Interviewer: Good morning, sifu. May I ask you about the regime you prescribe for your students to train the Yuen Kay San Wing Chun forms? You are always saying: "One Form....10 times a day for 3 years".
Sifu: I am. Yes, to master anything you must rehearse it correctly for at least 10,000 times. My schedule ensures this.
Interviewer: That would seem to make the claims that Wing Chun can be learnt in a few short years ridiculous, sifu?
Sifu: Well you can get a reasonable level of Wing Chun skill in a few years. But it’s rough and ready. To really become good and to learn the complete curriculum takes longer. Those people who sprout you can learn Wing Chun in two years are talking about a minimalised version and at a minimal level of skill and knowledge in my opinion.
Interviewer: May I ask how long it should take to master the art, sifu?
Sifu: That depends on your ability, your regular application to training with your complete mental focus, your attitude, and how clever you are in a Wing Chun sense. Sifu Sum Num said it took eight years of consistent training to master his system. Mind you, this is training as he did – quite hard with great focus. And, it is a given you have an appropriately qualified teacher who is both willing and able to teach you correctly. Within two or three years of hard, consistent and correct training most students will have reached a level where they are quite capable at defending themselves. Then, of course, you can take the view we are always learning and mastery is an endless zone with no finish line. Yeh, OK. But you can enter that zone – and that’s mastery, pure and simple. Don’t give me any of this esoteric nonsense that only seventy year old Chinese Taoist masters with eyebrows as long as their beards are the only ones who can be masters! Conversely, don’t give me the nonsense that every martial arts teacher who uses the term “master” actually is a master!
Interviewer: Yes. I guess most people assume that their system, their sifu is able to deliver mastery – or at least competence – to them?
Sifu: Yes, they do, I’d guess. That isn’t always correct, unfortunately. Probably most Wing Chun systems do give their practitioners some degree of self defence skill. But there are differences and I’m focusing here on mastery.
Interviewer: Could you tell us then, how your system for training forms works, please, sifu?
Sifu: Sure. In your initial year you are really still learning Siu Lien Tau. You have to have correct structures, correct execution of a form before you start really drilling it. Otherwise you’re practicing, engraining error! As you know, we focus initially on teaching each individual technique correctly and only then begin teaching the forms. My scheme, with respect to forms training, is a personal regime and probably might best start after the student knows Siu Lien Tau fairly well and is learning Chum Kiu. In other words it is probably best not to be a total beginner and try to begin this scheme. But, one could do so, of course. It’ll just mean you spend longer doing Siu Lien Tau – which doesn’t hurt! The scheme takes ten years and works as follows. In year one you practise Siu Lien Tau ten times daily. You must practice correctly and with full mental focus. All this form training is in addition to other training and classes, of course. This just applies to the forms training aspect of your Wing Chun. You also need to do the sup yee sik, individual techniques, and supplementary training. And, this scheme means you don’t do the saam bai fut section slowly when you’re training the Siu Lien Tau ten times a day. Once you get to doing it only once then, if you wish, you can slow down the saam bai fut section. Mind you, most people do it too slowly. It’s a nonsense! You can do this training all at once or split it across a morning and evening session. Perhaps, if your life-style and work allows, also you might be able to do a lunch-time session. That’s a lot more difficult when you need to do the dummy, pole and knives, of course. In year two you also train Chum Kiu ten times daily. In year three you also train Siu Lien Tau and Chum Kiu ten times daily. In year four you train Chum Kiu and Biu Jee ten times daily but Siu Lien Tau now only once. In year five you train Biu Jee and Mook Yan Jong ten times and Siu Lien Tau and now Chum Kiu only once. In year six, you train Biu Jee and Mook Yan Jong ten times each and Siu Lien Tau and Chum Kiu now only once. In year seven you train Mook Yan Jong and Dit Ming Dao ten times each and Siu Lien Tau, Chum Kiu and Biu Jee now only once. In year eight you train Dit Ming Dao and Look Dim Boon Kwan ten times each and Siu Lien Tau, Chum Kiu, Biu Jee and Mook Yan Jong only once. In year nine, you train Dit Ming Dao and Look Dim Boon Kwan ten times each and Siu Lien Tau, Chum Kiu, Biu Jee and Mook Yan Jong only once. In year ten you train Look Dim Boon Kwan ten times and Siu Lien Tau, Chum Kiu, Biu Jee, Mook Yan Jong and Dit Ming Dao only once. Thereafter you train each form only once per day. Years two and three, and five and six, and eight and nine are paired – they’re the same as each other. By the tenth year you’ll be doing perfect forms. You’ll have mastered the forms.
Interviewer: Phew!
Sifu: Do you want to master Wing Chun – or not? (Smiles) Most Wing Chun practitioners do their forms once or twice, at most maybe three times a week in classes. My guess is most trainees don’t do much, if any, individual training at home. How much more practice, how much more skill, how much more engraining into your neuro-muscular system does my system yield?
