The begginers guide to Wing Chun (In Short)

The Beginner’s guide Wing Chun
In theory, Wing Chun concepts and ideas should be easy to grasp for beginners. Wing Chun is based on the natural body structure and common sense found in fighting. However, in reality beginners can be overwhelmed with the amount of information, theories, strategies, and ideas that Wing Chun has to offer. Wing Chun taught properly is not simply, follow me and do this. So, the path it takes to training will be foreign to anyone who has never experienced it before. Here are several tips and suggestions to help you the beginner, in you're Wing Chun training.

1) The best way to improve quickly is to focus on the basics.
Most new students come to Wing Chun with a teach me something I haven’t seen, done, or heard of mentality. This can and in most cases slow the students learning down,the key thing to remember is that if you want to get good and improve quickly, you need to focus on the basics. Its not how much you know, but how much of what you know that your personaly comfortable with and perform in any instance regardless of situation. All to often I see individuals doing many techniques and fancy moves, when they don’t even truly understand the most important concepts SLT along with the back bone of the system centerline. Simple questions such as how do you move within your center, how does my center relate to others, and where is my center in relation to a different situation Thus, focus on the basics! The key three basics would be that of kim yeung ma, the punch, and SLT. The order is important since each one builds upon one another. Much like the triangle theory of the system you must lay a good foundation, the rest of what you learn must have equal sides as the foundation to complete the true structure. Take this path and you're skills will grow faster than most.

2) Concentrate on what you have to train, not what others are doing Sometimes in your training you’ll get that itch of curiosity, and see your older brothers and sisters working on other things. Focus on what’s at hand, not what others are doing? Everyone learns at their own pace, studying Wing Chun is not a race to see who learns the most quickly. This in the long run will set you back as you may have missed the other parts needed to truly apply the advanced techniques, in example it looks good but it does not work, this causes disillusion for the beginner. Your teacher has designed drills for you specifically for a reason. Don't sway of the path.

3) Don’t waste time Sufring When you first start Wing Chun, it seems like you can’t get enough information about it. So, you spend your time reading and checking out more information about it from videos, books, and the net. While all these are good ways to spend the time, don’t focus too much on it. The time spent reading on the net could be time spent practicing Wing Chun. The only true way is to think, practice, apply reading and watching only classifies you as a couch potato or a theorist.

4) Listen and trust your teacher If you picked your teacher, than trust him. It’s okay to ask questions, but if you keep second guessing him, you’ll stall your own progress. Listen to your inner self, if you don’t trust what he’s saying, then its time to leave and find someone you do.

5) The Journey As far as I know there is no ranking in Wing Chun.Thus, goals of belts, sashes, certifications, or levels should not be your motivating factor to push you forward. The fact is all those are meaningless measures of determining ones ability. I believe its okay to say, “I want to learn this or get good at this particular drill or exercise within, such n such a date” But there is other things you have to have to make your goal complete and real.

6) Single man technique is golden The drills are specifically designed to help sharpen motions as well as get familiar with application of each hand technique. The first goal is to be able to do them stationary. But, eventually adding footwork to the hand technique is a must. Knowing the proper motion leads to the correct structure. Without being able to perform this correctly at regular speed, you'll end up using a brawlers mentality, raw strength and uncontrolled actions/reactions.

7) Focus on one thing at a time Especially in the beginning, the feeling of being overwhelmed is a common thing. If its not one thing its another, there’s tons of drills, techniques, theories, strategies to the details of what makes Wing Chun tick. Trying to get it all down in the beginning will be impossible. Try keeping things simple in your practice, by focusing on one thing at a time. I have found that most students don’t even practice/train what was taught in classes, they are there only to get the next best thing. Being overwhelmed is a suffocating feeling, and especially in the beginning with all the information.

