The 108 Movement Wing Chun Form

All Wing Chun starts with learning the first 108 movement form. This form is called the ‘Little Idea Form” in Cantonese it is called “Siu Nim Tao” or “Siu Lim Tao.” You can Google each of these three names.

Above is one of my versions of the form. We were asked to do the form in less than a minute for as Chinese New Year show so I was practicing a quicker version. The slow version of the form can take 30 minutes to do and nobody likes to watch that. Totally boring. Wing Chun is not an art for nice looking forms. My form characteristics has changed over the years. This is my version at age 74.

The Basic Wing Chun Punch

All Wing Chun students and wing Chun practitioners practice the above 108 movement “little Idea” form on a daily basis. Over time this develops all the proper muscles , hand positions, power and proper relaxation to make the art work.

The form starts of with the STANCE to train the leg muscles. This is the basics for every Kung Fu style. Without properly developed leg muscles you cannot maintain your balance and none of your techniques will have any power.

Next you learn to defend and to attack the center. The crossing of the hands down and up at the start of the 108 form just defines where the vertical center-line is.

The third thing is to train the correct muscles to have a powerful punch. If you do not have a powerful punch, then you have nothing.

In the video above, Reza, our main combat instructor who has more than 40 years of fighting experience explains the basic ideas for training the Wing Chun straight punch. We have many other punches for practical use but first everyone must learn the straight punch.

Wing Chun Sticking Hands

Here I am training Raegan who had about two months of scattered Wing Chun training. After teaching the 108 movement "Little Idea" form we immediately started on the sticking hands training as a safe laboratory to learn the various hand techniques taught in the form.

Slow practice comes first to get the proper feeling and then quick practice is for reaction time and to learn to relax under pressure.

I tell the student to only concentrate on three things, the stance, the center, and the relaxation. Nothing else matters at the beginning.

Wing Chun Instructional Videos

Below are some of our instructional videos. Also There are some videos from some other people that we think are worth watching as well. The more you see, the better.

Some Basic Beginner Level Wing Chun Drills

Shown are some basic beginner Wing Chun drills that we train in the University of Victoria Wing Chun program.

Basic wing Chun Ideas

Here are some Basic Wing Chun ideas that a beginner level Wing Chun student can practice.

Basic Wing Chun Beginner Drills

Here are just a few ideas for he Wing Chun beginner to train. The video was made in the University of Victoria Wing Chun class.

Some Ideas to Train Grappling Defences

Grappling is a weakness of any hitting art. If your punch fails to connect then mostly likely you will see yourself taken to the ground very fast. We address this with our wrestling experience that has been adapted for Wing Chun usage. Many of these concepts have been adapted from Iranian wrestling. The Iranians and Russians are usually number one in the world for Olympic wrestling.

Basic Wing Chun elbow Drills

Here are some basic Wing Chun elbow drills that come from various of the Wing Chun forms. The second form teaches the horizontal elbows and the third form teaches the vertical elbows. The first form already teaches the positioning for the horizontal elbow techniques.

The Wing Chun Live Dummy from Master Wang Kiu

The Live Dummy is just the original way that Ip Man taught some of his private students in a one on one way before the first wooden dummy was ever build. Wing Chun has basically two parts which are what you do when in contact with an opponent and what you do to make contact with an opponent. The dummy part is how to make contact in lots of different ways. If you make contact and then don’t know what to do then that’s a problem. So you really need the sticking hands training before any of the dummy movements become useful. Furthermore, all the Wing Chun forms other than the weapons , have very little footwork so the weapons training is also required to develop the agile footwork required to combat an opponent who knows how to fight. So the Wang Kiu method and early Ip Man method to teach was to teach the whole art relatively quickly but then year after year to refine it. It didn’t make sense to go fighting with an incomplete art. The idea is like a carpenter who goes to work the first year with only a hammer and a saw. The next year he learns how to use a screwdriver. Instead he learns how to use all of the tools quickly, and becomes proficient with all of them over time.

High Speed “Bitch Slapping”

This video talks a bit about some of the Wing Chun people see on Youtube. One problem is that Chi sau is taken as a fighting method. You see two people doing high speed slapping hands and then taking about a dozen hits to down some opponent. Each hit has no power and is wrong because often there is no kind of good stance used, the movements are done at high speed, this covering up a lot of mistakes such as having an open or crossed center, being too soft, being too hard, using the same techniques over and over again and the parnter’s balance is never affected. It is just ineffective hand play which we call “Bitch Slapping.”

Some Beginner Training Ideas

In our YouTube Global Wing Chun video series we try to teach basic drills for beginners to learn the classical Wing Chun and then we also want to show how to make the classical drills really street applicable. So we try to address the beginner’s needs as well as the advanced Wing Chun practitioner’s needs meaning those people interested in real street self defense.

In the videos below, we also want to showcase the Wing Chun from other lineages that we respect. We consider that Wing Chun is one family that should share what we have learned, what we have experienced regarding what does and does not work.

