It's supposed to be an interactive adventure right?

Not too long ago our school hosted a weekend long seminar with our esteemed Teacher. He's our Sifu and our teacher's Sifu...I forget the traditional term, but we respect him. He's shown us so much that its literally been information overload. This is probably the same for each of you and your teacher respectively. Our teacher is, of course, better because he's ours. <Note the sarcasm, and the allusion to prevalent belief systems within the greater Wing Chun world. eg. "My dad can smash your dad!!", as you run away crying.>

Seriously though, he does invite questions and testing. He encourages us to test ourselves, what he teaches us, and to take nothing for granted. We're all human, and thus...probably very flawed.
This, and the effectiveness of his demonstrations, are attributes which have won my respect.

This isn't about the Seminar however.
This is about an aspect of the learning process withing the greater WC schools, which I've been a part of, and which I still see from others.
In a sense its pointless programming with no expectation for right, or wrong.

Let me set the scene...our weekend adventure had 20 odd students from two different schools. Ours...and 2 of theirs. I respect their teacher for letting them attend, and I respect them for giving it a go. One of them was even from my old LMK school, we didn't know each other but I recognised the footwork and such. He was in for a big surprise, and potentially turned his WC world on its ear, lol.
One of ours in particular came from a Chu Shong Tin lineage and had been learning down country, and we two had an interesting experience which astounded and surprised me at the same time.

We were going through a variation of the pak sao drill, (i'm assuming that all systems have some sort of repeatable pattern used for teaching pak sao. the technique isn't important here), and to be honest...I was a bit perplexed, which was in turn perplexing for my partner, lets call him Grant.
The main intention was to let us see where our pak's should be, why it should be there, and to have some thought towards real life application...within reason of course.
Grant had this...small-dog-being-held-over-water thing going on.
Such as:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSiC7KLiBZI

So we try to train for realistic application as much as possible considering the class environment, and we're none of us masters. As such we stagger our applications/attacks. We try to avoid establishing a rhythm. I guess the idea is that we are actively engaged in each encounter, and not falling into a pre-programmed routine by assuming the same sort of punch comes at me at the same speed, in the same fashion the whole time.

As soon as I threw a single punch, he would start throwing out his pak's even if I didn't have a punch, like that lil dawg above the water automatically doing his lil dawgy-paddle...nawwww, so cute.
But not in class. Yes, the chain punch can be effective, but it isn't some magic talisman that ensures success. If Grant was to try throwing these things at a boxer...well, I'm confident the boxer would have the upper hand.
My perception of WC is that...we meet what comes in. If it's not coming in, it should be retreating. So I'll follow it in.If these things aren't happening, then I'm not fighting. Worst case scenario is that I misjudge and need to defend against my opponents attack with one of my own. I can't do this if I restrict myself into programming a technique, rather than a concept.
By my definition a technique is a move you practice, the concept is the reason why the technique will work. Remove the concept from the technique...and....well, you're just swotting flies. Right?

What I'm trying to get at is that when I pointed out the staggered timing application to Grant, his face took on this, "wtf? why isn't this working? i used to OWN with this technique", sort of face.
It was a little sad. Not pathetic sad...more, a heart-breaking sort of sad.
I changed one aspect of training, and he wasn't used to it, and so he couldn't function. It would've ruined his day if I'd kept on like that, so I didn't...he's a nice guy, what can I say? Rather than point out this brain-fart/dis-functionality thing he had going...I just went along with his speed and he relaxed. He was happy, and that was fine.
But.
How can you have faith in a system that becomes next-to-useless if you change a single element?
The physics should never change. The physical laws of nature are immutable!

I don't know. I may have it wrong, but again...we must apply ourselves. This stuff isn't hard.
When you get down to it...Wing Chun, in all of its spelling variation, is simple and easy.
The hard part is allowing ourselves to put away old programming and expectation. Our bodies would move naturally through the 3 forms if we weren't locked up in our heads, in our bodies that spend 6 hours a day sitting.

It's funny...I've always been told to not over-think WC. And yet we can't understand it until we've used our analytical aspects. Perhaps I could change the over-thinking comment to something like, "try to think of this in a different context than you're used to." Or something even better. You tell me!