Just How Popular Is Wing Chun?

Most articles I've read that question which martial art is the most widely practised have answered that it's Wing Chun. I'm not sure that this is the case though, and I don't know where they get their statistics from. I know that if online resources are anything to go by then Wing Chun is one of the less popular martial arts. There is only a small provision for WC practitioners in the form of forums, blogs, general information on the internet etc. Invariably, if you do find a generic martial arts forum, there is very little on offer for Wing Chunners.

Just out of interest, I thought I'd do a bit of 'keyword research' in the area of martial arts, using some keyword tools. They give you counts of how many times a particular phrase has been searched for by the general public in Google. Here are my findings:

Although "Wing Chun" doesn't attract as few searches as Tae Kwon Do and ninjutsu, I'm disappointed all the same.  I thought Wing Chun would be more popular. What do we make of these statistics? Personally, I think that the number of times something is searched for in search engines is a good indication of that subject's popularity. If you look at sex, for example, (hey, I have to do my research ), we are talking 37 million searches for the same period! And that subject is pretty popular. So you can see that there is a rough correlation between the volume of searches for a topic and how popular it is.

Of course, some subjects just don't lend themselves to being searched for on the internet, and I understand that. It could be that the martial arts is not something that people generally search for in Google. Perhaps they are busy outside actually doing it instead of reading information about it on websites. These statistics do, however, give us a useful comparison between different martial arts.

Wing Chun Popularity Predictor

I predict an increase in interest in Wing Chun. Why? The new Ip Man movie is sure to be a big motivator for people to find out more about the martial art that Donnie Yen showcases so well. Here's a clip:

How can you watch that and not feel all fired up about Wing Chun? Whaddya mean it's not real, it's only a movie?! Check out more Ip Man fight scenes.

I'm grateful for what he and the film producers are doing for Wing Chun. Remind me to do similar keyword research one year from now to see what changes are evident in the rankings table.

Part of the reason for me starting this site was to bolster my enthusiasm for Wing Chun. I used to suffer a lack of motivation to go to class. Once I got there, I would have a ball - the problem was in getting myself to leave the house. It's not because I'm lazy: quite the contrary. I probably have far too many interests and they are all vying for my time. It wasn't uncommon for me to have arguments in my head on my drive home from work, one side putting forward the pros and the other side putting forward the cons of going to class that night.

The Wing Chun Demons In My Head

Check out the schizo banter in my head:

• "My Wing Chun is improving, I should ride the wave and go to class and get even better"
• "My Wing Chun is improving, so it's not that important if I miss tonight's class"
• "I went on Saturday, so I don't need to go tonight (Monday)"
• "The house is a mess, I really need to clean it - and it has to be tonight"
• "I'm knackered after a gruelling weekend of booze, so I'll stay in tonight"
• "I'm really motivated about making origami paper ducks so I should stay in and make the most of that motivation"

Sadly, the demons in my head were mostly on the side of missing Wing Chun classes. This is why I had to use different methods to boost my Wing Chun motivation.

Top Tips To Improve Wing Chun Motivation

The following tips are not specific to Wing Chun, but are universal. You can apply them to other areas of your life.

• Do more. Yes, I know that sounds odd, but the more I do, the more I like it. I'm sure you will be the same. Also, the better you get, the more encouraged you will feel.
• Look back and see the progress you've made. Credit where credit's due, you've made progress. You're further down the path than you were even mere months ago.
• Watch inspiring videos, with talented practitioners in them. Youtube hosts a smorgasbord of Wing Chun idiots - but there are also some geniuses too. Watch them and feel inspired.
• Project forward and imagine how good you will be in 2 years time. In 5 years time. If your future self could travel back in time, your present self would get its ass kicked big style. It might get dirty. Better your future bad ass self stay the hell where it is because it's so damn dangerous.
• Be healthier. Drink less alcohol (I don't mean become a monk), eat better foods, get enough sleep, do regular exercise. All these things conspire to make you feel better and the better you feel, the more you will want to engage with the world.
• Find other interests that complement your Wing Chun habit. For example, this website serves that purpose for me - and helps keep me interested. Interestingly, my classes often provide food for thought on this blog.
• Make contact with other people who have similar interests. I've emailed a couple of Wing Chun martial artists on youtube already. I'm not saying you should go and stalk these people too, but other ideas are to get together with classmates and practise outside of class. Our club has a regular class meal every month and its good to maintain regular contact with other members of our kung fu family.
• Vary your practice. I, for one, probably don't change my routine as often as I should. There are so many things to practise; one model I might follow is to focus on just a few techniques for maybe a week and then choose different techniques for next week. This way my routine doesn't become stale. Also, think about different ways to employ the same technique i.e. different applications. For example, take footwork.  I can practise the dummy form I know, but I can also improvise moving around a fictitious opponent and really concentrate on my steps. As a further variation I can then introduce some hand movements (gaan sau, kwan sau etc) to spice it up. Variety being the key not just to maintain interest, but to improve skill too.
• Make use of any friendly (or not so friendly!) rivalry that exists between you and your partner. For example there are two colleagues that come to my mind. One uses too much strength, and is sometimes quite reckless with his flailing fists. I use this  to spur me on to become better so that I can withstand and deflect his brute force attacks more subtley - in the Wing Chun way. So he motivates me to train more and work harder. The other guy has been learning Wing Chun for only a year but he has improved (and still improves) tremendously. I like this guy and think he has a good attitude. He really gives me a run for my money. I don't mind as much if he gets the better of me, because he is using good technique and not brute force. Nevertheless, I still use the experience to motivate me to improve my skill. He is improving so fast that I really have to train regularly and be on my toes.
• Go to seminars/workshops and use them to spur you on. You don't want to show yourself up in front of all those people you don't know, do you? Get training!
• Prepare. You can do this on two levels:

