As most of my students know, I went to Hong Kong to be part of the Fight Quest TV episode on WingTsun.  The Discovery Channel unfortunately did not want any "non-Chinese" to be part of the episode (besides the two stars of course).  It was a funny turn of events, but at least the producers promised to leave my demonstration in.  We'll see I guess.  I will be posting about the whole reality TV thing shortly.  At least Doug and Jimmy were really cool!  

It was a great feeling as always to have the big kung fu family together.  My Si-Hing, Sifu Robin Tsang (the most overworked man in the IWTA) did such an amazing job as always of coordinating everything. Meeting my other Si-Hing, Sifu Jung Su Park was also one of the highlights of the trip.  I always heard a lot of amazing stories about him but never had the chance to meet him personally until now.  Sifu Park is the pioneer of WingTsun in Korea.  I hope I will have the chance to visit him someday soon.  Sifu Paul from Italy was also present for the final day of shooting.  He is a really cool guy, just search for "fighterman" on YouTube and you will see this monster of a WT man with the kind heart.

 This trip also made me realize that I am in a really good place.  The school is starting to grow enough that I will be able to take more trips to Hong Kong to increase my own level of training and instruction.  This is a very exciting time for me as I feel that I have never had such access to the real WingTsun as I do now.  I want to be able to provide the best WingTsun instruction to my students, which includes continually improving my own skill and understanding.  I have never felt more able to do that then now.  I dare say my students at City WingTsun are in a really good place!

 More to come soon about Fight Quest!

 -Sifu

Of course, it has already been an adventure!  The first day we could not find my student Mike anywhere and we were unable to get in contact with him. That almost meant that we had to scrap our portion of the demo.  But alas, we found Mike and our portion of the demo will go on.

Last night we were up quite late preparing for the demo and opening ceremonies of the show.  We are now off to one more rehearsal before we go to HK island and meet the fighter Jimmy Smith and put on the show for him.

Stay tuned!  I will be keeping you all posted!!  In the meantime, here is a photo of Mike and myself in the office of the IWTA headquarters.

-Sifu 

Sifu Bernd will always have a special place in my heart.  For three years I visited his classes on Mondays and Wednesdays at Langenzell Castle in Germany.  Each class was six hours, meaning I spent on the average 12 hours a week with Sifu Bernd.  Despite the fact that I have changed many things about how I approach WingTsun since those days, Sifu Bernd's influence is without a doubt still in my WingTsun to this day.  I will never forget my very first day training at the Castle as a 2nd student grade.  Sifu Bernd was the teaching that day, a Monday I'm sure.  I had already read up on all my trainers and heard many stories about their skills.  A friend of mine from Hamburg named Nico told me how incredible Sifu Bernd was so I was actually quite nervous my first day.  Nico told me some pretty amazing stories of things that Sifu Bernd was able to do.

When I walked into the training room, Sifu Bernd popped his head in and said in English "Where is the American?".  I raised my hand and he introduced himself.   He was wearing a WT cap and had a very friendly smile.  When he demonstrated his techniques I remember having a huge grin on my face. I was so in awe of his speed and his very dynamic use of WingTsun techniques. I also distinctly remember him seeing my big grin and I felt like he was very motivate to show me what he could do.  Not in a showing off kind of way, but in a way he knew I appreciated the amazing stuff he was showing.  Perhaps the other Germans just don't show a lot of expression and I was the one with the giddy look everytime he did something.  In any case it seemed to motivate him to always show really amazing WingTsun.  It was a feeling that never left for the whole three years I was there.  And while this might just be my emotional recollection now, I remember that everytime he showed something in a dynamic way, he would always look to me first to see my grin of awe.

It was also from Sifu Bernd that I learned a lot about how to be a good trainer and teacher.  He would often take this as his theoretical topic.  I still have pages of notes and handouts from my many theoretical lessons with him.  I still refer to them to this day and have done my best to ingrain this in the instructors that I am teaching.  Sifu Bernd's legacy lives on even in my own students who never met him or heard of him.

I am saddened by the fact that, despite being with him so much I do not have any photos with him.  Before I came back to the USA to start my WingTsun teaching career, I will never forget what he told me.  The words of advice he gave me were absolutely true and I think about it very often.  I choose to keep those words he gave me private.  I never did have the chance to say thank you to him for everything he taught me.  I'm sure he would just consider it "doing his job".

