Interviewer: Sifu you’re obviously a gung fu teacher and coach but you’re also a qualified teacher aren’t you?
Sifu Zopa:
Yes, I am. I was a secondary school teacher for ten years. I’ve also lectured at two universities in different academic areas at different times.
Interviewer: You’re also a psychologist?
Sifu Zopa:
Yes. I have been trained and worked in three specialist areas of psychology: educational psychology; child and adolescent psychology, and organisational psychology.
Interviewer: Do these experiences influence your gung fu teaching?
Sifu Zopa:
Yes, of course. I think my training and experiences and my reflection on the manner in which martial arts is, and ought to best be, taught in optimal fashion helps. I reflect both on the abstract - what is ideal and on my observations of other martial arts teachers I know, I see or have studied with. I look at both the ideal, what is good and what is bad. I’ve trained with some excellent martial artists who certainly could improve their teaching and some who were very good communicators or demonstrators. I never wasted my time training for very long with anyone whom I considered a poor character or a poor teacher. I have also read all the martial arts books I have been able to - well, at least up to a point before the market really exploded. I’ve got loads of videos of gung fu masters and karate masters from all over the world. I learn about instructional methods by reading and watching these. I’m not a sponge - I don’t just absorb. I read or view analytically and critically. This is to constantly bring forth the best for my gwoon and my students. I’ve even read a book or two on “teaching the martial arts” but they were very basic I’m afraid.
Interviewer: You’re a unique blend, if I may say so, sifu. On the one hand you’re very traditional in terms of preserving the genuine Wing Chun but on the other your teaching methods are very different, very unusual - and it shows in the quality of your students.
Sifu Zopa:
Thanks. Yes I think I must be innovative when it comes to methods of training and teaching but very traditional and conservative where it comes to not prostituting, polluting or diluting the art. Certainly I don’t know of anyone who teaches the way I do.
Interviewer: Sifu, I’ve trained with other martial arts teachers as have a few of your students. Their ways of teaching and yours are very distinctly different. Could you please discuss your teaching philosophy for us?
Sifu Zopa:
Sure. Yes I guess in some ways my teaching philosophy is likely different from a number of other martial arts teachers. Thinking on it I guess that there are a number of areas in which you could say there are differences.
Interviewer: Can you elaborate on them?
Sifu Zopa:
Sure. I think we could probably think in terms of what springs to mind: selection of students; the unwritten contract; drilling - both structured and unstructured; explanation; sparring; excellence; and developing independent thinking and expression through recognisable stages. I can expand on these. With respect to selection of students I’ve spoken on this a lot at other points on the website so I’ll say no more other than that I don’t teach those I don’t think will be appropriate students and therefore are highly unlikely to succeed with my methods. This gives us a greater chance of success but when you think we’ve had approximately ten students enrol for everyone we currently have still with us we’re reminded of what my old teachers said in the 1960s: only one in ten persevere and only one in a hundred attain any level of mastery.
Interviewer: I’m interested in hearing you tell those who might read this about our “unwritten contract” as I think it’s a very unique perspective.
Sifu Zopa:
OK. It’s really quite simple. The notion is I select you to be a student therefore I commit to you and you commit to me, this gwoon, this art. It’s a relationship not a commercial transaction wherein I’m only interested in you for the money you pay me and you’re only interested in me as long as I keep pumping out something new and interesting and don’t work you too hard. It’s not a transaction where you keep learning overly quickly and keep getting loads of levels of grades or anything like that. The art isn’t divided up and apportioned out by weight for money. If anything - in fact it’s the way it is - you progress contingent not on the time you’ve been training - though minimal times are important - but in terms of your expressed attitudes, attendance and your application. You have an inappropriate attitude you go. You don’t attend regularly you won’t learn and in time I’ll ask you to not bother as you’re wasting our time. You don’t try hard enough and are lazy I give you some encouragement but if you persist, I ask you to leave. Simple! It’s really simple. You can’t buy gung fu skill. No-one can give it to you. Only you can develop it by expressing the above three A’s and by listening and taking on board the instructions - which are repeated over and over and over, no? (Laughs) By watching my demonstrations closely and by doing your best to look exactly as I show you. The notion of our contract is I teach you the best I can, you learn the best you can. So I try to be the best sifu I can, you try to be the best student you can. In fact we don’t “try” - we do it! How can the art continue if this isn’t done?
