is right, it is kung fu… just like making music.

“Music is noise mastered. Wing Chun Kung Fu is chaos mastered.”-©SiFu Carroll

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Penmanship and Martial Ability

Yesterday during class I explained that the Chinese culture sees all knowledge as interconnected and not compartmentalized. Writing to them is fighting, or health, or wealth etc. This is why education ranks higher in China than in the U.S. The ideogram (Chinese character) for scholar means 1-10 or a person who knows all from one to ten. Math may not be the subject of the scholar but the idea is apparent in the character.

In Calligraphy the Chinese student seeks to convey the ‘Chi’ or essence of the character. This goes along with all Chinese arts to include painting, cooking, pottery,  sculpture, etc.  Below is a well written excerpt from  http://www.zein.se/patrick/chinen9p.html to show what I mean. Please digest it and make it a part of your study. All knowledge is interconnected and interdependent.

Enjoy!

SiFu Carroll

The Eight Basic Strokes

Basically you can say that all modern Chinese characters are drawn with a palette consisting of eight basic strokes. Generally all strokes are painted from top to bottom and left to right – with exceptions for characters number six, which is draw upwards. In the following overview each type of stroke is shown (drawn in black colour) within actual characters (drawn in grey colour):

#1 = Dot (dian3):
#2 = Horizontal (heng2):
#3 = Vertical (shu4):
#4 = Slanting to the left (pie3):
#5 = Slanting to the right (na4):
#6 = Rising (ti2):
#7 = Hook (gou1):
#8 = Turning (zhe2):

That was a short walkthrough of the strokes – make sure that you train writing these strokes really well, thus making it a lot easier to continue your studies. After this, you will also need to know in what order the strokes are supposed to be draw to build up characters…

Rules for Stroke Order

The basic rule, when writing Chinese characters, is to always write from top to bottom, from left to right. If a character consists of more than one radical, you always write each included radical as a separate piece.

Within each radical you have six basic rules, which I will now illustrated with sequences of pictures. The complete characters are first shown on a yellow background, and then you see a sequence of pictures from left to right, showing how the character is built up, stroke by stroke, to form the final result:

Rule #1:	Top down.
	Special case: Left side of squares is drawn before the top.
Rule #2:	Left to right.
	Exception: Hook on the right side comes first.
Rule #3:	Horizontal lines and squares before crossing vertical lines.
	Exception: Bottom lines are always drawn last.
Rule #4:	Frames before contents.
	Note: The bottom line of a frame is drawn last.
Rule #5:	Centre before symmetrical sides.
Rule #6:	Secondary dots drawn last.

These rules are based on practical experience – the rules reflect what has been learnt from using brushes in practice. The rules give good guidelines, but to learn to write properly, it’s probably best to find a dictionary or textbook that clearly shows the stroke orders of several characters. In my examples above, I’ve only chose characters that are relatively simple and easy to write – when the number of strokes increases, the risk of the basic rules becoming inadequate will increase. In some special cases it’s even possible that there is more than one correct stroke order…

A Universal Character to Practice!

The character for “eternal” or “eternity” is a classical example of a character where all the basic types of strokes can be found. If you can write this character really nicely, then you’ll probably be able to write all characters well! The numbers and arrows indicate in which order and directions the strokes are written.

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JKD and Wing Chun

I have trained in both and now only teach Wing Chun Kung Fu for many reasons but the main one being that Bruce was once asked what he would use in a real life or death fight and his answer was not JKD it was Wing Chun. Now that I have learned the art of Wing Chun I know why.  My SiGong, Duncan Leung, posted something regarding Bruce and JKD and it rings so true.

Here is what he posted on the thread Potential Grasshopper

Posted by: SiFu Leung – October 7, 2004 (11:31 p.m.) – 68.10.116.153 By Bruce Lee’s own account, he applied Wing Chun principles and theory in the light of his personal experience as a fighter in a manner that was most appropriate for himself. However, that is what a martial artist is supposed to do –personalize the system. Bruce Lee called this “new” system Jeet Kune Do. It is really not significantly different from Wing Chun.

