Wing Chun, is without doubt a very personal experience. Never can it be seen as a team activity although without your training peers and partners it is impossible to learn. Wing Chun can almost be a very selfish thing, something just for you. How can people who do not have this desire to learn this particular thing that you have selected comprehend a serious Wing Chun’ers passion?
In ones journey learning Wing Chun we have our companion training partners to practise specific sequences but must also learn to ignore to some degree the ifs and maybes, rights and wrongs that spring to mind along the way and immerse one’s self in the correctness of technique. It is so easy to fall away from worthwhile sequence drilling by faltering every other second to examine each participant’s movement. Of course this can be to some degree very difficult as to virtually every partner you turn the feeling is so very different to the previous. So, it makes it very important to often have a regular training companion. Not, to measure yourself and compete with but to repeat and constantly repeat until you yourself know that it is you who is in fact making some way towards correctness. The very reason for sequence drills is to imbibe your self with technique after technique. Each and every one an attack followed by a defence. Each technique giving the correct response for the right attack, for the right distance, for the right speed, angle, and height etc.
So, it comes to the real battle. We do our Wing Chun the way we do it. It does not concern us whether our attacker does this or that he hopefully receives the response that has been trained for, for so many months and for some many years and given without mercy. This should be a genuine shock to him not just physically but mentally.
Most will fortunately never have to use what they have strived so long to become perfect in but the satisfaction in taking the journey and in the end to be as really good as you can be is immeasurable.
When you look around the class at your companions see and admire these strange and individual beings that are here all for exactly the same reason as you.
Sifu Tony Hollander, Wing Chun Head Instructor, Sevenoaks and King’s Hill