By Si-Fu Stefan Fischer Stress training was introduced into the WingTsun system a little over 11 years ago, shortly after I started WingTsun at the Heidelberg Castle. It was developed when the SEK (German SWAT team) sent some of their instructors to the Castle to learn WingTsun. Juergen K., the first student from the SEK and instructor of the SEK Baden Wuertemberg, and now a Fourth Level Technician in WingTsun, started shortly after me at the Castle. He was still in active duty with the SEK at the time and we became good friends and training partners. Over the first two years of our WingTsun education we exchanged countless bruises, bloody noses and the odd cracked rib as we both enjoyed a pragmatic and realistic approach to training. As stress training is a constant part of the SEK's training curriculum we did not have to "reinvent the wheel" so to speak. However, some changes had to be made as the situations and events that the SEK prepares for are quite unique, with the equipment and tactical requirements being far from necessary for the average person. Constant refinement since then has ensured consistent evolution of WingTsun DIS-stress training over the years.
  
DIS-stress training is as important for a self-defence system as the training of the techniques and applications. To highlight this point, consider the following experience of a man who later became one of my students. He had trained in Judo for 15 years, fought successfully at national and international levels, and was also an instructor. Following one of my introductory evenings in Wuerzburg, Germany around nine years ago, he told me about a dramatic event he had experienced a couple of months earlier. He had been walking along the river of Main when he was approached by a solidly built youth, who he estimated to be around 16-17 years of age. The young man asked him for a light for his cigarette. After saying that he didn't smoke, the youth, to the man's total surprise, started punching him violently. This attack came completely out of the blue and he did not respond in any way to defend himself, except to cover up and take the load. The thug continued punching and kicking him even after he went down. At some stage he passed out and woke up in hospital, where he spent 2 weeks recovering from his injuries and wondering why he hadn't defended himself. Although he regarded himself as a peaceful person who had never had a street fight before and who could talk his way out of a precarious situation, in the back of his mind he was confident that he would be able to defend himself if he had to. This unfortunately proved to be wrong. If these two guys had faced each other under different circumstances, say at one of the Judo tournaments, the Judoka would have folded the thug backwards. However, he was not mentally prepared to face senseless and unprovoked aggression and attack. This "unprepared" phenomenon can have several causes, with the most common being:
- Inadequate mental preparation for applying techniques under stress in a real life situation, where rules don't apply.
- Muscle memory only holds records of techniques learned and used in comfortable dojo training situations, wearing Gi or training gear; not in real life, under heavy stress, wearing street clothes.
- A lack of simulation training to prepare for applying techniques in real life and to highlight what works and what doesn't in such situations.
- Unawareness of self-limitations and a subsequent decrease in self-confidence when something doesn't go as expected.
- Fear of hurting others.
- Style and techniques unsuited to self-defence situations because the movements are too complex to apply under stressful and unknown conditions.
- Unrealistic techniques that don't work outside the dojo or kwon when facing an unknown attacker who does not arrange their attack in a familiar pattern.
Without adequate preparation, the first thing to depart in a real fight is the ability to think rationally and make conscious decisions. This could mean that all your training in the kwon or dojo, which was supposed to prepare you for a real fight, goes down the drain and you are suddenly faced with a partial or total black out. However, the risk of this happening can be greatly reduced with the right preparation. This is where WingTsun stress training and fear management can help.   
Stress in general is an unavoidable consequence of life. As Hans Selye noted, "Without stress, there would be no life". Just as stress can cause disease and anxieties, there are also good stresses that promote wellness. This subject, however, is concerned with “dis-stress”, which can be created in three different ways:
- Through real, high-risk situations and danger to life.
- Through controlled risk where the perceived risk is higher than the actual risk.
- Through mental imagery.
Perceived levels of distress can be augmented by several factors such as sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion, total darkness and many more. Obviously the creation of distress through real, high-level danger is not suitable for standard martial arts and self-defence requirements, and will therefore not be mentioned further. It should be noted that this technique is employed by the military and special forces, but in the past has been known to cause serious injury and even death. For the purposes of this article, we will concentrate on the second possibility: calculated risk to create stress. The third possibility, which uses appropriate techniques such as self-hypnosis to create imaginary situations, will also be considered. This technique is effective in triggering the physical reactions of stressful situations, such as cold sweat, tachycardia, and high blood pressure, which makes it a perfect complement to physical stress training. Click here for part ll | 
