Why I Finally Quit Wing Chun

This is the story of why I quit Wing Chun.

---

Welcome to the Martial Arts Journey YouTube channel!

My name is Rokas. I'm a Lithuanian guy who trained Aikido for 14 years, 7 of them running a professional Aikido Dojo until eventually I realized that Aikido does not live up to what it promises.

Lead by this realization I decided to make a daring step to close my Aikido Dojo and move to Portland, Oregon for six months to start training MMA at the famous Straight Blast Gym Headquarters under head coach Matt Thornton.

After six months intensive training I had my first amateur MMA fight after which I moved back to Lithuania. During all of this time I am documenting my experience through my YouTube channel called "Martial Arts Journey".

Now I am slowly setting up plans to continue training MMA under quality guidance and getting ready for my next MMA fight as I further document and share my journey and discoveries.

---

SUBSCRIBE to see when the next videos will come out:

Check the video "Aikido vs MMA" which started this whole Martial Arts Journey:

If you want to support me and this channel on a regular basis check my Patreon page:

#WingChun #KungFu #MartialArts

[ives]

"Being a good human being is more important than being a good martial artist, " ABSOLUTELY!

[BourneFighting]

This is a problem with most martial art schools across the world. More concerned with politics than anything.

[bw]

I've come to appreciate my teacher. He teaches Kung Fu he emphasized full contact sparring. He finds politics stupid and just cuts the foreplay, which I am more than appreciative of

[MissesWitch]

His story actually surprised me. I thought he'd go onto say how he found it wasn't useful in fighting on the street or in mma but instead it was just bad community. Nobody can blame you for that! I wouldn't continue anything no matter how much I loved it if I was surrounded by a bad community, It just becomes very unhealthy and toxic to you.

[MMABreakdowns]

You lied to me. You said I wouldn't believe why you quit, but I absolutely believe this.

[keepmoving]

"Being a great human being is more important than being a great martial artist" Damn...I think we found the thesis statement for a lot of your videos. Beautifully said! Thank you

[alstone]

I had a similar experience when I moved to a new city and found a new Lau Gar school. They were utterly offended that my previous instructor emphasised sparring, padwork, didn't use Chinese commands for everything and allowed headkicks, claiming that they had drifted from the core organisation and had become impure. All I thought was well their classes are more fun and they are far better fighters so..enjoy being pure, so long!

[matthewthompson]

This is interesting. I definitely noticed this in Taekwondo, WT doesn't like ITF doesn't like ATA etc. My experience in Wing Chun has been very different. My Sifu is very well respected, but he and my Sigung always encouraged looking up videos online and if you're traveling, meeting up with a different instructor and training. They even encourage during sparring to mix in moves from other styles. Sorry to hear that your experience wasn't the same.

[drfistface]

There was a lot of this kind of talk in my old Karate school though mostly the accusations were that everyone else watered their training down to make it more palatable for money but we were the real school- those schools said the same about us. In retrospect not a single one of those schools used real pushups, emphasized regular sparring, diet, or any kind of organized workouts. That was before the UFC so there was no clinch work or ground work. I am still angry with myself for not seeing through it earlier

[yewknight]

I trained in a Korean martial art, Hwa Rang Do, and had some incredibly similar (and some significantly worse) experiences. Some traditional martial arts are run like cults and feed the ego of the instructor and master instead of focusing on elevating the students.

[DaXia]

I trained WC for several years in China directly under Sifu Duncan Leung who together with Bruce Lee, Leung Ting etc was taught directly by Ip Man. Duncan came from a pretty rich family and was able to afford more lessons from Ip Man than the other students and some people say that he is the only one who actually got the learn "everything" from Ip Man (although thats probably BS). I also got to meet Ip Mans son a few times, Ip Chun.

One thing thats interesting about the names that you might not know unless you speak Chinese is that WT and WC are both called 咏春拳 in Chinese and in mandarin its pronounced "Yong Chun Quan" but in Cantonese which they speak in FoShan and HK where Ip Man lived at the time, its pronounced "Wing Chun". Leung Ting chose to change the English name of his style of Wing Chun to "Wing Tsun" so that it could be differentiated from the normal Wing Chun and be used as a trade mark name internationally, but in Chinese its all the same name: 咏春拳.

Anyhow, I broached this subject with Duncan because I had previously also trained the "Leung Ting" version, i.e. "WT". He told me that Leung Ting was pretty much the "black sheep" of the WC family and went off to do his own thing and money was the main motive. Maybe you've seen the video where Leung Tings disciple Emin Boztepe (who I've also met) ambushed William Cheung (another disciple of Ip Man) and threw him down on the floor to prove how WT is "superior" to WC (Emin Boztepe was a BIG GUY back then). They filmed it and used it as a bit of a marketing tool but the quality of the video is so poor that you hardly can make out anything.

Sifu Duncan showed me how the WT style is (or at least used to be) flawed with all weight on the back leg and those really fast chain punches etc that look flashy but actually does nothing in a real fight and thats mainly the WT concept: It looks flashy, they incorporate escrima and some grappling and they market it as this "really effective no BS real fighting style", and a lot of people believe it and pay a lot of money to learn it, but its not very good for actual fighting (WC is not really a good style for actual fighting either but thats another story).

All the disciples of Ip Man teach their own style of Wing Chun. William Cheungs style is called "Traditional Wing Chun" and Duncan Leungs is called "Applied Wing Chun" and has more focus on actual fighting, but it does not come close to MMA or BJJ. If you want to learn how to beat people up then Wing Chun is not the answer.