1. You can prepare what you will train the day before you actually train. This means that you don't run out of stuff to do halfway through. A few times I've been scratching my head thinking about what I should do next and instead of continuing, I've just left it at that and stopped training that day. Don't give yourself time to think. Plan every minute of your training. Now I arrive at the gym and I know I'm going to spend 15 minutes on a warm up, 15 minutes doing Tsum Kiu, 20 minutes doing Siu Lim Tau and then 25 minutes on turning exercises.
2. The other level involves planning your training that week. Plan to go to class Monday and Wednesday and also to train one hour before work Monday to Friday. If you do this, you won't give yourself the chance to choose the Inaction Due To Uncertainty option.

Motivational Success

The above tips have really worked for me, so I hope they'll be of use to you. The thing I've done that has helped me most is restructure my training timetable. I used to squeeze 15 minutes in before work started, and think that that was enough. Now, I schedule in an hour before work and stick to it religiously. Because it's consistent and substantial practice, I can actually feel myself improving and that makes me feel like I want to do more.

I've also started chi sauing with people outside of class and that helps with the training you can't practise on your own.

Another big motivator is the upcoming Wing Chun residential. I don't want to get destroyed by the daily 90 minute siu lim taus that are on the cards, so I'm putting the hours in now.

Let me know if you use different ways to motivate yourself and I'll steal your ideas, publish them here and take the credit

Surprisingly, I returned from the Wing Chun instructors' course feeling deflated and disappointed.

There were tests of my knowledge and I failed some that I thought I would pass easily. Ha ha, a dented ego! Of course, this jolt is good for me. It's made me look again at the things I thought I knew. The problem with practising things over and over again on your own is that sometimes you become blind to your mistakes. You stop seeing what you are actually doing and there grows a distance between how you perform a technique/form and how you imagine you perform it. At least, that's how it was in my case.

So the course was good in that it has destroyed my complacency. It was good for other things too, like forcing me to look more closely at what I'm doing, even if what I'm doing has been practised to death. To examine it meticulously.

Although not billed as a chi sau day, I couldn't just stand around and not chi sau with all those available seniors I'd not practised with before! Club members from all over the country were present, so there were a lot to choose from. Any spare moment I got, I asked someone to chi sau, and mostly with chi sau strangers. It's much better to touch new hands than familiar hands when you get the chance. Of course I got beaten up by everyone I chi saued with! Interestingly, though, I found myself learning while chi sauing. After getting slapped a couple of times whilst using 'wrong hands' I had to adapt on the fly to avoid getting more slaps.

Wing Chun Instructors' Course Learnings

It would be quicker for me to say that I need to work on everything! But here is a breakdown of the detail that I need to brush up on:

• Siu lim tau. It's 'basic' I know, but there is so much detail in it that it blows my mind, like precisely what are the important points when performing a jam sau. You can do it, but can you define it?
• Tsum kiu. I didn't expect it to be perfect as it was only a short while ago that I started learning it. Good job, because it wasn't perfect.
• Theory. By theory I mean things like lineage etc.

My experience here highlights the importance of going to class regularly so that technique can be corrected. Though necessary, it's not enough to only practise for countless hours on your own. You need to regularly attend class so that any problems are identified and any mistakes you make are corrected. You might think you are doing everything right, but you need an objective opinion, or as objective as you are going to get, from your sifu to verify that that's the case.

