Ok, you guys seem to want to discuss time in in a bad way lets talk about it.
When is the exact minute that you arrive at a superior knowledge of Wingchun? Exactly how much time does it take for one to ‘understand’ the art? We can break it down to hours, that will be sufficient, unless of course you have counted the minutes as well? Maybe seconds?
How much practice does it take to really get it? Lets say someone prctices and hour a day, everyday, thats 365 hours a year. So working form that how many hours/years does it take for someone to ‘know’ what they are talking about?
Lets go on a realistic average, maybe 5-6 hours a week, if nothing else is going on. Lets take off a few hours during the year for vacations, holidays, family outings and such. Probably more like 300 ours a year maybe? a little more a little less?
So a serious student does 2-3 hours a day lets say. We wont include 4 hour days because someitmes 3 hour days turn into 2 hour days so it all averages out. At three hours a day thats roughly 1100 hours in a year. thats nearly 4 x times the amount your average wingchun guy does it!:eek:
Years sound good when you want to talk about time doing something. Hey I have been doing wingchun for 9 years! But lets break it down to hours and see where that 300 hours gets you, in 4 years, 1200 hours. Hmmmm, you can see where this is going don’t you? Someone who is working hard and applying themselves is putting more time in then most people who do it as a “hobby”
If you put more work in then you get more out of it. Less work, you get less out of it. Why do all these guys at the top have the skill they have?
The sad thing is, if you arent practicing smart, then you arent getting it and all that time is wasted. Suddenly 10 years of wingchun turns into the equivelant of about 2 years.
So you see the correlation here right? More smart work leads to good skill, less work leads to little skill.
Kungfu = time and energy.
More than that!..It goes with who you are and with who you practice with!
Imagine you are a jerk who practice with jerks!..10 years becomes like 0!
Imagine you are still a jerk and you practice with average guys!..10 years are really like 2.5 years!
Imagine you are average and you practice with average guys!..10 years are more like 5!..
Imagine you are more than average and you practice with jerks!..10 years are like 2.5 again!..
imagine you are gifted and practice with more than average!..10 years are like 7 now!..
Imagine you are gifted again and practice with jerks!..10 years become like 4.8 years!..
Imagine you are a jerk and practice with a genius!..10 years are more like 0 again!..
Get the idea?..
…so as an average guy practicing with a genius I have both going for me?
Yenhoi - awesome story so far!
Why not?..
Old Jong
So who taught you for how long have you trained?
I had a feeling it was Patrick Gordon. Is he a genius - where you a good student?
If people are going to berate our Angelic friend, they ought to offer up their own stats!
Have you learnt all forms and weapons? How long did it take for you to learn them?
What!..Do you want to hear me bragging about my lineage and knowledge?..Sorry, I don’t do that because it is useless to brag on the internet as anybody can write anything and the only way to “prove” something or win an argument is through direct hand to hand confrontation.
When do you understand WCK? When I first began, after a short time, I thought I understood. Then, a week later, I understood something more and couldn’t believe I’d thought I’d understood then. Then, a week later, I understood yet more, and again couldn’t believe how silly I’d been a week earlier (nevermind two weeks, I’d forgotten that already). This repeated, over and over, with weeks becoming months, until, finally, my dense brain realized there are always depths of understanding. Hey, maybe now I understand…
RR
<What do you get when you scratch the surface? More surface!>
Steady fella
Didn’t want you to brag - was just interested to know where you’d place yourself in your list for determining who’s who.
Just interested to know how long you’ve trained, with whom, and what you’ve covered.
I asked Yuanfen a similar question on a previous thread (wondered how long he studied to learn all three hand forms and weapons), but didn’t get a reply… maybe he missed the end of the thread.
As somebody said…(Jean Gabin!)
…Now I know that we will never know!..
Well, “I’ll” never know
You guys post but don’t answer. Jeez
:rolleyes:
I want to keep my life personnal!
I can say that: I study with Patrick Gordon.
I have studied with others before.
I know all the forms.
I also teach myself.
I am not a Wing Chun genius but I can handle myself pretty well!
That’s about it!
Shrug and sigh a sad sigh
Personal is fine, but why do people argue about time spent learning and then not reveal their own time in the art?
