Top products from r/WingChun

Give Complete Wing Chun: The Definitive Guide to Wing Chun's History and Traditions by Robert Chu, Rene Ritchie and Y. Mu a try. It is a pretty comprehensive history of wing chun, from what I've read of it. As the foreword by Mark V. Wiley perhaps a little hyperbolically says:

> Complete Wing Chun is perhaps the best book written on the various schools comprising a single martial art form. The authors have done an excellent job in their tireless research and presentation of material into this comprehensive treatise on one of the most controversial and misunderstood arts of this century. This book is destined to become the classic reference on the subject, and has set a standard by which other researchers and practitioners wishing to uncover their art should follow. I highly recommend this book to all Wing Chun stylists and martial arts researchers alike without hesitation. If ever you were to buy just one book on the art, this should be it." --Mark V. Wiley

This one isn't specific to Wing Chun but for be Wing Chun is best when it's practiced as an internal style - Secrets of the Pelvis - it improved my wing chun so much!

I see what you're saying…
Maybe my opinion is somewhat extremely colored by seeing the EWTO stuff…
Pure Leung Ting… OK.
But KRK is just clearly not Wing Chun anymore.

As for LT WT:
I'm using the Document "Wing Tsun Kuen" as a reference here.
The SNT, we can more or less agree on.
We put the main focus on the elbow here.
LT seems to be more concerned with "applications", we don't think that way about the form.
But Cham Kiu is where it starts to differ greatly.

We know that the motions, which are performed three times, tell us "hey, this is important!"
Cham Kiu turning, the pivot, is very important!
Both the Lan Sao turning, and the Bong-Jut turning.
For us the correct way is defined as such:

1. When you pivot, the heels have to stay where they are, they cannot move. Otherwise, it's a step.
   
   
2. When you pivot, looking square onto a mirror, your head stays where it is. In WT, the head moves from side to side, as the body weight shifts from left to right.
   
   Please consider the following sources:
   
   

• "Wing Chun" Documentary
  
• VING TSUN MONTREAL / Wing Chun Kung Fu in Montreal / IP MAN, also the book The Wing Chun Compendium, Volume One
  
• Wong Shun Leung Chum Kiu
  
  Observe how these three different lineage all coordinate the pivot the same way, while the LT way differs.
  These three lineages are well separated, yet they are much closer to each other than WT's way is to any of them.
  From a sort of "evolutionary" point of view we can deduce that LT's way is the "unusual" one.
  
  What do you say to that?

I'm not sure what you're referring to. Did you mean something like the B.O.B. dummies?

I would say anything freestanding on a base you fill with water/sand would fill your needs, and dampen the sound, and beyond that you have choices on what you'd want to be hitting. And yes, anything that gives you targets you can focus on can help.

I think rookayy has it right, you don't want to start learning from online videos or whatnot, you will definetly pick up some bad habits, or maybe just different habits than the school you eventually train with. Every lineage has it's intricacies that get passed down from generation to generation that are slightly different depending on the sifu.

Start with the basics, learn the principles etc, but nothing beats hands on instruction!

Check out some books too. This, for instance

Good luck!

Yeah thanks :)

I've ordered this book to learn more about the history and concepts of "traditional" wing chun, and try to spot the difference between that way and the "modern" way I'm learning.

The Tao of Wing Chun is a great book about conceptual things. It's a light read and incredibly informative. The Sifu who wrote it is also usually available via email about inquires, and travels around to teach people if they are interested in running seminars.

https://www.amazon.ca/Tao-Wing-Chun-Principles-Explosive/dp/162914777X

Championship fighting is a great book, I read it after it was mentioned in another thread regarding which knuckles to punch with. The only other (martial arts) book I've really read is Samuel Kwok's Mastering Wing Chun, which was ok, but i'm not a massive fan of just learning moves from looking at pictures. It was useful for trying to remember the forms before I knew them properly though.

