Wing Chun is...boring?

In the past I have had students tell me, "I am having second thoughts about training...its moving so slow, and is, well...kind of boring. When will I get to the good stuff?"

Ah, America...land of instant gratification!

Wing Chun is a martial art, and like any art form, takes time to learn to use the tools required to express human movement and emotion.

Make no mistake about it, but fighting is absolutely a form of human emotion and must be expressed. Bruce Lee, a former Wing Chun student himself, formed countless philosophical theories based on this idea.

That said, we must learn the base of our art form before we use the tools on the canvas.

Conveying this to students is a task well entrusted to teachers with integrity. It is the teacher's responsibility to understand that there are those who want to learn to run before they can even crawl. In martial arts this can be dangerous for several reasons.

The first and most important is that as the teacher, if rushed, you are misrepresenting the art itself. As instructors, we have the responsibility of teaching what we know and we know that a 2 month Wing Chun student is not even remotely ready for chi sau.

Unfortunately, some students see the chi sau phase of Wing Chun as the epitome of where the want / need to be and rush to get there.

So, how do we tell students that learning Sil Lim Tao (The Little Idea form) and the centerline punch are two very important and training tools and must be practiced over and over and over again?

Rushing into exciting looking drills and chi sau without a solid foundation is dangerous as it gives students the worst aspect of hasty training...the false sense of security that they can defend themselves.

I had the very fortunate experience of learning this first hand as a student myself.

It was upon meeting my teacher Syed Ahmad that I was humbled and reminded that Wing Chun is about foundation.

I meet with my Sifu for the first time after talking extensively about training, theory, Wing Chun and our passion... My Sifu and I are within years of the same age, same height, same physical build and same years of Wing Chun training. I had left a former Wing Chun school with a massive amount of confidence in my chi sau and Wing Chun skill as being one of the top students; yet upon training with Sifu Ahmad for the first time, I was unbelievably humbled and not only his ability, but the ability I lacked in the form of basics. This was true of his students; my now Wing Chun brothers and sisters. They had an unbelievable ability due to their foundations.

Sifu Ahmad has spent countless hours refining, exploring, listening, feeling and living his Wing Chun basics. Doesn't matter if it his centerline punch, footwork, Sil Lim Tao, etc. Sifu has done his homework over and over. Under Sifu Ahmad, I have had to return to basics and have noticed that my Wing Chun has not only improved, but I understand Wing Chun better than I had under any previous teacher. And this is all due to patience and basic training.

Wing Chun must be learned and the process respected as being one of diligence and patience. As teachers we must be able to recognize that some students will request speeding up their training, or they will leave. It is the nature of the beast. But as Wing Chun artists, we must not compromise structure and integrity for money or student base. This will only hurt our schools, students and future reputations as well.

Is Wing Chun boring? Depends how you want to look at it. As one Chinese saying puts it, "I do not fear the man who has practiced 10,000 techniques one time; rather the man who has practiced one technique 10,000 times."

Dominick Izzo
Lead Instructor
www.izzo-training.com