HI all..
Well I thought I would write up a small review of the Sam Chin workshop. Firstly, thanks must go to Sam for an amazing two day high energy trip through the basics of ILC, to Serge Augier for facilitating and Eric Ling for hosting. There were 20 total participants from all round europe and a lot of them had heard about Sam through other teachers. I was intrigued because my own teacher talks so highly of Sam and the other seminar reviews talked about stuff which seemed a bit far fetched. It wasn't.
You can always see what a man is about by the way he laughs, why he laughs. Sam laughs as he shares secrets that martial arts masters hide, when he talks about combat, when he trains with you, when you get vaguely close to anything threatening & then laughs as you go staggering off after having been unbalanced, qin na'd or hit. If you hit the man he laughs, as I imagine a mountain would if being attacked by a rubber dingy. It's infectious and I saw many smiles at the absurdity of how easily Sam threw them around, and how gentle he was in doing it. I ended up being thrown, hit, unbalanced and thoroughly schooled, then Sam would carefully explain how it was done, how to get the skill to do it.
In terms of appearance, from all of the masters I have seen, only a handful actually look like they have done what the arts are for. Sam is definitely one of them, his build is like a tank disguised as a smiling bear, i think he is smaller than me in height, maybe 5'10, my cheescake gut says I am in no position to comment on his weight
This size disguises his sensitivity which is astounding, but simple because it seems to be based on a central unifying principle that underlies everything he does, awareness.
Awareness seems to be the key ILC principle and Sam teaches how to utilise it in everything.The two things we looked at were how to organise the body, and what happens when engaging the opponent. Both parts were shared in a way so all the participants could take the principles and apply to their own practice.
The first was done from how they body works, down to the fine detail of weight, mass, structure, body wrapping and alignment, movement. It's was hands on and we all had to do various exercises to get the body organised. There were various levels of ability, some of us were rather less coordinated than others, but it was good fun and Sam managed to get us through with humour it despite the aerobics class next door on morning 1, and the evangelical god basher this morning. I talked to many people who were newly motivated by what they learnt. Sam said repeatedly 'the secrets protect themselves', and shared them openly on this basis. You only get the secret if you train it. We came away with a clear explanations of many shortcuts to the underlying principles.
The second thing we looked at is spinning and sticky hands, engaging the opponent in my vocab. The spinning hands is where we got lots of interaction and the skills being taught hands on were astounding. Forget taking your center, Sam can pretty much take and hold your center through your arms. It's a physical thing, and he shares the details of angles and forces necessary to be able to do it, how to deflect incoming forces etc. We then trained the methods using two person drills. We all got to train with Sam, Serge took some ferocious limb destructions, the rest of us were spared to being lightly hit, and unbalanced. I have been hit by several CMA teachers and it is a different sort of power that Sam has. One of Serge's students said it was like being hit in the skeleton and having taken one to the shoulder I have to agree. The whole skeleton hurts.
It was all about awareness again, and acute fine details about body angles and alignment, and physical forces interacting between the two people. I can say that I got unnervingly unbalanced into an untenable position every time Sam wanted to. One real brown trouser moment was when he just touched my arms with his palms, and managed to freeze me, I mean my head moved ok, but i couldn't move somehow. It's part of his awareness, how my body is moving. Which also led to the zombie walk. He repeatedly put out his arms and walked in on anyone who wanted some. You can;t do anything, punches neutralised, arms tied up, centre taken, hit/throw. Very cool.
Anyway, it's late and the hour I spent writing this I could have been doing far more interesting things. If you get the chance you should check out Sam. He is a very generous teacher who can explain and demonstrate some very valuable methods that students of fighting can utilise. Thanks to Sam, to the organisers. Hope to see the other participants again.
cheers
yusuf