This was on his website: „Viele Menschen kommen in unser Leben und verlassen es wieder spurlos, andere bleiben für eine Weile und hinterlassen Abdrücke auf unseren Herzen und wir sind nie wieder wie zuvor.“  Translation: Many people come and go in our lives without leaving a mark or trace, but others stay a while and leave a mark on our hearts and we are not the same as before.

Thank you Sifu Bernd.  You were certainly one of those who left their mark on my heart.

Sifu Alex Richter

 http://www.harpersbazaar.com/promotions/products/

 Thanks Valerie!!

 Si-fu

I am having a great time here in Berlin with my brother Kenan as always.  He has taken me out everyday and shown me a really good time.  Tomorrow we are off to go-cart racing and bowling.  Yesterday we saw a Vegas style show with celebrity imitators which was a riot.  It is really nice to finally have a vacation, but I do miss all of my students a lot.

I had a very interesting experience here in Berlin today and I hope one day I will be able to write freely about it.  I just need to process it first so that I can distill it in a way that will hopefully be a good lesson for all of my students and readers of my blog.

All I can say now is this:  No matter how good one is in anything (wingtsun for example), it is of ultimate importance to stay humble and open and aware of your own fallibility.  Often times people who are self-styled gurus lose touch with reality and believe their own hype.  So much so in fact, that they can not even listen anymore - they can only lead monologues.  Full of anger and rage they do not "self-style" a life of self-realization and discovery (though they may claim to be doing just that), they just promote a teaching based in anger, resentment and ultimately fear.  I learned tonight that I am in a really good place, surrounded by truly incredible people and that which is in the past is in the past.  I move forward with more confidence and determination!

Before I check out of here tonight from my Si-hings little laptop here in the "dangerous section" of Berlin (Kreuzberg...lol) I want to leave you all with something I have been thinking about a lot lately.  It comes from a book called "The Four Agreements" and I read it because my late friend Klaus was a subscriber of this philosophy.  To honor my dear friend and student Klaus I wanted to read it to perhaps understand better how he was such an incredible person.  The four agreements are:

1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Dont take anything personally.
3. Dont make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

What I saw tonight was the antithesis of this.  It taught me a lot.  That is your legacy for me Klaus.  Thank you.

Si-fu

I was planning on writing the follow-up to my last blog article, but it seems impossible for me to concentrate on anything else while dealing with this incredible loss in my life. For everyone who knew Klaus, it went without saying that a man of his caliber in every aspect of his character was so rare. Klaus had the ability to make everyone feel loved and special, and not just in the trite way that most people mean when they write of someone’s passing, but truly. Klaus made everyone feel incredible. Or as Klaus would always enthusiastically say, “fantastic!”

I will be writing a more complete posting about Klaus when I can muster the strength to not cry every five minutes just thinking about him. For now I want to share the last email I received from him exactly two weeks before he passed:

From Klaus Niedermeyer
To City WingTsun
Date Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 5:29 PM

Subject FW: some inspiring video for you...

Mein Lieber Sifu,

Bin wieder zurueck aus Greece/Nevada/California/NYC/Germany, uff, dat
war ja was.

Hoffe dir gehts gut. Ich werde anfangen, dieses Wochenende zu chillen,
vielleicht treffen wir uns auf ein Fruehstueck?

Bis dahin moechte ich dir dieses BMW video nicht vorenthalten :))))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFt6IYG1vZA

Bis bald mein Lieber Alex

klausN

Translation:

My Dear Sifu

I’m finally back from Greece/Nevada/California/NYC/Germany, oh, that was quite something.

I hope you are doing well. I will finally start to chill this weekend, maybe we could meet for breakfast?

Until then I would like to not keep this BMW video away from you :))))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFt6IYG1vZA

See you soon my dear Alex

klausN

Dear Klaus - you owe me breakfast...

Si-fu 

 The first page of a 3-page interview the late great grandmaster Yip Man originally published in February 1972 issue of New Martial Hero.  The interview was arranged by Sifu Leung Ting.

I was in Chinatown the other day as I often am and I came across this find at Bok Lei Po martial arts store on Mott St.  It is from an anniversary edition of "New Martial Hero" magazine which was published last year.  New Martial Hero is basically the main kung fu magazine from Hong Kong since the late 60's.  It has survived even until this day, with new issues coming out every 2-3 months.  In this special anniversary edition they reprinted many famous articles from some of there really old issues.   I bought the magazine because it has significant historical worth for WingTsun (and wing chun) followers.  It is the only interview the late great grandmaster Yip Man ever gave during his lifetime!

