Leeds Wing Chun Classes
Hi and welcome to this website "Leeds Wing Chun".
It was in 1993 when I first joined my first Wing Chun class in Leeds and from then on I was hooked. Nearly 30 years later and I'm still an avid practitioner of the Wing Chun system.
So what makes Wing Chun so interesting? At the time I started I had already practiced a few different styles. I was keen to learn more but as a Bruce Lee fanatic, I was also interested in "juggling" styles! Wing Chun changed my mind because although it was so simple, there was no end to it. Each practitioner showed you a different approach. Despite thinking that I would "invent" my own style (how naive), I realised that I could spend a lifetime studying Wing Chun and never truly master the art.
Alternatively I could jump from style to style and never really properly understand any of them. I decided that I wanted to study Wing Chun.
Miyamoto Musashi — 'from one thing, know ten thousand things'
Having a never ending menu of techniques to choose from is not necessarily the best way to approach a martial art. But understanding Wing Chun's Chi Sau, or sticky hands gives you a natural advantage over many styles because of the hand to hand contact. The sticky hands exercise of Wing Chun allows a practitioner to learn intuitively through sense and touch, rather than from sight. This gives you a huge speed and timing advantage which I didn't experience in my previous arts.
I like Aikido for similar reasons. The hand contact gives you the knowledge of bio mechanics and intuitive ability.
Obviously you need hours and hours of practice with a range of different students and instructors for this knowledge to sink in.
I was lucky enough to find a school which was connected directly to Grandmaster Ip Chun and my teacher offered many classes each week. As a young man this served me well as I was lost and had no direction other than my martial arts study. I imagined myself becoming a movie start at time, much like Bruce Lee and even pursued a career in the film industry as a stunt performer for some time.
But it wasn't meant to be and in 2010 I opened a school in Bradford under my instructors umbrella.
During the pandemic of 2020, things changed dramatically and I lost many students. I put on a Wing Chun Online twice weekly zoom class for my students. This was enough to maintain the class over a year and a half! Teaching online is of course nothing like going to a class. You can't get the hand to hand contact which is needed for such a style based on hand contact and sensitivity.
One of my students had just joined the classes and learned the entire system in forms (hand patterns)! He even went through knife form, dummy form and the pole form. But he hadn't much experience of chi sau. Of course when we returned his hand to hand skill had suffered, and the class drills showed what had been missing from teaching only online classes.
However, knowing the forms has served him well too!
Wing Chun is a simple style based on economy of motion and minimum movement. For this reason I believe it has a lot to teach us and not only from a martial viewpoint. From a health and fitness point of view it also is massively important. Ip Chun has emphasised using the style to teach people how to live, not just how to fight. This is a tendency of many of the best teachers.
In 2020 particularly, but over the years I do believe Wing Chun has saved me from myself. Focusing the mind has the outcome of quieting it, and in today's busy world this is one of the most important skills you can learn to stay sane! I hope Wing Chun will continue to grow as an enjoyable pass time for those who wouldn't ordinarily gravitate towards a martial art for the sole purposes of fighting. There's much more to learn from Wing Chun than simply fighting.