So that's 3 classes a week for me forever then!

Chi Sau With Seniors

On a lighter note, the chi sau with the seniors was excellent. I practised with one guy who was built like the proverbial but whose footwork was excellent. He moved really well. He was pretty strong with his strikes too, but had quite light hands. It turned out that he was a sifu himself and had had his own class for around 4 years. Knowing that, I wasn't too disappointed in my (relatively) crappy performance.

Warrior number 2 had a very slight build and looked like he was only 20! But wow, he was all over me, dishing out 3 or 4 strikes whenever there was an opening. Excellent technique. He had very soft hands and proceeded to take me apart at his leisure.

Executioner number 3 was quite tall, same as me and was built well, but again he had very soft hands that applied no pressure when we rolled. Like the others, his footwork was so much better than mine that he was able to attack me from all sides while I clumsily turned to fend him off.

The footwork and softness of hands of those seniors was admirable. It's good to meet up and roll with

I've heard people call Wing Chun Lazy Man's Kung Fu. I know, shocking isn't it? They haven't experienced the pain of doing siu lim tau on one leg for half an hour and can't appreciate the inner strength involved in maintaing a posture for a length of time. Usually the classes I go to involve just this kind of strength - gong lik.

Last night though, sifu had other ideas. Last night was Wing Chun Cardio Workout Night, and it was designed to improve our footwork.

Footwork Exercise 1

The first exercise saw us pairing up with one being the leader and the other being the follower. The follower had to hold out a tan sau and the leader had to hold the other's elbow and lead them in random directions and at random speed (direction + speed is velocity, but that's a subject for my maths blog ). The follower had to ...yes, follow, but also maintain the tand sau and not show any inertia. That is, as soon as the leader goes, the follower is right there following the movement. Whilst moving, the follower had to use correct footwork. As well as footwork, this exercise used the follower's sensitivity too, so that the leader never had to push the follower too hard in the right direction.

Five minutes of running round the room in stance and using correct footwork left everyone close with heart rates clearly in the fat burning zone.

Footwork Exercise 2

In this exercise, the follower is at the centre of an imaginary circle using his/her bong sau and the leader is on the circumference with a hand (wrist contact) on the bong sau. The leader follows the circumference at different speeds and as the follower rotates/turns, they have to use correct footwork and remain in stance.

Footwork Exercise 3

Similar to the last exercise but this time each person is on the circle's circumference with the centre between them. Outstretched wu saus meet in the middle and the follower follows the leader as they make their random way around that circle. At this point, those whose hearts hadn't packed in did the last exercise:

Footwork Exercise 4

Two chairs facing each other.  The leader can go anywhere in relation to the chairs but the follower can only go round the outside of them. This means that the leader can go in between the chairs but the follower can't. Leader chases follower. Proper stance, correct footwork, both must be used.

Eggbox Shite O'Reilly

I had an exceptionally good training class last night. The practice was good, but it was another event that triggered my euphoria. We did siu lim tau and then sifu split us up into two groups: one practising siu lim tau, and the other practising chum kiu. Towards the end of the chum kiu practice, sifu said very quietly that he wanted to see me and two others at the instructor's course at the end of January! Eggbox shite O'Reilly! I had to ask the other two whether I'd heard right because sifu was speaking quietly. But I'd heard right.

The Instructor's Course

Now, this news has an impact. I'm going to speak for myself now, as there is no way I can know what the other two feel. I can only assume they feel a little like I do. Firstly, it is a real vote of confidence by sifu in my abilities and I'm over the moon. It's a way of saying "you're doing well". Secondly, it's a good motivator too, because now I feela responsibility to the art, my sifu and his sifu to live up to the high standards. I was geared up before, but now I feel like training even more. I'm sure the others think the same. Maybe I should get some guest posts from them!

To be honest I'm thrilled that sifu thinks we're all good enough to move forwards in this way.

To Be A Wing Chun Teacher

I don't know what this course entails, but I wouldn't feel confident enough to teach other people Wing Chun until I have a lot more experience. I would like to teach at some point though, and this is one more step on the journey. The thought of someone calling me 'sifu' makes me cringe! But that's only because my skill is nowhere neear good enough. Yet!

Recently I realised the importance of keeping my shoulders stationary as I move between the different Wing Chun hands and decided that this was something I was going to practice. But man, this is difficult.

