Learn Wing Chun for Beginners
These Beginners Wing Chun Tips may make or break some students who want to learn Wing Chun. For beginners, Wing Chun is one of the most highly misunderstood martial arts to learn. And if during your beginning Wing Chun training, you have not yet discovered these Wing Chun tips, you may end up quitting and never getting good at Wing Chun.
No joke!
Students who don’t learn these beginners Wing Chun Tips, will not progress as quickly as others. And because of that, they get discouraged. Often, this can even lead to discounting Wing Chun altogether. If you can’t understand the correct mindset and approach to Wing Chun, then you certainly won’t experience long term success.
Its not just about knowledge of the concepts.
You may know Wing Chun concepts such as “how to defend in Wing Chun” or the idea of “simultaneous attack and defense“, but you’ll also need to understand these important Wing Chun tips for beginners.
Here are four Wing Chun Tips for Beginners Only the Experts Know…
1. Appreciate The Basic Things – Get good at the basics and that’s how you get great, not getting good at flashy stuff. There really are no basic things because it’ s the fundamentals and the ability to apply these fundamentals which draw the line between success and failure. Many may even know these basic things. But remember, “Knowing is not enough. We must apply.” -Bruce Lee.
2. Learn to Relax your Nervous System – You can’t be tense. You’ve got to find that tension in your body and let it go. If you’re not relaxed, you will not be clear, you will have your emotions involved. The first internal harmony is the emotions with the mind (or the heart with the intent). Know this… there is no Wing Chun without relaxation. It is fundamental to the art and your ability to apply. If you aren’t relaxed, you’ll be stiff, slow and insensitive to changes in your opponent. (See Common Mistakes Beginning Wing Chun Students Make)
3. Fixate on your Goal – Your goal is the centerline of the body. Whether you’re choosing to hit a primary target or to control posture, be sure to go to your opponent’s centerline. When you can get there, you can shut things down immediately. You don’t want to mess around or participate in their struggle at all so knowing the goal helps to not chase hands, not participate in the irrelevance of what they might be trying to do. Because they always leave you an opening when they try to attack you, if you know your goal it’s really irrelevant what they are trying to do to you. Too many people in Wing Chun worry so much about what the other person is doing. They completely forget about their goal. They chase hands as the try so hard to control or trap the other person. Because of this, they miss the many open opportunities in front of them. Don’t try to trap. Your goal is the center of your opponent. Strike! Trapping happens. You don’t need to try to do it.
4. Forward Energy – Your energy is constantly going toward that goal… and that means constantly! There’s there’s never a time that you’re forgetting about your goal or forgetting about your intent to move forward towards your goal. You have to maintain it. In fact, forward energy is also something we have when we meet another person. When you meet their energy, you can then determine in which way it’s headed. So you want to feel for that stimulus, then and only then, once you know where the stimulus is going and you’ve met it correctly with your forward energy (not insistence) but your forward energy, you can then respond simply.
4. Meeting and Feeling for a Stimulus – In order to sensitize with your opponent and use their energy against them, you have to understand how to meet their energy. Not looking to force your way in, rather meet them. This allows you to feel where their energy is headed. Once you can do this, you can learn to ride their energy and then direct it to a place that’s advantageous to you.
(See also Wooden Dummy for Beginners)