In Wing Chun, we have no seniors.

“In Wing Chun we have no seniors.” This is a line from the Wing Chun Fist Sayings.

There are no “Masters” or “Grandmasters” of Wing Chun. We are all students. Some of us have trained for decades, some of us have trained for only a few months. There’s no grading or ranking system. It’s an egalitarian system without hierarchy or pretence, and those that try to impose these structures on the system are deluded, and possibly corrupt. Experience is your best teacher. The best practitioners are the ones that can talk the talk and walk the walk.

For me, all of Wing Chun is contained in each part – each drill, each structure, contains the whole. I used to train the whole “syllabus” of 3 hand forms, wooden dummy, knives and pole. It wasn’t enough, and I cross trained Muay Thai and BJJ. Now I train in – and teach - a streamlined version and it’s all I need. My Wing Chun is like a double shot of single malt Highland whiskey. It’s smooth, powerful, profound and distilled. It works at “Fight Club” – an underground club for serious martial artists to test themselves. Most Wing Chun “sifus” can only make their Wing Chun work by demonstrating in slow motion against their own students. They are not sifus – they shouldn’t be teaching.

Recently, an instructor in another martial art asked me why I left “orthodox” Wing Chun. I explained to him that there is no “orthodox.” There’s no “traditional”, no “modern”…just here and now. You can either do it or you can’t. Anybody can teach Wing Chun, but unless you have actual experience of making your martial art work against motivated fighters who don’t give a damn about Wing Chun, you are simply the blind leading the blind.

Train hard, have fun, and be sceptical of self – proclaimed “masters” or “grandmasters.”