Interviewer: Some people might be daunted at allocating ten years to something.
Sifu: Some might. If they don’t undertake a program to attain mastery in anything it won’t just come magically. Look, I studied much longer than ten years to accrue my professional qualifications and expertise. I trained at least twenty five years at karate! And there were many more forms to practice in karate! I trained at least twenty five years at Hong Kong Wing Chun. Who counted it out? Who cared? Training was the thing! Just do it and keep doing it! Musicians practice long hours, as do athletes and performing artists. Anyone who is so good at something they make it look easy, trained long, hard and correctly. You pay the price or you don’t claim the prize! Simple. Wing Chun makes it easy because it is such a compact art! For an hour or two a day it yields incredible dividends! Look, what I’m proposing here has backing. Professor John Hayes of Carnegie Mellon University in the US points out that music composers typically require a preparatory period of “ten years of silence”. Psychologist Howard Gardner of Harvard analysed great innovators of the early twentieth century and pointed out what he called the “ten year rule”. When did the Beatles produce their most innovative and best music, Ruber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? When they’d been a group, working hard for …. ten years! Maybe we ought to have that “ten years of silence” become a rule for all those clowns who interact on Wing Chun internet forums mutually exchanging ignorance, eh? (Laughs)
Interviewer: Yet, it is more than just training as ten years passes by, isn’t it?
Sifu: Oh yes, it’s a specific type of training. Of course! Yes, it has to be deliberate practice – as I’ve explained in another interview, on achieving mastery.
Interviewer: Ah, yes! Many people obviously also do less training than this forms training scheme, though, don’t they?
Sifu: (laughs) Yes! And look at them! Just look at them! (Laughs) Look, sure you can train less. How often, how hard, how long you train is an individual decision. Also, training can be impacted upon, these days especially, by all sorts of factors. Not all of these are under our control. But, if you want to be able to master the art, this is one scheme that is guaranteed to produce the results you see. It will produce mastery.
Interviewer: May I ask how long you train now yourself, sifu?
Sifu: Sure. About an hour to an hour and a half a day, these days. Mind you, in the past my training varied at different times between two to three hours a day up to about six or seven hours.
Interviewer: In one hit?
Sifu: No. Lengthy training is actually not helpful. Although I have trained at times in some three hour stretches that’s too much in my opinion. Between one to two hours is optimum. You can’t train with quality and intensity and duration. In Wing Chun we have to train like speed athletes – sprinters, speed skaters etc train. High intensity, high quality, focused, short duration. Most of my auxiliary or supplementary training only takes me about forty five minutes. When I trained six hours a day it was about an hour in the morning, an hour to ninety minutes at lunch and the rest in the evening.
Interviewer: How long a period of time did you do that, sifu?
Sifu: Oh, I guess about eight years, actually. Conditions were right for that sort of commitment at that time in my life so I was able to. I couldn’t have done it at any other point in time. It’s rare anyone can get that sort of time to devote to training. I was lucky in that respect. We didn’t set out thinking we’d train for six hours a day. We just kept adding in sessions until we were doing six hours. Prior to that period of my life I’d been training about at least ten or twelve years as an adult though. So, I was already considered accomplished.
Interviewer: So you did six hours daily?
Sifu: No, about five or six days a week. But for six hours – yes – almost every day we trained we did six hours. Rarely we dropped back to four if events got in the way. It wasn’t ritualistic. We were relaxed about it. It was very hard but we enjoyed the accomplishment.
Interviewer: Were there times when training wasn’t fun, you just had to do it?
Sifu: Yes. I enjoy hard and demanding training. I enjoy a challenge. But yes, there certainly were times when I asked myself why I was doing it! And, times when I didn’t feel like it and had to force myself to do it. There still are! (Laughs). But, if you don’t keep the tea hot it won’t taste any good, as sifu used to say!
Interviewer: Oh. (Laughs) Thank you sifu. This is a very interesting forms training scheme! We’ll summarise it in a chart for readers.
Sifu: OK. Thanks.
Sifu’s Daily Form Training Scheme
(Six days per week. Sifu recommends taking one day per week completely off all training to rest and recuperate)
Year 1 – SLT x 10
Year 2 - SLT & CK x 10
Year 3 - SLT & CK x 10
Year 4 - CK & BJ x 10; SLT x1
Year 5 - BJ & MYJ x 10; SLT & CK x1
Year 6 - BJ & MYJx 10; SLT & CK x1
Year 7 - MYJ & DMD x 10; SLT, CK & BJ x1
Year 8 - DMD & LDBKx 10; SLT, CK, BJ & MYJ x1
Year 9 - DMD & LDBKx 10; SLT, CK, BJ & MYJ x1
Year 10 - LDBK x 10; SLT, CK, BJ, MYJ& DMD x1
After: DMD & LDBK, SLT, CK & BJ & MYJ x1