As most of my students know, I am also a student of Chinese language and script.  I love finding these articles as it gives me something new to practice reading.  I'm going to work on a translation so that descendants of our great art can read what great grandmaster Yip Man himself had to say.

For now I will translate the second to last paragraph which has extra value for Leung Ting WingTsun practitioners. It was the time that great grandmaster Yip Man openly announced that the WingTsun instructor Leung Ting was his "closed door student" (the student accepted after the grandmaster retired).  Contrary to popular rumors, grandmaster Leung Ting never gave himself the title of "closed door student", it was great grandmaster Yip Man himself.  Here is the paragraph (if the following looks like a bunch of boxes, switch the encoding on your browser for tradtional Chinese characters):

 葉問現年七十六歲﹐ 十三歲即開始練拳﹐ 於一九四九年﹐ 從大陸來港。  當時﹐香港人對詠春所知有限﹐ 經葉問二十三年來之努力耕耘﹐ 成就漸見﹐ 葉師傅已於多年前 “封門”﹐ 刻在浸會學院﹐ 珠海書院﹐ 中華傳道會學生中心等各處詠春訓練班之主持教師粱挺﹐ 系其一位封門弟子。

This year Yip man is seventy-six years old.  At the age of 13 he began studying martial arts, and in 1949 he left mainland China for Hong Kong.  At that time, the Hong Kong people had really limited knowledge of the Wing Tsun style, and after 23 years of hard work and promotion his efforts can now finally be felt.  Sifu Yip "closed his door" (retired) many years ago already.  Now Wing Tsun classes are being carried out at the Baptist University Student's Union.  These classes are being run by the instructor Leung Ting, who is now Sifu Yip's closed door student. 

When I get the rest translated, I'll post it!

Enjoy...
 

My students often ask me about my own personal training regimen, that is, how often do I train, what type of training do I engage in, and whether or not I lift weights. When it comes to workout routines and regimens, I have tried just about everything (except kettlebells, admittedly – I will try them soon and give you a report). It seems as though I have finally found the best workout to suit my needs through my WingTsun workout routine and Taoist Yoga. Mind you, my WingTsun training routine has also developed quite a bit over the years as well. Just to clarify what I mean by workout routine: I’m talking about what I train for my personal development as a WingTsun exponent and for my own personal fitness. This is in addition to the 2-6 hours a day of hands-on teaching I give to my private and regular students.

Now for a little history about how I started supplementing my WingTsun training with personal workouts. When I became seriously involved in training WingTsun, I was training full-time at Langenzell Castle in Germany, the headquarters for the EWTO. At that time I was training six hours a day, 5 days a week, sometimes more, sometimes less depending on whether I was injured or exhausted. Initially, it took some adjusting to get used to the six-hour regimen, but the human body is so adaptable that six hours a day became quite easy after a while. I wanted to improve my conditioning, so I joined a gym in Heidelberg. I trained at the gym three times a week, 2 hours at a time in addition to my 30-hour per week WingTsun training. I trained cardio on the treadmill and a serious amount of weight lifting. I tried to focus mainly on the muscle groups important for striking. After following this regimen for a few months, I started to notice something really incredible - I was able to beat most of my training partners in lat sau (practical fighting) and chi sau! But I noticed that most of the time I was simply out-muscling or overpowering my partners. The result was that my partners were all forced to increase their technical game to handle me, and after a while, they were able to handle me. Even smaller, less athletic partners who really internalized WingTsun concepts like “borrowing force” and “abandoning force” were starting to handle my power attacks.

Plus since I was focusing on “power” and not skill, I was having difficulty myself, not just with more technical partners but with those more powerful than myself. So I needed to go back to the drawing board. Weight lifting was not delivering the results I wanted. It was also making me a bit stiff. After some research I also found out that “cardio” whether running, jogging or otherwise, was a fairly useless endeavor for martial arts. Especially practical-fighting martial arts, the emphasis should not be an aerobic conditioning, but rather anaerobic conditioning with the breaking up of rhythm. Years later I confirmed this theory when I had an avid marathon runner join my WingTsun class and “gas-out” after one minute of steps and punches on the shield. Aerobic conditioning does not do us a whole lot of good in the high-stress, high-intensity world of a short fight.