I devised an exercise: I would simply move between bong sau and wu sau and back again, turning to the left for the bong sau and then turning back to the front for the wu sau again. Repeat over and over, monitoring the shoulders and making sure they don't move. I've got to say, it's boring. Surprisingly, when I slow the movements right down to tell better whether I am moving them, this makes my shoulders ache. The boredom isn't the only problem though. I'm finding it hard to know whether I am moving my shoulders by feel. For this reason it feels like a wasted exercise, just because I can't determine whether or not I'm doing it right. What I need is a mirror that I can face while I do it.

So this is the plan: save this practice for times when I can stand in the mirror and watch what my shoulders do. I've got some turning routines that I do involving doing those bar arm turns at the start of chum kiu, turning whilst changing bong saus and turning whilst changing tan saus etc. I'll do those exercises but this time I'll focus on what my shoulders are doing and try to keep them still. I might have to slow the movement right down to stop the movement.

I initially wanted to do some research on the Wing Chun forums out there so that I could list what I considered to be the more useful ones. However, I'm a bit bemused at the moment. In the past, I haven't really been one to get involved in the martial arts online community, because to tell the truth, it just never occurred to me. The most important thing for me was to learn, and that was best accomplished simply by going to class and practising on my own. But then I got curious to see what was out there. Bewildered isn't the word! Some forums are dead. Others are active but provide nothing for someone studying Wing Chun.  Some do have an active Wing Chun sub forum, but are spoilt by childish bickering and personal insults! Some of the participants in these puerile scuffles are grown men! I've listed the best one I've found (in my opinion) first.

Martial Talk

I discovered this Wing Chun forum recently and I really like it. There are some knowledgeable people here who explain things well and it feels friendly.

Kung Fu Magazine

Despite ranking first in Google for "Wing Chun Forum", this forum is pretty quiet. Having been created in 1999, it's certainly well established. Be warned: check this thread out for childishness. I really don't know why the moderators don't step in. I'm not sure how representative this thread is of the forum as a whole, so it may just be a one off.

International Wing Chun Academy

Focused on Wind Chun in Australia.

The Wing Chun Archive

This is a very useful resource, comprising lists of Wing Chun schools, movies and videos, places to get wooden dummies and articles. There's also a comprehensive list of Wing Chun forums.

Martial Arts Planet

It comes up first when I search for "martial arts forum" in Google, but sadly there is no Wing Chun forum. There is a one for Kung Fu in which the odd thread concerning Wing Chun is created and then trashed.

As I said above, it's only recently I started looking on the internet for Wing Chun forums, so maybe there's a good one hiding somewhere.  The search continues.

I've just had a mind blowing class. Not mind blowing because some complicated technique was revealed, but quite the opposite. This was something very basic, something very simple to understand but very difficult to do. As with every basic principle, its mastery is crucial if you want to progress to a higher level. So what is this crucial principle? Not moving your shoulders when you bong sau, tan sau, wu sau etc.

The teacher today (not sifu) noticed that we were all distorting our positions and tensing our shoulders when we chi saued, so he stopped us and got us to follow him. We stood in basic stance, right hand in a wu sau and proceeded to move into a bong sau > tan sau, back to wu sau. Every one of us moved our shoulders, some more than others and some even stretched their shoulders forward. Bad, bad bad! The shoulders must remain immobile and relaxed whilst moving into those different hands.

Why Keep Your Shoulders Still?

If you move your shoulders when moving between the different hands, the following can happen:

• the shoulders become tense making it very easy to lap sau your bong sau
• you commit yourself to a certain position instead of remaining neutral and relaxed
• if your shoulders are misshapen and tense it makes the transition into the next position slower
• you are not as balanced as you could be
• your opponent can feel what your intention is

Sifu is a perfect example of this principle. He moves seamlessly from whatever hand to whatever hand keeping shoulders relaxed and immobile, yet his gung lik is very strong. He's also very quick.

Exercises To Develop Relaxed Shoulders

Understanding what we need to do, and the reasons why are all very well, but how can you just do it? Well, you can't. You have to practise. I asked whether the best approach to take was to deliberately practise hand movements whilst minimising shoulder movements or to just practise our usual routines whilst placing special attention on correcting the shoulders shoulders. The teacher let us in on his little practise sessions for this:

• adopt the basic stance with one hand in wu sau
• turn to the left and bong sau
• turn to the front and wu sau again
• repeat this many, many, many, many times, bringing awareness to how much your shoulders are moving. Try and minimise this movement
• when you've worn out your bong sau replace it with other hands like gang sau and tan sau
• when you've worn those out, try mixing up random sequences, both to the right and the left

The devil really is in the details. The above may sound a little tedious and boring, but you have to ask yourself how good do you want to get? And how much do you want that? If you want to progress as far as you can, these tedious little exercises must be performed, and these trivial little problems must be ironed out.