There was a thread about how long it should/could take to learn the forms and weapons. Basically, people were saying (and I agreed) that while WC takes a life time to learn, you shouldn’t have to wait 20-30 years before your Sifu is willing to give up knowledge.
All I wanted to know was in regards to WC. Time spent learning, how many years before weapons etc. Just a simple series of questions :rolleyes:
Don’t want PERSONAL details… I’m not that kind of guy, Old Jong.
Is there no one on this forum willing to reveal a little about themselves???
Rene: My last remaining hope 
How long did you study before being shown, for example, the pole form.
Phew!
It took me 7 years to learn the basic material. The longest parts of that were the horse (3-4 months just standing, turning, stepping), Siu Lien Tao (because I was just beginning and there was lots, and lots, and lots of support work to build the foundation), the dummy, the pole (my sifu thought it useless to just learn as a set so we spent months on each point, over and over…), and the knives (again, lots of support work).
Material aside, Chi Sao and San Sao were and are on going, as everything new gets put into that process.
These days, some 11 or so years in, I find myself wondering less about movements or forms or what not, and more about the simple nature of combat - recently the balance and momentum and how to control and affect it.
I tend to be borderline stupid, though, and have no innate ability at anything ever.
RR
Thank you Rene
Finally… a person on the forum willing to tell me.
Much appreciated.
Type Old Jong and Yuenfen… you know you want to.
Time in is fairly irrelevant. My first couple of years in WT I threw guys around who had been training in other arts longer than I’d been alive, and had played around with guys from other lines with 10-15 years experience who had very little compared to me. So what. There are folks with half my time in my art who have significantly greater skill. So what. I know how much better I am this year than last year. That matters.
For stats for me- 8 years in WT out of which there have been perhaps four months where I’ve logged less than 15hrs of training a week, generally living at 20-25hrs. The last two years I’ve been out at the LA HQ making 12-18 hrs a week of class time, 1-2/hrs a week private lessons, 2-6 hrs/wk with training partners, 1-6 hrs a week solo basics work, and 3-6 hrs a week tutoring a student of mine.
FWIW,
Andrew
No worries. My sifu (from his sifu) always said you could be taught WCK (the material) in a day (personally, unless you have a form-o-graphic memory, I’d say a couple months but what good would it be because you couldn’t use it? So, for me, that’s always been the criteria.
See, what people are calling “soft/internal” a lot here isn’t always useful, especially not in the beginning (first few months or years for some). And what people are calling “hard/external” a lot isn’t always useful, especially when you get old or sick or find yourself facing someone with better attributes.
So, the path I was taught, and that I follow, is to work on the “soft/internal” mechanics, because they take a long time to cultivate, but to practice the “hard/external” (not as refined but still effective) in the mean time as well, so that the art is there with you, in the stages, as you develop, developing alongside you.
RR
Re: Shrug and sigh a sad sigh
Originally posted by black and blue
Is there no one on this forum willing to reveal a little about themselves???
Okay, I’ll bite. It wasn’t always this way, but my new routine is something like this:
Class twice a week. 3-5 hours depending on who comes early or stays late.
Personal training everyday. Lots of stance/root training, forms, stepping and turning, sandbag and standing meditation.
Total hours 20-25 hours a week.
I know the first two forms and a handfull or excersises on the dummy etc.
Going on 4 years of total training.
Oh yeah,
the time I’ve spent has been on the first two forms and material derived from therein. In another year or so, I’ll start the third form. This has been a very deliberate attempt to lay a foundation for my practice, and I’ve gone down many blind alleys along the way, in part because I had only intermittant access (1-2x a month) to adult supervision for my first 6 years of training. Had I followed what my teachers had told me directly (and very precisely) rather than playing around I would be much better now, but I doubt I would understand things so well.
I’ve had many long discussions on how to train and learn with friends from my and other lines. At this point, my sense is that to go too slowly retards one’s progress, as one gets overly comfortable with material, while to go too quickly is to lose depth and simply collect techniques without gaining anything of substance.
My sense is that with 8-12 years of closely guided daily study one could have a good overview of the system.
Later,
Andrew