As a westerner who speak fluent Chinese and have had the opportunity to meet and talk to all these "legends" I've gotten a pretty unique insight into this whole rivalry so I thought I would just share some of it with you. All the best!

[Simonk]

All wing chun, wing tsun, Ving chun etc all look the same when fighting a resisting opponent. It doesn't matter what tournament, I see zig zag footwork + chain punching + straight kick + arms out. That's what you need to know to be effective. Lineages argue about the stupidest things that most of the time don't add any value.

[WarriorBoy]

Your life experience of starting out as a young guy obsessed with anime and Asian culture, being lead to TMAs, is very familiar sounding to me. It's so funny how traditional arts and people who practice them talk about honor, respect, and all these other lofty concepts, but I've found more drama and backbiting in the TMA community than in any other segment of martial arts, especially Chinese arts like you said. Their minds would be boggled by someone pointing out to them that an outsider would see their styles as being identical.

[baywest]

Love these stories man! Also like how you recognize that you probably had a reach advantage and didn't just ego trip and say they stopped sparing with you because your just so much better than them. Whatever percentage of that being true doesn't matter, the fact that you have the self awareness to look into other factors is refreshing.

[watz]

That was one of the reasons I got sick of my martial arts training, politics is rampant and it ruins it. Especially as you get up in the higher ranks.

[RamseyDewey]

Plot Twist: in Mandarin, it’s not pronounced Wing Chun or Ving Tsun, rather Yong Chun (sounds king of like “yah-ng chw-uh-n”)

[ArmadusMalaysia]

Yeah it always feels great to feel like you're on the journey to be the ultimate martial artist.

[robertopavez]

Thanks for sharing man, i am a wing chun practitioner as well, and also have felt this letdown about the politics war between wing chun practitioners. I actually empathize a lot with you, im very sorry that the wrong instructors took away your disciplined and well intended passion about the martial art. I think you spoke very sincerely.
We can have a whole conversation about the "real" masters of the art, and how you as a student can identify the real vs the fake, the good vs the bad, the profound and applied knoledge vs the posing salesman, the one that wishes to serve vs the one that wishes to serve himself of you. I would love if you could make a video a bout this topic, because to me, martial arts is: "The art of facing life". So the method of finding the truth, is actually one of the things that a martial art should strive for, naturally because its elemental to face life.
So lets talk about some of the basic ideas that should be applied:
- Ying Yang principle: If you go to extreme internal and only theorize, you become a technician that only talks about the art. If you go extreme external and only fight, without applyng technique you become a brawler, that doesnt learn. If you use both for progressing, internally you learn and hipotethize, and then put to practice with reality testing (sparring), get feedback and repeat the cycle. This way you become a warrior, since you strive for the Consciousness off better fighting.
(so this way we can discard groups that dont do sparring or pressure testing, and groups that only fight but not teach, tipical bully club)
- Self Consistency: "You have to be the change you want to see in the world-Gandhi" if a martial artist strive to be the best martial artist, he doesnt do it by denigrating others. Because he treats with respect, because he wants a world with respect; he gives the example even if others do not, because he wants a world of righteous. (this way we can discard this Wing Chun and Wing Tjun group, for not giving the example and answering your strive to martial arts by putting other people down and compare themselves superior. really common also in jobs competition)
-Reasonable thinking: a martial art should inspire you to use your critical thinking, in order to simplyfy the art of facing life in to simpleness, in to basic principles or small ideas. The reasoning process, used also implicit in the scientifici method comes like this: i see a problem or a event, i try to find the unions the bridge; i point my finger to see beyond the problem and solve it, and concludes with an idea or theory. Naturally waht comes to mind is the three forms of wing chun, siu nim tao (small idea), chum kiu (finding the bridge), biu jee (fingers pointing [to the moon]). So actually Wing Chun, trys to teach you this concepts of a way of thinking with the forms. The thing is nobody taught me this, i discovered them on my own by analysing the meaning behind the forms and the art. So should every martial artist do.
- Many more that we could discuss:!!
Ill wait for your repply.
Best wishes to you!!

[TheFomp]

I can relate to this video so much. I had the same experiences with Wing Tsun/Wing Chun. I was training Wing Tsun passionately for some years and reached a relativly high grade. One experience I had made me realise something and lead me to overthink. A friend of mine was interested in training in a local Wing Chun school and asked me, to accompany her and check out this school together. Before even starting the class, the so called "Master" questioned us about our prior experiences in martial arts and I made the mistake, to tell him, that I was already training at Wing Tsun, at that point unaware of the hatred between these lineages. He then did not let me take part in the regular training class and instead took me in to a seperate room, where he lectured me for 2 hours how bad Wing Tsun is and how great Wing Chun is. That one style is all good and perfect and the other style is all fake and money making. He told me this while showing me the EXACT same techniques I had learned at Wing Tsun.
I'm now training open minded and free of styles for MMA. However, I'm sad that Wing Tsun/Chun often has this bitter tone to it, altough it can be a great style with good aspects.

[willstith]

There is so much drama in Kung Fu it's pretty silly I remember hearing similar stories and fights from people in different lineages when I trained in Hung Ga I remember my school would just note the differences between different styles of lineages but overall say that ours was obviously the better and more authentic one. It's all pretty ridiculous.