Not wing chun specific (more general kung fu) but my Sifu recommended i read "The Sword Polisher's Record" by Adam Hsu and indeed i would recommend it too.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Sword-Polishers-Record-Kung-fu/dp/0804831386/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405186946&sr=8-1&keywords=the+sword+polishers+record

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1583941290?pc_redir=1404977283&robot_redir=1 one of the best books I found

I'm not a WC practitioner, just find the topic interesting. But I recently read a book about the physics of martial arts that made an interesting point about gloves.

It said there are two ways to do strikes: by emphasizing momentum, or by emphasizing energy (i.e. physical energy, not woowoo "energy").

Momentum is mass velocity. A momentum strike has a lot of mass behind it but doesn't necessarily have to move super fast. The point of it is to transfer momentum to your opponent, moving their body. It's how you knock people out, by rotating their head. Gloves don't reduce the effect of momentum strikes.

Energy is mass the square of velocity. Since velocity is squared but mass isn't, an energy strike emphasizes high speed over getting a lot of weight behind the strike. The point of an energy strike is to do local tissue damage. Gloves dramatically reduce the effectiveness of energy strikes, by spreading out the area and time of impact.

My impression as an outsider is that WC strikes are more on the energy side of the spectrum; if that's true, then maybe the glove objection would have some validity. Boxing and muay thai are heavily momentum-based, which explains why competitors with gloves always end up using those types of strikes.

(Feel free to call me the worst neckbeard, here I am talking about geeky physics and I don't even practice WC.)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0195OPNJO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I liked this one but it breaks down all the different wing chun lineages

Here's the book I used to learn it:

Grandmaster William Cheung, Bil Jee: The Deadly Art of Thrusting Fingers

(Wm. Cheung, like Bruce Lee, was a student of Yip Man, but claims to have been his only student to have learned the unmodified form of Wing Chun from him.)

*EDIT: See also: http://goo.gl/U57Zt for footage of Bill Cheung performing Bil Jee

EDIT 2: Not really sure why this got downvotes. OP wants to learn Bil Jee, and this is a credible source....

The book 'The Wing Chun Compendium' (vol 1) by Wayne Belonoha has the chops and many of the translations to English, though I don't know how complete it is.

http://amzn.com/1412028191

I have this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SL6ITG/ref=s9_acsd_hps_bw_c_x_1_w

I just ordered this book
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594391181/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Pick up this book!

http://www.amazon.com/Wing-Chun-Kung-Fu-Yimm-Lee/dp/0897500377/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348517031&sr=1-10&keywords=wing+chun

http://www.amazon.com/Wing-Chun-Warrior-Fighting-Companion/dp/9881774225

https://www.amazon.com/Wing-Chun-Warrior-Fighting-Companion/dp/9881774225/ref=sr_1_1

My sifu earned his Ph.D and wrote a book based off the "tactical cognition" of WC. Here's the book

True... self-defense is mostly for women only and generally it's total bullshit. There are some good self-defense systems out there though (Senshido comes to mind). Like any martial arts though, you might not have a proper school in your area. In fact, I'd say it might be even truer for self-defense since there is no real set rules/standards. I invite you to read Facing Violence. It's a great book on self-defense. In fact, if you can't find a good self-defense class I strongly suggest just taking up a MA and study self-defense on your own (books, videos, blogs). There is a lot of good material out there and unlike martial arts, self-defense is mostly about psychology and concepts rather than a set of moves.

MT is good. Personally I'm not too keen on kicks when it comes to self-defense or use in real life, but that's my opinion. I didn't want to discourage you from Wing Chun though. If you want to try Wing Chun go for it. It is a self-defense art, no question there and you know what, some WC school DO teach some self-defense (my school does). So it might be worth checking out. Visit your local WC school and talk to the sifu. Ask about how the class is structure and if he covers a bit of self-defense.

As I said though, my beef with WC is that it's easy to lose track of what is important and it has a long learning curve. If you can remember to keep forward pressure, be aggressive, attack on lost of contact, and don't fight force with force then it brutally effective. The problem is students often focus too much on trapping and fighting defensively.