The problem with deconstructing the very fundamentals of your skill when you chi sau is that you will get hit. It's like going back to the beginning and learning everything again, but with a special eye on the finer details now. And we should get hit, because our technique is not as good as it could be. The teacher today had a perspective on this that I liked. He said that we should be brutally honest with ourselves and with our partners. If they don't take advantage of our bad technique and hit us then they are lying to us and cheating us. And if we don't notice and try to correct our technique, then we are lying and cheating ourselves. As is so often forgotten, the class is not about winning, it's about studying. And it's not personal. I agree with hime wholeheartedly.

After around 3 weeks total abstinence from Wing Chun due to a mysterious injury, I've started my training again. I usually go to class once a week, twice in a good week, and do 15 minutes training on my own Monday - Friday so a complete stoppage was really hard to take.

This morning I did a quick Siu Lim Tau and Chum Kiu (which I learnt just before I got injured) and it felt good! Thankfully, I could remember Chum Kiu in its entirety, so in that repect I don't think I've lost anything. Obviously, my technique is a bit rusty, and certainly my muscles aren't as strong as 3 weeks ago, but at least I'm back. All being well, I'm going to try to make all 3 classes this week.

The injury is still there but its symptoms have reduced. There's some swelling round my left knee (I hate joint injuries) and it hurts when I kneel down but both the swelling and the pain have reduced. I think it might be bursitis. My main concern was the pressure exerted on the knees when doing siu lim tau and also that exerted on them when turning in chum kiu, but my speedy routine this morning didn't cause any pain. So it's looking good!

There's a subtle distinction between using force and... using force. Up to this point I'd been under the impression (ok, it was my mistaken belief) that you shouldn't use force/strength under any circumstances - unless you were finishing off you're opponent. I realised at a class today that it's not quite as simple as that. And yet it's not much more complicated either.

If I'm face to face with someone and I try to push them out of the way, this is bad. I'm using strength to overcome them. But if they are walking backwards already and I simply add my weight to their movement by guiding them backwards a little faster, this is good. Similarly if someone charges towards me and I charge towards them, that's two equal and opposite forces meeting in the middle - bad. Bang bang. If someone charges towards me and I slip sideways and then my deft push adds to their momentum to send them on their way - in the same direction - good.

So using strength isn't always bad. We did a couple of drills today that really made the penny drop for me. They both started with me pushing my bong sau against my partners fook sau. The bong sau actually changed to a lan wan sau (bar arm thing!) to do this and the action was merely to get a response from my partner - that response being his resistance. When he met my pushing bong sau with his own unconscious resistance, I could use his energy by rolling my bong sau on the inside into a tan sau. But because he was pushing back against me, I could actually help his arm go in that same direction with my tan sau, so the tan sau pushes his arm in the direction it's already going. This is the use of force that isn't bad. His fook sau is already going in that direction because he's resisting my bong sau, so it's ok for me to help it along with my tan sau.

Does that sound complicated? It's not at all, but of course trying to string a coherent sentence together that describes the movements is tricky. I really need to video these things to illustrate. But saying that... it's actually quite useful for me to articulate what we did, and write it down, because it aids my memory. Maybe I could do both

The next drill used the same setup. The old "bong sau pushing forwards against his fook sau to provoke the resistance that we can harness" trick. Sneaky like a ninja. This time, when I felt his resistance I had to lap sau it out of the way with my other hand, trapping his tan sau in the process. My lap sau is almost coming back towards me and I have to move to my left to get the angle (assuming my right arm is the bong sau). After the lap sau comes the punch of course, but the important bit is creating the space in which to punch.

These drills really illustrate the subtlety of wing chun. Redirecting energy, you have to love it. The pushing bong sau doesn't have to be that strong, and people invariably resist it without even knowing they are. This resistance is most accommodating of them, because without it the technique won't work.

Recently I was messing with my girlfriend (who doesn't do any martial arts) and we were facing each other, long wu saus touching at the wrists, I would pak sau and punch blah de blah. Well after a few goes, when our wu saus met, I could really feel her pushing against me. Of course she didn't know she was pushing until I quickly moved my hand away and her hand flew to the side because I was no longer resisting it! I'm always being told to stop pushing, and I know I'm much better than I used to be.

I wonder how much of your partner's energy you just don't notice. Energy that you could use to your advantage but is just going to waste. I know for a fact that I'm not yet tuned in sensitively enough. But then, who is?

On a side note, if you want to see numerous examples of how not to use strength, search youtube for chi sau competition. Some of that stuff is not that far removed from wrestling! It ain't pretty.