If you are seeking a method of relieving stress and attaining emotional balance, you might also consider tai chi, which is excellent for this purpose.

I questioned the differences when I was training in JKD and what I was told could be summed up with the statement I use today for my students to understand: “Wing Chun does not need JKD but JKD needs Wing Chun.”

Question the obvious… and the statements that are used to blow smoke and confuse you. Common Sense and Hard Work are the secrets.

SiFu Carroll

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“WING CHUN IS SWIFT AND INTENSE FORCE.”

quote form SiFu Carroll when asked to define Wing Chun.

This definition is copyrighted material. All rights reserved. Copyright 2010

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Joint Locking and Wing Chun

Wing Chun is primarily a striking art but it does have Chin-Na incorporated into it. It is after all a Chinese art. I have had students ask about Joint locking and the like. We can do that but instead seek to simplify the situation. We don’t “lock” joints we Break or destroy them . In training we slow down the technique to keep someone from being injured irreparably. However slowed down does not mean watered down.

Most students that begin with us are taken back when we get frustrated that they do not really try to hit us. SiFu Savage would always say “Wing Chun works when the other guy is being a true Bad guy!” . Pulled punches and kicks are the downfall of a point sparer. Likewise joint locks are like “pulled” joint breaks.

Does Wing Chun use joint controls etc. yes and no. Yes you can but why train to “pull” punches or anything?

Just my opinion…

SiFu Carroll

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“GROUND FIGHTING”

NEVER go to the ground in a street fight. The Ground is your enemy. The ground has dangers of it’s own. It limits your mobility. The smaller person dies on the floor or ground. The larger or more powerful person uses it to slow the smaller person down by pinning them and beating the shit out of them. The ground is never a place you want to go when your fighting for your life. There are always more dangers in the street than in the Dojo or the ring/ octagon (there are no mats, gi, referees, rules or emergency personel).  Do whatever it takes to stay off the ground. If you are taken to the ground do whatever it takes to regain your feet. you can’t get away from a situation or defend against multiple attackers from the ground.

Wing Chun is noted for …

Relentlessness

Lightning like speed

Aggressiveness

Explosiveness

Simplicity

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What makes it an effective self defense system?

Everyone needs to know how to defend themselves. If you really want to know how to protect yourself and your loved ones, survive a street attack, or prevail on the battlefield, then you need a strategy and practical techniques that can be applied to any situation.

In a real life confrontation, there are no referees, you can’t “tap out” to save yourself from harm, there are no rules in place to protect you, and it most likely won’t be a one-on-one fight. Wing Chun Kung Fu was designed to teach you to handle the reality of a real life confrontation using techniques that have been proven to work in turbulent times such as today. It doesn’t exclude techniques because they are too dangerous in a competition and it does not take years to effectively master the techniques.

No points, no rules, no tapping out. Just reality-based, combat proven, street tested…

What about the “UFC”, or “MMA”? Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) are not reality-based. They have been modified for sport/competition.

In order to be truly effective, a self- defense system needs to meet the following 10 rules:

1. It must be appropriate for today’s world
2. It must work on an assailant that is much larger, stronger and faster than you
3. It must work against both armed and unarmed assailants
4. It must work against single and multiple assailants
5. It must work against determined and capable assailants, not just cooperative training partners Training scenarios and “sparring” must be realistic in nature. (You will rarely encounter a fight against someone using the same style as you on the street, and the days of a one-on-one “fair fight” are over.)
6. It must work when you are surprised
7. It has to be concept driven to handle all situations
8. It must work in every possible environment (The same method must work in snow, sand, parking lot, woods, jungle, your living room, etc.)
9. It must become instinctive and convulsive as quickly as possible
10. It can’t be bound by rules of engagement such as in competition and sport

If you want to know how to defeat any attacker in only a fraction of the time it takes to learn a sport driven martial art, then come check us out. Our techniques are literally the same as those taught to many government agents, military special forces operators, and law enforcement officers. They are practical, realistic, and designed to be street and battlefield effective.

