By Alix Lavaud, 4th Degree Black Belt (Lakan Tapat), Modern Arnis

The article on “Mind” (Omni, May, 1990) by Kathryn Phillips entitled “You Must Remember This” stimulates some very challenging thoughts. As a martial arts practitioner with some background in Wing Chun Kung Fu and the Filipino stick and knife fighting of Modern Arnis as taught by Professor Remy A. Presas, Miss Philips’ article grabs me in a way that compels me to consider the following thought very carefully…

“Think back,” she wrote, “to the first time you played hopscotch. If you are like most people, you can’t actually remember when or where you learned that childhood game. But you still know how to hp the nine-square pattern. In other words, even though you can’t remember the event, you can remember the motor skill. How come?”

It has become evident to me over the years that the ultimate goal of Wing Chun and Modern Arnis training is to enable the practitioner to transcend intellectualization — i.e., to suspend the interminable chatter that goes on within the individual in the form of thought processes while engaged in close quarter combat. Wing Chun and Arnis are very close quarter combat systems (though Modern Arnis is not exclusively a close combat style).

One hardly has time to think when confronted with a staccato of the center punches of a skillful Wing Chun practitioner or the blinding, trance-like twirling motions of the Modern Arnis sticks and hand movements. To have to stop to think when one should be acting is death to smooth functioning. How then do the Wing Chun and Arnis practitioners respond to such displays of speed with so much effectiveness? The question always arises in the neophyte after witnessing Wing Chun or Arnis at work: “how do they know when to block or when to attack?”

The answer to the question “how come one can remember the motor skill without having to remember specifically when one learned it” is, according to Phillips, complex and still eludes neurobiologists.

However, the research of Richard F. Thompson and William Greenough, two collaborating scientists, may have moved closer to providing part of the answer. Kathryn Phillips reports in her article that their research gives some of the strongest evidence yet that the ability to learn motor skills and recall them appears to be located in the cerebellum, the mini-brain wedged under the backside of this cerebrum and behind the brainstem.

Thompson and Greenough discovered that when we learn a motor skill, part of the cerebellum’s nerve cell system changes physiologically. Certain fibers and dendrites, which act as communication wires to other nerve cells grow differently during learning. Skills are hardwired into the brain as one acquires them.

It would not be presumptuous to infer that the Chi Sao drill of Wing Chun as well as the trapping hands techniques of Modern Arnis are designed to elicit cerebellar changes. The constant repetition of these drills hardwire the brain thereby making conscious recall unnecessary. The ability to bypass conscious attention enhances concentration and corrects the tendency of the mind to diffuseness.