...I had an interesting experience today. I crashed another WC school from a different lineage and demanded to do chi-sau with their guys to defend the honor of my lineage! Yeah, and then I got hit in the mouth. (It's the biggest target on my body as you can tell from my posts.
) But I gave as well as I took. It was really great! I will visit them again or invite them to visit us.
OK ... to be honest, it wasn't "crashing" at all. The guy who runs the other school has an open workout once a month, so we talked and he invited me to attend. Unfortunately I had to work that day and could only visit for about an hour. As it turns out it's a really small school ...like mine, but way cooler. I just sub-let at a boxing gym. These guys have their place decked out like a proper kwoon. Classy. And they were all doing chi-sau when I got there. With guys from several different lineages.
So I signed the release form and got on the floor. With each partner we started of just rolling to get a feel for what the other guy had in mind. Different people have very different ideas about what chi sau is and how to train it. In this case we were able to find common ground and work productively.
Honestly, I really think it would be good for my guys to work with these guys once in a while, and hopefully their sifu will feel the same way. We've had very successful multi-style Escrima/FMA gatherings in this town. Maybe we can finally do something similar with WC and raise the overall awareness of WC with the public.
I mean we live in a huge metro area yet WC is almost unknown. It's not like we are competing for customers. We need to cooperate to have a public presence, and by mixing, our students will be exposed to more bodies, more variation, just all round, more experience. ...If I can find the right people, really don't see the downside. Any thoughts?

OK ... to be honest, it wasn't "crashing" at all. The guy who runs the other school has an open workout once a month, so we talked and he invited me to attend. Unfortunately I had to work that day and could only visit for about an hour. As it turns out it's a really small school ...like mine, but way cooler. I just sub-let at a boxing gym. These guys have their place decked out like a proper kwoon. Classy. And they were all doing chi-sau when I got there. With guys from several different lineages.
So I signed the release form and got on the floor. With each partner we started of just rolling to get a feel for what the other guy had in mind. Different people have very different ideas about what chi sau is and how to train it. In this case we were able to find common ground and work productively.
Honestly, I really think it would be good for my guys to work with these guys once in a while, and hopefully their sifu will feel the same way. We've had very successful multi-style Escrima/FMA gatherings in this town. Maybe we can finally do something similar with WC and raise the overall awareness of WC with the public.
I mean we live in a huge metro area yet WC is almost unknown. It's not like we are competing for customers. We need to cooperate to have a public presence, and by mixing, our students will be exposed to more bodies, more variation, just all round, more experience. ...If I can find the right people, really don't see the downside. Any thoughts?