Why the principles are not taught? In many cases, it is because the style does not have any to speak of. It is built on some fragmented ideas with little foundation. In other cases, the teacher is unaware of the principles. They, themselves, had learned their martial art blindly, knowing only the superficial movements. Then there is the commercialism that comes to play. In order to make money in martial arts, one would have to have lots of students. When you achieve that, you are unable to give individual attention to the students. In order to enroll and keep the large membership going, a special system is formed to teach the mass and keep them hooked.

The belt (ranking) system in martial arts, although meant for grading and goal setting, is often used as a bait to keep students hooked as ongoing, paying customers. The mass system training, has very little in content (in the martial arts sense). You spend most of your time warming up, stretching and muscle building. For that matter, you can do that in aerobic classes or weight training. You spend the first 20 minutes warming up. Then you do 20 minutes of drills. Another 20 minutes go towards "patterns". Then, 15 minutes go towards sparring techniques. Finally, the actual sparring, for about 10 minutes. Five minutes goes towards wind-down exercises. Nothing wrong with the system, if you do want to exercise your body and do a little martial arts while you are at it. However, if you are serious about learning martial arts, shouldn't you be spending more time on it? If you want to learn to golf, you expect your instructor to teach you golfing, not aerobics, calisthenics, or gymnastics. What would you say to him if he were to tell you that you should be doing an hour and fifteen minutes of calisthenics (to get in shape) and fifteen minutes towards golfing. You don't need to tell me, I know where you'd deposit the golf clubs.

Wing Chun concentrates the whole class towards the combative techniques. Fitness exercises should and can be done on your own. There is no sense in spending your time on them in Wing Chun classes. As for the drills, there are some in Wing Chun, but not the type other martial arts schools teach. Wing Chun drills are done with a partner to develop sensibility, reflexive action, and sharpening combative techniques. Most schools make students drill on blocks, punches and stances without a partner. No one questions the fact that these blocks and stances are ineffective, impractical, and unusable. Note, those of you who are taking or have taken martial arts before ... think about this: Have you been able to use the low block doing a front stance when sparring or the cross forearm block on a back stance? You will agree with me that they are not useful, as they are too slow and awkward. The things that you have been able to use are the basic punches and kicks. The formal blocks and stances are useless. So, why were you spending so much time on them?

Most drills in most martial art styles work the students towards the "pattern" training, known as "kata" in Japanese, and "heung" in Korean. Patterns were created for students to practise without a partner. They are only good if the moves are applicable in sparring or actual fighting. If not, they are waste of time. This is true in most martial arts patterns. In fact, the students learn about 10 sets of patterns before acquiring a black belt. They continue to learn more through their years of black belt degrees. More fancy moves are added ... most of them useless.

Wing Chun has three sets of patterns. The first one is called Siu Lim Tao, meaning the "The Basics". The second one is called "Chum Kiu", or "Searching the Bridge". This is Wing Chun's the defensive training. The third one is the "Biu Jee", or the "Shooting Fingers". This is Wing Chun's offensive training. You will find other styles consisting from one to twenty or more. There is nothing wrong with patterns if they are training you on practical techniques. It is a waste of time, effort, and energy if they contain impractical movements.

Wing Chun training incorporates a wooden dummy for limb positioning and contact training. There is nothing better than training with a live partner. The problem is that a partner is not always available. When available, you are unable to strike him with full force for fear of injuring him. The wooden dummy fills this gap. While you are unable to train for sensibility or reaction, you train for positioning, bridging and attacks. For those of you interested in weapons, Wing Chun has two. They are the 6.5 pole and the twin butterfly broad-swords.

When you have learned all of these, you graduate from the Wing Chun course, unlike some styles that seem to go on endlessly to keep you as a paying student.

Wing Chun is one of the youngest forms of Chinese gongfu. It is under 200 to 300 years. The beauty of it is that it took the best of the ancient styles and condensed it into a small package. What Wing Chun did was take a massive rock and chipped off all that was unnecessary and sculptured a masterpiece from it. On the other hand, some other styles, took a little rock, and plastered layer over layers of clay, to make a huge clay sculpture. All it would take to break it is a small stone.

Let's now go to Classroom Lecture I by clicking the (white text) link located at the bottom (black) border of this page.