Any beginner is bound to struggle at first, with learning new material. It is true of any new activity. I have a question for you. Does the struggle have to do with just learning your new movements or does it partly have to do with your ability?
Regardless of athletic skills or physical learning abilities, anybody can learn Wing Tsun movements. Practice begets insight. Insight begets solutions.
I think the simple answer is yes. Traditional training, if it also involves conditioning, can be a great start toward training for ring fights and cross training in other arts if your goal is the octagon type of fights we see today. Traditional martial arts offer basic principals of the individual style that could be overlooked in a mixed martial arts setting in the interest of “getting through it” so you can move on to another martial art.
At first, you, as the beginning student cannot usually understand why these basic movements are so important unless you have had good grounding in another traditional martial art. The truth is, the basics also train the smaller muscle groups that, again, are overlooked in faster training methods. They can strengthen and condition joints that work to prevent injury and increase efficiency.
Our classes address a surprise attack if you are grabbed by somebody attempting to put you into a headlock. Of course there is a whole series of ideas against grabs that can be addressed. Many martial art styles have pre-arranged scenarios for a whole variety of attacks. Unfortunately none of those scenarios is going to be what happens to you in an attack. It is impossible to know this ahead of time! That is why we have to know and practice ‘principals’ that can be applied at will in any situation.
You might say that anybody that takes a martial arts class is a martial artist. Then again, you could say that anybody that is climbing up through the ranks should be classified as a martial artist.
I ask the question because many people that are in a martial arts class have never thought about it before. It is possible they A) do not think of themselves as a martial artist or B) do not know specifically what constitutes the title of “martial artist.”
I might go out on a limb and say that most people who want to get into a program involving fitness training, be it martial arts, personal trainer, 24-hour gyms, and anything else, do not know where to start and how to keep going. The tendency I see is that many people have been sedentary for so long, they do not know how far out of shape they are. When they start out, they are thrown for a loop. Their whole body is sore, perhaps for a week.
The manual for training for full-contact fights with Wing Tsun has been available for over 30 years. It is called Dynamic Wing Tsun Kung Fu by Grandmaster Leung Ting. The book is, in part, a basic book for those interested in fighting applications and part training manual for winning a full contact ring fight. The book includes photos and short descriptions of 12 different fighters that won their fights in such countries as Malaysia, Hong Kong, Denmark and Yugoslavia in the early years of Grandmaster Leung Tings’s teaching career.
Register now on our web form at: Trial Lesson and get one week of free trial classes! Just mention this offer! Our martial arts classes in Gilbert AZ, are at Guadalupe and Gilbert Rd. one mile south of the Mesa, Arizona city line.
745 N. Gilbert Rd. #120, Gilbert, AZ 85234.
Offer expires Thursday June 27, 2019 (last day). Cannot be combined with other offers.
You will get a free introduction prior to your first class. Here is what to expect at your first Wing Tsun Kung Fu class:
The world of martial arts is a mixture of focused students and practitioners and technique collectors. Our Grandmaster Leung Ting warns his students early on about being “technique collectors.” He created his teaching system out of the Wing Chun he was taught and re-named it Wing Tsun. Instead, he says, it is the skills that are important. This theme is a thread throughout the Yip Man lineages. It is stronger in some lineages than others. It even exists in an oft quoted Bruce Lee saying, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
Wing Tsun Arizona will be offering special self-defense programs in the next few months in Gilbert, Arizona and surrounding communities. Stay tuned by subscribing to our updates and blogs by filling in the blanks at the bottom of the NEWS page.
Our Wing Tsun self-defense martial art system, a Wing Chun teaching method, is the most effective and efficient system, having been an off-shoot of the more complicated Shaolin martial arts. Our Grandmaster, Leung Ting, was a closed-door student of late grandmaster Yip Man.
We are part of a network of Wing Chun schools spanning the globe as part of the IWTA based in Hong Kong.
-Sifu Keith Sonnenberg