There is not just one good lineage of Wing Chun, or one good martial art. My teacher used to say that no one students had captured his art completely but the complete art existed if you put the knowledge from all the students together. Likewise no one student of Ip Man learned all of what Ip Man had to teach. But among all of Ip Man’s students the complete art of Ip Man’s teaching exists.

The Bong sau or Wing hand

The Bong sau or Wing hand is a signature movement for Wing Chun. You rarely see another art use this movement. You will see it in every Wing Chun movie. The other signature movements are the Tan sau and the Fook sau. According to Master Wang Kiu, the Wing hand which is a Crane style Kung Fu movement, is both the most versatile movements but also the weakest Wing Chun hand. Versatility means that the most number of movements, changes and variations come from this hand action. According to Master Tsu Shan Ting the various 18 Wing Chun hand movements are actions and not static positions. According to Master Emin Boztepe you should never even see a Bong sau in a real fight. It should just be a momentary position that occurs in the blink of an eye. A wrongly applied Wing hand can give you a two year shoulder injury which is what happened to me one year.

How to get out of a Choke?

One thing a lot of guys do is to choke their opponents. Domestic disputes often result in the lady being choked.

The all American Headlock

The all American headlock is quite a common tactic for the street. I have used it myself against very experienced martial artists, often catching them completely by surprise. In a split second they are already on the ground before they know what happened. All kids use this technique for playground fights.

Wing Chun Beginner Stepping Drill

Here is a drill for beginners to start to practice the basic wing Chun forward step. This actions cmes from the second form of Wing Chun. The wing Chun stepping is something like the stepping used in Western fencing.

This is the video tape that inspired my Wing Chun in 1982. I had studied Wing Chun since 1976 already but there were no videos available to use for a reference. When I heard that Wong Shun Leung, who was also Bruce Lee’s teacher made a video, I had to have it. I didn’t have any video tape player though, so I spent $1,100 to buy one just to watch this video. to me it was money well spent. In 1992 I finally met Master Wong Shun Leung when he came for a visit to Victoria and also taught us a lot about his Wing Chun. I found Wong Shun Leung to be very open minded. He loved to talk about Wing Chun and didn’t mind at all to have a debate if we didn’t think something was good. He said our basic Wing Chun program was good and that one of our female students by the name of Yvette Wong had very perfect Wing Chun. So he adopted her as an official student to refine her skills.

At the time of this video, Dr. G.K. Khoe was already quite ill which I suspect was some kind of a Cancer. He was trying all kinds of medical procedures and investigated various Asian healing arts to get better but the illness was too advanced to help. He wanted to leave something behind though to talk about his Wing Chun legacy. In a similar way, the same thing happened to Grandmaster Ip Man who left behind a few videos of his forms, but at that time he also was quite ill so the forms he did do not necessarily look like the forms he did when he was young and fit.

Master Wong has more than 1000 videos and more than 2,000,000 followers on Youtube. This is not without reason. Master Wong has brought his thinking out of the box and out of the Wing Chun theory text-books to see what really works on the street, against different arts, against bigger opponent, for females and against multiple opponent. Some people criticize him as a way to get likes on their channels because they have nothing better to do. We have met many Wing Chun Masters and even though he technically does not meet all their fine subtleties of the art, I find he is the most practical and doesn’t have just endless theory talk or just stick to the world of Chi Sau and Chain punching your way out of a wet paper bag. Master Wong freely gives away his Wing Chun and any club can improvise on his drills to see what works for them. So for those interested in how Wing Chun applies on the street, his videos are pretty good.

Master Chan Chiu was an original student of Master Wang Kiu. Later he changed a few things which look to me to come from the Wong Shun Leung lineage. Master Wong shun Leung and Master Wang Kiu were good friends anyway. Since Master Wang Kiu did not really leave behind much video material, then what Wang Kiu’s Wing Chun was like can be gleaned from watching this video.

This video by Master Chan Chiu from Holland, is a pretty good reference for the “Siu Nim Tao” form and the second form of Wing Chun called the “Chum Kiu” form. Ip Man said if you understand those two forms then you should not lose a fight.

You might wonder what the heck is this video doing here. Well we decided to play this music for a Wing Chun demonstration because it is very exciting and modern and fits martial arts very well. Too many people were going with the traditional Chinese music from the Donnie Yen Ip Man movies, so I thought to try something different.

If you are interested in this kind of blade work that the lady in the video shows, then I would recommend to look up various videos on Youtube about the Thai bladed weapon art called “Krabi Krabong.” A lot of her actions look like that. Krabi Krabong is the real fighting art of Thailand. Thai boxing is the ring fighting art.

Movie Fantasy

Movie choreography and Real fighting are two different things. Movie fantasy is the ART part of martial arts, in some ideal world. Movies are meant for entertainment but they still have elements of the truth and are often choreographed by people who understand the art. Real fighting is not pretty. Martial means military combat. There is nothing artistic about military combat. The art part in martial art is not effective in real combat but most people prefer to study for reasons of the ART. Movies are just for entertainment and to be enjoyed. THey are part of the ART side of martial art. Have fun. If martial arts were not fun then nobody would do it. At least not for long.

