The difference is at the age of 17, you might have had many years of careful, and not so much so, observation of the art of driving, compared to the 10 year old in my analogy. With a careful, calculating brain, and a body developed to a sufficient point to handle the vehicle with the potential ease of that of a fully accustomed adult. You "grew" into it, or have a body capable of handling that vehicle's various "pressure" requirements.
With regards to driving a car, it might be a perfectly fine approach to teaching and learning. With regards to fighting, injuries suffered take time away from the practioner. This includes time to heal, time to train. Wing Chun seems to be a very internal style, lots of inner workings going on in there, and biomechanics that may or may not really have to be learned, but clarified. A lot of throwing a punch seems instinctive, but knowing how to throw a punch as everyone does and how it should be in Wing Chun, and being able to throw one as everyone should and as it should be in Wing Chun, are clearly not.
To me, anyway.
Describing for instance to my peers in the service why I punch with the bottom three knuckles, or more specificially perhaps the sun fist, when I had only just begun training, is challenging, but I like a challenge. The wrist for one feels more sturdy, when intent is to deliver with the middle of the bottom three (for now, that is sort of an "unadjusted" facet I came to a logical conclusion to based on other sources as well as hitting things). When I use "perfect pushups," if I try to focus on doing pushups with the first two knuckles as a boxer would, my wrist cannot support my weight without tensing heavily, not to mention it is difficult to maintain control on the perfect pushup, especially with both hands. Injury feels more likely a possibility as if I were to slip at time or loose that tension at any time (as is likely to happen when tensing muscles, you must untense after a while), at which point I would slip anyway and likely hurt my hand or my wrist.
It only serves to justify why boxers wrap their wrists like concrete before a fight, and the idea of "tensing" your arms before impact to minimize injury upon said impact is to provide protection. Unfortunately then the matter seems to be one of "timing." If you time wrong and tense at the wrong time you not only loose power from improper alignment but you risk injury. If you tense moments before impact you now slow the punch down, at which point you loose power delivered from the body's snap. Additionally, with all this tensing and untensing as the body twists and turns, fatigue builds up, hence the rounds in the ring. Without the breakup, fatigue takes away the snapping and it becomes a slop fest.
I guess looking at that you can argue that western boxing is very much an internal style too.
Conversely, doing the "perfect pushup" the proper way, you see that your hand supports your weight more in alignment with how the sun fist is delivered, and you can even do this with a somewhat more relaxed grip. Arguably, you'd last longer or at least not get as tired. Further your punches remain faster and so long as the rest of the cogs of the machine are good to go, you retain power. Of course to deliver you need that timing and strategy to get in the position, and you need to "see" when to get in.
Some people got the idea, some didn't. The point is that is just a sort of... I do not know the word. Something along the lines of ergonomics, fitting the workplace to the worker, but in this case fitting our every day stuff, to the art?? There is more to throwing the punch but I feel I don't have to explain I sorta did in the previous posts and I'm sure we all here know how it should be done.
I know enough about WC to know I cannot and must not spar with it yet. I remember a former training partner who came to class, dismissed SLT as being something that "you can do 'till you're blue in the face, but it won't help you fight," and effectively all he did when he sparred the bigger guys in the class was hold his hands up but walked circular from his target like perhaps a Ba Gua stylist would do, crossing his legs, standing a few points away from totally upright, unsunken. Cross-Stepping.It should never be either/or with regard to learning and sparring. They should go hand in hand. You need the pressure from sparring to test your body, mind and spirit. Skill cannot emerge in a vacuum.
It almost looked like Ba Gua if I didn't know better.
I know that chi-sao is supposed to help you move with the structures and be fluid, flowing, able to move and attack without compromising either yourself or your balance. It is supposed to help you with the pressure from multiple angles, and presumes pressure coming from an opponent that also attacks along the line, for what I can guess to be only one reason, but I already said this above.
I know SLT works more than just brainwashing your elbows to maintain positive shapes, and know it is supposed to work in a special kind of focus ahead and with your peripherials.--among many other things.
I know that some people understand a punch must hit "mid range," and they pull their punches way before it gets to that range, even if the opponent was not close enough for them to have hit in the first place, and I further know that this takes away the true intent of the fists if they were properly aligned with the appropriate distances, structures, and focus. Intent seems to matter a lot with that punch. It's the difference between a tap and a shock.
I know that Wong Shun Leung reportedly trained 4 to 6 hours a day for 6 months straight before taking it to the streets. I also know that reportedly he boxed before he took Wing Chun, so therefore he was somewhat exposed to the rigors of sparring before hand, but found something to appreciate in Wing Chun and fully committed to the program.
There is a danger in "parroting" information like a mindless robot, and "knowing" the information, discovering it for yourself or truly understanding why, and only after serious exhaustion of your faculties then do you approach the observant teacher for guidance towards your own attainment of that understanding.
I further know that while executing, I must be relaxed, give nothing away that compromises my balance, while at the same time retaining sufficient control to project power from the center. That is quite a bit of control, and in a way the pressure building sensitivity drills prepare your structures to deal with increased pressures of actual fighting, without just getting in there and getting hurt and having to delay your training to recover, or just quit altogether.
These concepts just cannot be learned without dilligent practice in a few months. Unfortunately that is exactly what a lot of people are guilty of, and hence they quit the system and exclaim that it does not work, when they should consider why it did not work for them, if people before them made it work, in the street and the ring.
These are just my own opinions, and many would probably call it all just b.s. But these are my own opinions and observations.
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Anyway, that is a lot of knowing.
Just because "I" know it does not mean my body does.
To each his own though, I fully agree though that upon full understanding or shall I say "attainment" of the system, upon you and the body fully "getting it," you should go out there and spar, but there has to be some sort of mutual understanding as to the goals of the exercise and the limitations upon both parties as you just cannot go about "kick-stomping" people's knees in a friendly sparring session. To me that just feels more like a real fight. Also, the sense of continuity is different, because doing that "potentially" can end one, but without sufficient drive, focus, power, whatever there's no way to tell the effectiveness.
Still, I like speaking of that group that went to Thailand, because they defied most of what I said, if I understood the episode regarding Lui Ming Fai. I think they sparred daily. NTC says they did a lot of training that seems possibly much more demanding than most other schools. It seems they did many many hours of training a day. For competitive fighting in the ring, effectively to build warriors. Maybe there's a biography or something I should read on this because it is really something.
It somewhat tells me you can't dive in too early with sparring.
Perhaps the difference then from my classmate with the 1950's fighters is consistent guidance.