So the conclusive results of weight lifting on my WingTsun training were the following:

1. My skill suffered due to lack of focus on technical and conceptual strategies of WingTsun. All my focus was on building strength to “cheat” my WingTsun.
2. My power-intensive strategies only served me against weaker, less technical and less experienced partners. I would assume my attacker is stronger and not a slouch so this weight-lifting strategy was a dead end.
3. My shoulders started to become stiff as a result of the various shoulder presses I was practicing. Stiff shoulders are a deadly sin in WingTsun.

While I may be going over my weight-lifting period rather quickly, I do want to point out that I constantly sought the advice of professional personal trainers, weight-lifting manuals, and books to ensure I was using “proven” routines.

So what did I switch to next? I’ll explain that in part two…

Sifu Alex Richter

P.S. - Just for some perspective, at five foot seven I am hardly a giant. In fact I am the same exact height as the late Bruce Lee. At his leanest (and most unhealthy period) during the end of his life, Bruce’s weight was 115 -120 lbs, perhaps even lighter. My weight starting WingTsun (on the same basic frame as Bruce Lee) was 140. When I was done with my weight-lifting endeavor I was 165 lbs without much fluctuation.

I started this year as I do every new year - with 5000 chain-punches on the wall-bag... I can barely type now so please excuse typos and such ;-) 

Last year was big for City WingTsun and for myself.  City WingTsun's enrollment increased dramatically and we instituted many new programs for our students to suit various needs and interests.  Now students have the chance to learn WingTsun in our regular classes or if they want to step it up, we now have special fighter and instructor classes as well.  It also makes me very proud to have produced four high quality Primary Level technicians this year.  Mary, Fabian, Elliot and Wai are the first batch of my students to start with me and achieve the Primary Level.  Congrats!

On a personal front, I spent the greater part of 2007 developing myself further as a WingTsun exponent.  I changed up my training regimen fairly drastically, cutting out a lot of the fat and focusing on some very key WingTsun skills.  I could not have done it without the help of Sifu Carson Lau and of course, my Si-Kung, Leung Ting (for those who are interested, I will post another article shortly on my new personal workout and its evolution throughout the years as well).

The past year was also huge for me in terms of developing deeper bonds with my WingTsun family and the martial arts community in general. In March I was in Budapest for Grandmaster Leung Ting's 60th birthday.  That trip was really big for me as I really felt the strong bond between me and my international WingTsun brothers and sisters.  Being the only WingTsun instructor in New York City I sometimes feel a bit isolated, but that all changed.  It was a huge eye-opener to meet Sifu Maday Norbert and experience his tremendous hospitality and friendship.  There are few people I would lay it all out for, but if Sifu Norbert ever needed me to go to battle with him I would be there in a heartbeat.

I also had the chance to bond with Sifu Will Parker while I was in Budapest.  He is a real straight-forward guy and I really respect him as a person and as a martial artist.  In the past an unscrupulous former instructor of our association had tried to give me a less than favorable opinion of Sifu Will.  I'm glad I had the chance to meet him and judge for myself.

Of course I also had the chance to see my Hong Kong WingTsun family again - Si-Kung, Sifu Cheng Chuen Fun, Sifu Leung Koon, Sifu Leung Kwok Wah, Sifu Robin Tsang, Sifu John Lau and the WingTsun girls ;-).  Looking forward to my next trip to Hong Kong this coming May.

My school's five year anniversary was also a big event this past year.  Further strengthening the ties between my students, Sifu Damon and crew, Paulie Zink and myself was tremendous for me.  They all inspire me to keep trying my best.

As for the shortcomings of 2007, there were some big and small.  I realized this past year I was very focused on my training and my school and so my personal friends outside of the WingTsun world must have felt a bit alienated from me.  I will do my best in 2008 to continue my very valuable friendships with people in and out of my daily world.  I'm not one to cast away friends too easily, perhaps because I am very selective of those I choose to spend my precious free-time with.  I hope my friends all realize how important they are to me.

So looking ahead, 2008 is already going to be another big year for us.  I'm starting the year off by teaching a Weekend Intensive seminar on the weekend of Jan. 12th - 13th.  We will also be hosting Sifu Carson Lau twice this year (February and June) and Grandmaster Leung Ting in September.  I'm planning a number of workshops, trips and seminars this year as well so stay tuned.

I wish you all the best for the New Year!  I always focus on one of my favorite Chinese maxims at the beginning of every year (I apologize if you don't have Chinese encoding on your computer as you will probably just see boxes and jibberish):

仁者無敵 (the man of virtue is invincible)...

Si-fu