When I got to his home, he said to me, “Today I have some special training for you. He then took out two punch hand pads, the ones the people use punch the trainer’s hand. Sīfú took me outside into the long corridor which ran along the front of the apartment. He put the pads on his hand and held them up and told me to punch them, so I did. Sīfú said, “You can punch them hard,” So I punched hard, and Sīfú started moving away from me along the corridor. This meant I had to chase after him while still punching the pads. After a few rounds, we both grew tired and stopped. Sīfú said, “I am training you to fight for real, you need to learn to punch fast and hard. Be ready as you opponent will move, and the targets will be mobile.” Now I understood why we were training like this. I think Sīfú wanted me to not only be good at Wing Chun, but to also be good at fighting. Also, in the early 1980’s there were a lot of martial arts competitions staring up in Hong Kong. Sīfú wanted me to know the fighting skill, and this was very rare, and he did not train anyone else this way. It was the first and last time I trained like that.
