Training goals in Wing Chun.

I’ve always believed that almost anyone can become proficient at Wing Chun given hard training with a good coach over a long enough time period. The issue of experience in real world scenarios is important - I recommend that individuals that want to take their Wing Chun to the next level cross hands with different martial arts practitioners in order to get experience.

Sometimes students have specific goals. One of my students trains Wing Chun to complement his power lifting. Another student trains for real world usage - I can’t say much more on that one.

Some students train with the idea of becoming a Wing Chun teacher. I don’t think that is such a good idea. In order to be a good Wing Chun teacher one needs a lot of experience and exposure, which takes decades to get, plus a few bruises and broken bones along the way!

Since I started Wing Chun, I’ve met and trained with many of the leading exponents of the art, cross trained and competed in different martial arts, and sacrificed my home, relationships and job to really live Wing Chun.

This approach is not possible for most. I consider myself to be a coach and student of Wing Chun rather than a “Sifu”, “Master” or other fancy but essentially meaningless title.

I encourage students to do their best in training, and feel that if we feel positive about our own training, and our relationships with our Kung Fu brothers and sisters and coaches, we are more likely to commit to long term training.

When we feel that we are making gradual, steady but genuine progress, the idea of training goals becomes less important.