Our Wing Chun Training System
Our main training system comes from Master Wang Kiu who was an early private student of Ip Man and his student Dr. G.K. Khoe, a professor of Chemical engineering, who was a private student of Master wang Kiu.
The students under any Master all have their own slant on training ideas. Ip Man generated more than 40 teachers of Wing Chun yet all their Wing Chun methods are different.
Master Wang Kiu and his student Dr. G.K. Khoe
Over the years we have met many great Masters and teachers of this art. We have incorporated things from all these masters in our training but we have not changed the basic structure of the system as taught by Master Wang Kiu.
Our system starts off in the classical way with the “Little Idea Form” or in Cantonese “Siu Nim Tao.” Master Wang Kiu explained that this form is like a seed. When you nourish a seed properly and give it sunshine and water then it grows to be a very healthy plant. Likewise the first 108 movement form of Wing Chun is like this seed. If time is taken to really understand the ideas contained in this form, then one’s Wing Chun will be very good.
In our version of the Wang Kiu system, there are 5 pieces consisting of 108 movements. These pieces are:
1. Little Idea form
2. Searching for the Bridge form
3. Pointing to the Target form
4. Wooden Dummy form
5. Weapons form (Pole+Knife)
These forms are an organized training system of ideas that will eventually produce a high level of skill. A form is not meant to be a meaningless choreography of random movements. The idea Wing Chun is not to memorize patterns. Each form is like a subject of study with various chapters in each study.
The first form is very fundamental to understanding Wing Chun. It is not something just for beginners. It forms the basis for the whole art for beginners as well as for advanced students. A serious Wing Chun practitioner trains this form, every day of their life. Historically there were not a wealth of books and no videos and no Internet. Martial art ideas were handed down from generation to generation with forms that each generation re-interpreted for use.
Master Wang Kiu said that Wing Chun is really just an organized way to understand the wealth of ideas contained in many Kung Fu systems. In parts of China, it is just called Orthodox Shaolin. This means that Wing Chun consists of the key ideas that are contained in various well known Kung Fu styles. Wing Chun is not meant to be a style. It is just an organized system of training ideas.
Some people say that Wing Chun is not good. Yes, if Wing Chun is practiced as a style such as by imitating Bruce Lee or Donnie Yen (in the Ip Man movies) , then this does not work and is no good. But to say the ideas are no good, what does that mean?
Does it mean to have good balanced and yet mobile footwork is not good? Obviously not. Does it mean the being relaxed is not good? No, not either. Does it mean that being in the center and attacking and defending the center is not good? That’s how animals instinctively fight. Somehow they get your throat. Anything wrong with that? Obviously not. So those people that criticize Wing Chun don’t really know what Wing Chun is.
You can criticize a practitioner of an art or criticize a style or criticize a training method but to criticize ideas that are fundamental to all fighting doesn’t make sense.
Those people that try to take Kung Fu poses and use chain punches to defeat seasoned fighters, do not represent Wing Chun. They are doing Wing Chun like a style.
The 108 movement “Little Idea form” has ten parts which are grouped into three parts. Part one is to train the core foundation of the art. Part two is to develop a relaxed hitting power and part three is the application of the art for defending the various quadrants of the body.
Part1 - The Foundation
Stance
All Kung Fu styles emphasize having solid stances for strong punch and kick delivery. The leg muscles around the knee need to be trained for strength and balance otherwise you cannot develop good power and you will easily be off-balanced by pushes and pulls.
Center
The crossing of the hands down and up serve the purpose of defining the Wing Chun vertical center line. It is a mathematical concept. These movements also have a fighting use. The idea in Wing Chun is to attack the opponent’s center (like an animal instinctively does) and to defend your own center.
Non martial artists often make the mistake of having an open unprotected center that you can easily attack. The second mistake is to cross the center which like in driving a car will get you instantly killed.
A major idea in Wing Chun’s “Sticking Hands” exercise is to sense for these center errors.
Punch
The third idea in Wing Chun is to develop a good punch. At first the simplest straight line punch is taught to develop the appropriate punching muscles. Later all kind of other punches are learned. A good Wing Chun fighter rarely uses the continuous chain punches that you see for movie effect. Chain punches will put your brain into freeze mode until the punching cycle finishes and this is not good.
Elbow
After the straight punch, there is a slow part of the first form. The slower the better.
In this training the elbow is slowly brought towards your center-line. Your hand passes through that center-line. They say in Wing Chun, nobody takes your hand off the center-line. If someone does then you replace that hand with something else which could be your other hand, an elbow, a shoulder etc. Wing Chun is like a chess game where two opponents try to fight for center control. The strongest physical opponent does not necessarily win.
The second major reason to have an movable elbow in the center is to make all movements economical to gain a speed advantage. The idea in Wing Chun is to have small movements to gain speed. Large movements take more time. So Wing Chun is an art that concerns itself with economy of movement. As my teacher Dr. G.K. Khoe said, “small movements are better than big movements and no movement at all is best!” Wing Chun teaches one to be efficient and precise.
When I was learning from Patrick Chow, we had to perform just the slow part of the form, like a QiGong training, for more than an hour each time. I met a master in San Francisco by the name of Kenneth Chung whose first form takes 30 minutes to do and most of the time is spent in this section of the form. Patrick Chow said just this part of the form represents 1/4 of the Wing Chun training system.
Often Wing Chun practitioners with several years of training do not have a good stance, because they did not train this part. So they are lacking in power and stability. Also often these students have flying elbows and thus open or crossed centers and easily are defeated because of this.
The slow part is meant also to develop relaxed muscles and a calm settled non-angry kind of mind. Beginners are often too tense, too jumpy with many spastic uncontrolled movements. That means they did not pay attention to this slow elbow training.
Sticking Hands
There is an exercise in Wing Chun called sticking hands which goes together with the first part of the “Little Idea Form.” This exercise goes hand in hand with the “Little Idea Form.” Dr. G.K. Khoe said that in each lesson in Wang Kiu’s kitchen he would get pushed and pulled and punched from all angles. Wang Kiu was like an Octopus with 8 arms.
The advice he got was to have a good stance, to be centered and to relax. That was it. The idea was to be like a boat in a violent ocean storm. No matter how the wind blows, you always maintain good balanced positions. This exactly what the first part of the first form and the sticking hands exercise teaches.
Sticking hands is not meant as a way to fight. Nobody fights like that. Sticking hands teaches you what to do once you are in contact with an opponent.