My Gung Fu Journey

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  • Ving Tsun Memories and Impressions

    Ving Tsun Memories and Impressions

    Just random thoughts below that i wanted to share with you all 🙂

    My time with the Ving Tsun crowd in the South of England was amazing, the level of small detail that my instructors were able to go into over one movement or technique blew my mind away at the time when i compare it to my very first beginnings in Wan Kam Leung Ving Tsun which when i reflect on now, didn’t feel like it went into very much depth. I was never a fan of group classes in Ving Tsun, it’s difficult for an instructor to ensure the messaging/technique is being done correctly on the small details. Which could breed bad habits of course.

    The skill level of the instructors is quite varied and the best instructors i found were very good at being discreet, so as to stay out of the politics or to attract unwanted attention. Interestingly the most skilled pracitioners i’ve seen in the UK had both had a background in Tai chi before they came to Ving Tsun, i felt there was a difference in their abilities when i compare to others who had only a Ving Tsun background (granted those people had less years experience), I would describe those guys with tai chi backgrounds to be experts in soft hard martial arts. Soft and flexible yet so strong, with the addition of their very high level knowledge on footwork it made them feel even stronger!. Seriously the kind of people you do not want to be hit by!

    I haven’t done any form of “sparring” or any form of drill yet to try draw a “comparison” betweeen White Crane and Ving Tsun but when i do i’ll let you guys know!
    MA

     

  • White Crane Gung fu – Session Two

    So i did my Second session of White Crane Gung fu yesterday and we practiced a basic stance(bent our knees) whilst our arms are pointed out and we focused on our breathing. breathing,  we must have done this for what felt like 10 minutes and my knees were shaking like crazy and my arms were beginning to feel like i was holding 8kg kettlebells, shows out of shape i am right now!.

    Then we did some tai chi style “pushing hands” which reminded me a great deal of Ving Tsun’s Chi Sau,  my first impression was its more difficult to learn than Chi Sau as it is more fluid and there was waist rotation and knee bending backwards and forward involved with Pushing Hands; while Chi Sau is primarily static with you sitting static in your stance while doing an exchange of Tan Sau(open palm  facing upwards) and Fook Sau(relaxed hand at a side angle) at the basic Chi Sau level.

    I continued to work on the White Crane soft style form that i’ve been getting taught. It is rather similiar to this video:

     

    Essentially this is what was covered within the hour that i did for this week. Normally i’ll be 2 hours of White crane , which the 2nd hour covers the “hard style” aspects of White Crane. I’ll try to look up the formal names for the “workout” techniques we use at the beginning of the Soft and Hard classes for my next posts if i can.
    Have a good Weekend all  🙂

    MA

     

     

     

  • WSL Ving Tsun Kuen Hok Book review

    WSL Ving Tsun Kuen Hok Book review

    I received my book last week and i intend to review it all here once i have completed my first read through of the book.

    So far, i have enjoyed the quality and the size of the book, the photos are definitely quite rare as i have not seen them online before, even a few familiar faces 🙂 .

    The sections near the end of the book cover the lives of Ip Man and Wong Shun Leung is a fantastic ready, especially if you’re someone who’s new to Ving Tsun or haven’t read up on either of them much beforehand.

    I’ll also be posting some images and maybe even a tiny sections of text (I will seek permission from the publisher beforehand of course)

    More to follow….

     

    MA

  • Tao of Wing Chun

    Tao of Wing Chun

    A fantastic book by Wing Chun Instructor Danny Xuan who has an interesting mix of background in wing chun from various individuals/systems and is well traveled, he currently resides in Canada. I have posted a couple example of images from his book, i love the book cover that it has and the content feels fresh in how it reinterprets Wing Chun’s history and theories are explained really well, which you can tell from the images I’ve used.

    If you’re a Wing Chun book collector this is one to add to your collection!

    MA

  • Memories and Exposures to the Arts

    Memories and Exposures to the Arts

    My earliest memories would have had to be in the early 90s watching Enter The Dragon on VHS or tv. Bruce Lee blew my mind away with his physical presence and martial art skills. But it wasn’t until the early 00’s that I had direct experience with the Martial Arts, this was some kind of mixture of TKD/Hapkido and Yudo(Korean Judo) and it really reinvigorated my imagination and what could be achieved if I put the effort in. But sadly I didn’t do more than 1 formal class as I was discouraged by my family from pursuing it(boy do I regret that!).

    The idea of practising martial arts kept coming back to me, particularly as I gained more confidence in myself  I would come back to the martial arts in May 2011 when I was living in town at the time ( previously I was basically living in the woods away from everything which was one of the factors that put me from practising during my college years. So the art I chose to return to the martial arts was Ving Tsun. It was the original system that Bruce lee practised before he left for the states. I also had some knowledge about ip man before the films were famous. Jeet Kune Do was my ultimate goal at the time in long run but I wanted a solid foundation in Ving Tsun. Interestingly I dreamed of my own style that expressed myself before I actually knew of JKD’s philosophy.

    But the deeper i went into Ving Tsun with my various instructors I found it to be a complete system that if well understood and trained correctly is arguably one of the best systems out there that deserves a better reputation than it has generally. Like all systems , the community has the drama , backstabbing, misunderstood concepts etc. 

    But as mentioned in my first post. I’ve moved to Scotland where the quality of wing chun is low or poorly understood by particular lineages.

    But on a positive note, there is a wider mix of systems here than what I had in my town down south.

    Thank you for reading this and Goodnight 🙂