8) Be consistent in your training Whether you show up once a week, or three times a week the key is being consistent. Everyone has busy schedules and I have found many students asking fort little tips, hints or other “secrets” there is no secrets only your willingness to practice, learn and apply. Coming to class and then letting a month slide brings you back to the beginning every single time. Its understandable that this will happen on occasion, but the 5 to 10 minute practice is doable by all.



9) Vacation to detach It’s sorta hard to describe the feeling you get when you start Wing Chun. I’ve come to believe whether your beginner or advance the roller coaster of emotions will hit you every single time. By that I mean, Wing Chun is like a good recipe In the sense that, there are times things go so well with them and you think you’re really getting the idea behind the techniques, and then the next day when you think you’ve gotten it, it does not turn out right. Thus, I guess what I want to say that something this good, can also be as frustrating as well. Every time you’ve think you’ve climbed a pinch of that mountain, only to realize it’s bigger than you thought it would be. This frustration is common, is consistency, sometimes taking a break (1 day) on the days that your not in class and think and do something other than wing chun, and just letting things sink in, is sometimes the best thing.

10) Regardless of the lineage, stick to it in the beginning You’ve chosen a teacher that means you’ve also taken a specific line in Wing Chun. You’ll come to realize that there are quite a few different lineages in Wing Chun, applying and doing wing chun in many different ways. Regardless of what line you picked, the worst thing you can do is mix and match different theories and ideas together. Especially in the beginning it’ll just confuse the beginner. Thus, what I say is in the beginning stick to what your learning, if in your gut you feel there are things that just don’t appeal to you then look else where. Create a solid base of something regardless if its right or wrong. You don’t want to be doing several versions of SLT. I’ve read and talked to people who do that. When I hear that that means he knows of several versions, learned none, and mastered zero.

11) Method to the madness Everything you do in Wing Chun serves a purpose. In my beginners class it gives me the chance to test the character of the student before introducing new concepts, theories, and application. Asking questions helps big time, but make sure you know the why in things you do and that you have actually practiced it before the 20 questions, scenarios begin. Wing Chun is not parroting your Sifu, and copying what he does, I have experienced this first hand when I started WC, as this was what I was told I needed to do. Later on I asked the head Sifu of our linage while training with him why every thing I was doing did not work, and what he was teaching/doing did. Long story short, the Sifu I had learned from prior only chose to teach his students the how to do it but not the why and the what if’s. Find out the details in the structure and the motion. Knowing why you do the things you do gives it deeper meaning.
12) EgoAlmost everything that you do always comes full circle. A ego plays an important role, there is no such thing as having no ego. Having no ego in itself is an unnatural balance in things. But, the ego's job is to push you to want to be better, to drive you further. At the same time you must learn to control it, ego uncontrolled only slows your progress. There is always work to be done, you can always improve. Appreciate the gains from hard work, but don't rest on it.

13) Don't be so concerned with fighting You train in the beginning to unlearn what you think you may have learned. Just because you can whack each other in the ring for 5 minutes, does not make you a better fighter. Without structure in the training first you will not ever achieve the proficiencies of being a good fighter, meaning why you got hit at this point or what went wrong when I did this or that. Imagine if I told you to give a 100 people a presentation on a punch and just a punch, and on day 1 I say, okay I want everyone to give this presentation to all the new students. Sure you can whip something up, but that doesn't mean you know what your doing. Bottom line, beating on each other doesn't mean your developing fighting skills.

14) Stay out of the politicsOnce you enter the world of Wing Chun you will learn one thing right away. Wing Chun is riddled with politics. My best advice is to stay out of it. And, don't think you'll be the one individual to convince other lineages that your way is the right way. Spying and other unscrupulious activities will only make you, as a beginner a target and scape goat for thing to go wrong. Understand that as a beginner you will only be marking yourself as someone who wishes not to learn. Many Sifu’s for the past 50 or more years have dealt with this problem. My thought on this is, once you have studied WC for many years you come to an understanding that it’s all WC and as my Sifu told me, if an argument is made “argue the principles of the system” anything other than that is ego and personal gain of power or control. In short you can’t argue the principles.