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From Close Quarter Combat Magazine – Page 13, August/Sept 2003, Issue 20

G r a c i e C o n f e s s e s

By SGT. Laurence Snell (US ARMY, Ret.)

“Hidden in this CYA statement there is a confession.”

“When I tour the country and give seminars, I am surprised by how many people who are experts in sport jujitsu but do not know the most basic self-defense techniques of ju-jitsu. The problem with this is that you can get a false sense of security from what you know. Just because you can handle yourself on the mat doesn’t mean you’ll know what to do when attacked. In that case, sport ju-jitsu can actually be a detriment because you’ll be overconfident. We were shocked by how many longtime students had completely forgotten, or even worse never learned, the very important self-defense aspects. For my father Helio, the self-defense moves are far more important than the sport moves. Every time I see him, he always tells me that students are not being taught enough self-defense moves.”

– Royce Gracie,

Grapple Magazine

Isn’t it a little late to be telling us this? They are the number one initiator and breeders of modern sport wrestling. After all these years of making undefeatable claims and brainwashing thousands of students into believing they are in some kind of an undefeatable system, he tells us this, now? Questionable marketing and early UFC  shenanigans (trampoline ring floors and that fighter named Kimo that really had only one month of training–not a 4th degree black belt!) had left their deep impression in the early 1990’s. This Gracie style of sport wrestling, which has confused and misled so many as being some kind of ultimate self-defense, has infected the world. So many martial artists feel compelled to offer groundwrestling courses in their programs that the Gracie family name appears coast-tocoast.

So much so, that a few key, naïve, military insiders have embraced it. I am a retired U.S. Army Sergeant and former old-school, Karate black belt. I stood by through the years as I watched my beloved Japanese arts turn into “children citizenship schools” that produce little more than sport kick-boxers. And I am ashamed to say I also stood by as just a few people in “this-man’s-Army” twisted our hand-to-hand combat manuals into some kind of high school wrestling program.

Powerless to interfere again, I watched the process, which started with a small team of Rangers going to Brazil, bringing the criteria back. Next, the material somehow spread into Army doctrine. Newer manuals cover an abundance of sport, wrestling techniques. I spoke with a graduate of these courses and he told me, “…during the randori (freestyle wrestling) work-outs, I would pretend that the real enemy was trying to get me, or that an attacker was after my family and I had to break free and win.” When I reminded him that stabbing your finger into the eye of these killers was just one of many survival techniques missing from their doctrine, he seemed to miss the point.

“Ever wrestle with your backpack on? With an M-16? Wearing a pistol and a knife? Can you? Even as an escaping and unarmed prisoner, is wrestling your first choice? “ I asked him? “I just really like it,” was the only answer. For some, the brainwashing runs deep.

For others in a growing trend, the brainwashing doesn’t run so deep. Early on, the newer UFC fighters, with their emphasis on hardcore striking and kicking, have learned to defeat these sport wrestlers. A recent Tennessee police officer wrote a review of a police-based, Gracie seminar he attended for a major law enforcement magazine. The officer reported that much of what Gracie teaches must be “taken with a grain of salt,” because he lacks experience in the realworld problems of police combat.

I think the Gracies have seen the modern movement toward reality in martial arts and are doing public relations / CYA (cover your ass), actually blaming their students for not knowing what they haven’t been teaching them for 15 years now. But hidden in this CYA statement there is a confession. When will we hear something similar from the Army? I wonder now what these shortsighted, Army H2H manual writers think now, after Gracie’s admission. We will be stuck with this manual for years, maybe even a decade!

By SGT. Laurence Snell (US ARMY, Ret.)

Why are we teaching these (our) troops to wrestle?

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