Some movies display more violence and I would say are less artisic. My personal preference is on the arts side more. That’s why I look forward to the upcoming movie Mulan.

Historicity. The story of Hua Mulan is treated more as a legend than a historical person, and her name does not appear in Exemplary Women which is a compilation of biographies of women during the Northern Wei dynasty.

The Wing Chun Butterfly knives are just the basic way to fight with kitchen cleavers. Wing Chun borrowed the Butterfly knife ideas from other Southern styles of Kung Fu such as Hung style and then just made the movements more in line with Wing Chun ideas. There is no original Wing Chun knife set from Grandmaster Ip Man. Ip Man showed the basic ideas to some people and after they they crafted their own forms for the knives.

We found the Wing Chun knives could cope with the Escrima stick work but most Wing Chun people don’t spend enough time on the weapons to be as good as the Filipinos, the Silat people and the Thai people are with theirs.

One of the classiest Kung Fu movies that took years to make is the Chinese movie, “The Grandmaster.” Those people who just like fighting violence, would not appreciate the artistry in this movie. The movie features, Wing Chun and Ba Gua and also Xing Yi, Ba Ji, and other arts.

I’m looking forward to seeing this movie in March of 2020.

Bruce Lee is one of the people responsible for spreading the art of Wing Chun which is the main art he learned in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong much of the training was close range sticking hand supplemented with street fights against the gangs. Passionate Wing Chun people trained everyday for even 15 hours a day. You can’t learn to fight with a once a week with one hour lesson especially if you don’t practice at home.

In Hong Kong, Wing Chun was known by the name of “Gangster first.” These people knew how to fight. To them, fighting was a way of life and was no joke. It was not something for health or to be one with the universe.

It was not uncommon that many could complete the formal Wing Chun system within even within a year or two of studies just like the legendary founder Yim Wing Chun did, but even then mastery would still take a few years.

The traditional Kung Fu training system was to learn the formal art and then go out and fight. The people who did that, could all fight. My Hung style teachers did that. But with the invention of guns and laws and lawsuits, this kind of training method no longer was practical. Even in the gang fights, they knew not to go for the kill for at least public fights because they did not enjoy going to jail. In the challenge matches against other Kung Fu masters, dangerous hits to the eyes and groin were never used. You can still beat the hell our of someone without the need to cause serious permanent damage.

One weakness of many Wing Chun people is their lack of mobility. Too much sticking hands training is not that good. Street combat is different in that the attacker is often in your face right away and with no time to think, the instant reactions developed from sticking hand training is pretty good.

But against professional fighters this does not work very well. A professional fighter is very mobile like world champion boxer Mohammed Ali or like a Western Fencer. That’s why Bruce Lee studied both of these arts intensively to gain his lighting footwork speed.

Wing Chun is always supposed to be a mobile art because, as a so called woman’s art, how can she just stand there and trade blows with some male, double her size?

In this movie, Chuck Norris beats the hell out of Bruce Lee to start with but then Bruce Lee decides to totally change his tactics to being more mobile to finally defeat Chuck Norris.

The movie was kind of a lesson by Bruce Lee on what you should do against a good fighter. In real, Bruce Lee’s fighting didn’t look quite as cool because real fighting is ugly compared to movie fighting. Nevertheless, his tactics are very interesting and a lot can be learned even from watching his movie fights.

Enjoy Martial Arts!

Martial arts should be enjoyed, have fun. Don’t get all hung up on whose art is the best. Only a few of us do martial arts for actual military combat. If you don’t enjoy the art or if you only do it for competition, then you will never keep up the art and soon give it up. If you are too busy to attend class, then when are you going to have time to learn or enjoy anything in your life? Anyway, in that light, watch Master Ken who thoroughly understands what I just said. He is a real martial artist by the way.

This is the song for our Chinese New Year Wing Chun demonstration to be held at UVIC on January 18th. There may be 1,000 people watching. We will demonstrate:

1.SLT form - Ray - 1 minute
2.CK form - Reza - 1 minute
3.Fighting applications - Reza and Dan - 30 seconds
4.Dummy - Reza - 30 seconds
4.Knife - Ray - 30 seconds
4.Pole - Dan - 30 seconds
4.Chi sau - Kim and Spencer - 30 seconds
4.Chi sau - Raegan and Alex - 30 seconds
5.Bruce Lee’s inch punch - 10 seconds
6.Bow

Demonstrators: Ray, Reza, Danial,Kim, Spencer.
Helpers: Alex, Raegan, John.
The whole performance is to take 3 minutes and 50 seconds. Some of the time will be to get into the various configurations.

Thanks to Guimei Yang (dance performer and instructor and owner and operator of Beauty on 5th Salon in Sidney BC) for inviting us to the Chinese New year’s show.