Interviewer: Sifu, your drilling methods are incredibly comprehensive and realistic. Where did these come from?
Sifu Zopa:
The drilling, yes. Well, the actual basic applications are of course the art’s. The less common ones you see, the art taught me as I reflected on it in drills against attacks. “The art teaches the art” I have always said. I guess this is only if you don’t have a mindlock on and don’t enslave yourself to slavishly follow all the sifu taught - but nothing else. That’s mindless and cookie cutter art! You mentioned “comprehensive”- yes, I go through the sup yee sik and forms as you know as appropriate to your level and ensure everything is fully unpacked. Multiple applications and flexible usage of techniques - as you know, are taught. I ensure you know all the common basic applications you’ll see some Wing Chun lineages illustrating in text books - the realistic ones that is - some are just plain silly and wouldn’t work in a realworld fight against an uncooperative attacker who isn’t feeding you a Wing Chun technique, anticipating and cooperating with you. We also have a lot of drills that are unique. These include drilling against realworld attacks not just Wing chun techniques. And, of course, we do all our drilling against attacks which simulate realworld attacks at combat speed. Yes I’ve never encountered any other gwoon that goes through the applications every training session year after year as comprehensively. We structure our drills so the student gets full coverage of the total applications of every move in all the forms - nothing is a mystery. Nothing in Wing Chun is not combat applicable - you just have to know how! Our drills are also unstructured. After a few years on structured drills, as you’ll have seen, the student is given the freedom to think and let the “art bloom forth”. Attacks are gradually changed from being more predictable to less predictable to totally unpredictable. Nothing is rushed in the pseudo-interests of developing a “fast track” student. That sort of mindless approach simply ruins true Wing Chun. You can’t end up with good Wing Chun in only a few short years.
Interviewer: Your explanations are very comprehensive too, Sifu. This comes from your deep understanding of the art as well as your experience as a teacher I guess?
Sifu Zopa:
Well I think so. Yes. My thinking is if I select you and you commit then you deserve the “full truth and nothing but the truth”! (Laughs) Seriously though, you need to not just understand the principles, concepts, techniques, structures, and applications of the art you need to understand how it all holds together and why things are the way they are. You need to understand what makes Wing Chun Wing Chun! A sifu has to really want to give everything to his students not just dole it out depending on the student’s capacity to pay or pander to the sifu’s ego. The student ought not to have to “draw teeth” to get the art from the sifu either. A lot of martial art, a lot of Wing Chun has notched down as teachers don’t teach fully. If a student is accepted as a student then they deserve to be given, progressively according to their development of skill and knowledge, full detail. Anything less is immoral, in my view. Deceptive, manipulative, controlling and unworthy of a true sifu. Of course, just casting pearls before swine - giving every detail out to those not accepted as students - in an effort to boost one’s ego - is idiotic in my view - most of those who get things with no commitment, no effort don’t value them. Most of the material given freely is worthless fortunately!
Interviewer: Your ideas on developing power and fluent fighting ability are traditional but seem unique in this era immersed in sparring, Sifu. Could you comment?
Sifu Zopa:
Yes. I think I’ve commented on this elsewhere. A lot of young blokes come to me and tell me that they believe in this notion of cross training or sparring. Mostly I can’t be bothered trying to point out the stupidity of their thinking - derived not from their own analysis but from what they’ve been brainwashed into thinking by the populist commercial martial arts media. You can see how swift, how fluent, how relaxed and comprehensively skilled my seniors are becoming. You can see how they close down an attacker, taking control of his centerline, center of gravity and totally controlling and dominating him. How can someone spar with the sort of tag game or swapping turns you see under these circumstances? The mindset developed by sparring is inappropriate for Wing Chun. You have your go, we hop around or prowl around each other looking threatening then we engage in a flurry then part, then another flurry, not showing we can land attacks with real power on vulnerable, disabling targets. This sport approach is sport and not how to win a real fight. My Wing Chun is to really hurt an attacker - not to outpoint him, not to look good, not to win trophies. It’s to attack all the areas forbidden in sport martial art. It’s not to make me famous, or “important” or an “authority”. I could care less about all these - I have an identity and life apart from Wing Chun - I don’t “need” Wing Chun for my ego! I’d do it if no-one knew I did. In fact I did it for years under exactly those circumstances! It’s to survive, to win against a vicious, serious realworld criminal! If someone likes sport martial art, likes appearing macho, is a bully or likes appearing “tough” to his mates then he should follow that path. I don’t, my students don’t. Yet we can defend ourselves adequately with confidence.
