Reconsidering wing chun

I'd have to say that my three main interests are music (songwriting, recording), woodworking (primarily hand tools), and martial arts (empty hand, rather than weapons).

Their relative priority shifts over time: music used to be the #1 thing, and I took up woodworking just to build racks and storage for my music gear. Lately I've been doing more woodworking than music -- largely because none of my recording gear is set up, and I don't have a place to set up my guitar gear. So, when I **do** play, it gets a bit frustrating.

Even though I miss being in a band, over the last week or two I've realized that I miss martial arts almost as much -- or maybe equally as much. It's not so much "learning how to hit people": rather, the body mechanics intrigue me -- particularly for the "soft" styles. (To over-simplify, "hard" styles rely on brute strength, blocking head-on, and toughening up your body; "soft" styles rely on finesse, and deflecting and re-directing.)

Although for the last two weeks I've been missing Aikido, to the point of Googling for local Aikido schools, a recent blog entry on a martial arts -oriented blog (check out the links -- they all go to short YouTube instructional videos!) made me reconsider Wing Chun. As I watched all those video clips, I was reminded of how Wing Chun uses finesse and deflection -- good stuff!

So, I'll have to Google some local WC schools, as well... :)


--GG