Interviewer: Sifu, you are always saying that things have to be perfect - there are only two ways to do Wing Chun: the right way and the wrong way. Can you elaborate for us?
Sifu Zopa:
Excellence is vital. I aim for the highest quality in all I do. I try to inspire others to do so too. It’s the way I am. What’s the point of doing anything with a half-hearted effort? Why bother? You either want to be the best you can, you either want to master Wing Chun - or you don’t. If you want to be the best you can then you better quickly learn “reference” - what constitutes really good and what is just held up to the masses as “good”. You have to learn to be able to compare everything to a criterion of excellence - your “reference” - and ensure that your reference is the best not just what you’ve heard is the “best”, not some group illusion of what is popularly perceived as “best”. A great deal of what folk think is good, simply isn’t. Many of those who think they know the “best”, don’t. Many delude themselves. Fine! Just don’t expect me to agree or be complicit in the delusion!
Interviewer: How do you go about your expressed highest aim, of developing students who are independent thinkers and can give the art their own expression?
Sifu Zopa:
That’s a process of guiding development through the three stages. The first stage is utter obedience and compliance. The student simply does exactly as they are told and shown and does it fully trusting the sifu and the art. The art is instilled in the student’s neuromuscular response systems and they fully grasp the theory. Mind you, the sifu and student both have to ensure they have the true art and train it very well. Then after a few years, the student is allowed to begin developing some degree of individuality. Certain techniques, certain ways of moving emerge - the individual expresses the art. It’s like a musician or a dancer who can perform a set piece of their art which everyone recognises but now it is with their own interpretation. Then after a few more years, the student is given approval by the sifu to separate and to fully develop their own expression. This is not to devise one’s own art and dishonestly and immorally dishonour the ancestors by calling it Wing Chun, it’s to be able to express one’s own personality and skills through the art without modifying it or changing it or mixing it with other arts. At this stage the student knows the art fully and can and will faithfully teach his students in turn as he was taught - or improve on it in minor ways, but he won’t change things for the sake of change. The student can tell his students that he was taught a certain way and this is it - but this way is better in terms of better expressing the Wing Chun principles and offer a valid reason his students can agree with. (A number of folk have made major additions to Wing Chun and some even devised their own versions - I’m not talking about this immoral sort of thing here - Wing Chun is so perfect it can only be incrementally improved in minor ways). Of course if anyone wants to change things or mix in other arts then no-one can stop them in today’s world and I guess it’s their choice, but it would be good if they were straightforward about it and didn’t call the mix of arts they produce “Wing Chun”. A number of the now “established” Wing Chun groups have unfortunately done this over the decades. It goes back into China and into the early part of last century in some cases. Some have even developed false lineages to justify themselves. Few know the real truth anymore, so comprehensive has the marketing and mindless repetition of what others have said has been. So many lies have become accepted “history”. It would be the best thing in terms of honesty if they derived their own name for the art they developed rather than confuse people by referring to their material as “Wing Chun”. Some of these people can be quite good at what they do, of course - and very dedicated to what they do - for various reasons - unfortunately mostly money or ego - but that’s not the point. The point is honesty. Sifu Chan, for example, developed Choy Li Fut and honestly acknowledged his mixing and integrating of three styles. Many others have produced arts from pre-existing arts by changing them or mixing several arts or components of them. Some famous arts began this way. Why can’t others also be honest? I encourage my students to think for themselves - but they know the parameters of what is and isn’t Wing Chun, what is and isn’t their lineage - and why!
Interviewer: Thank you, sifu.