Actually, Wing Chun can take up to a year to be decently proficient at for purely street defense. To master it would depend on your understanding and open-mind. If you practice and learn at 1 hour a day, you should do fine, but it really depends on the lesson, who's teaching it, your understanding of it, and your ability to apply it. However, it can seem very counter-intuitive. Wing Chun is not a what-you-see-is-what-really-happens art. When you think of forms/katas, you usually think of how each movement is applied to real-life scenarios. Unfortunately when it comes to Wing Chun, non-practitioners make the mistake of doing the same thing when all that the first form tries to do is get you to understand the importance of structure and alignment, as well as teach you all the tools found in Wing Chun.
Form #2 is the form that teaches you to move w/ the structure and alignment.
Chi Sao teaches how to read opponent intentions once you've bridged the gap. Wooden Dummy trains you to correct your structure and posture (it'll hurt if it's not "correct").
Unfortunately, you'll need to be careful of school's with teachers that don't really know what they're doing.
A good school will focus on the concepts. The principles they should emphasize are to be simple, effective, and efficient, and realize that Wing Chun is heavily based on concepts. You will find many Wing Chun schools with focus on different aspects of Wing Chun b/c of the principle to take what works for you.
I think the best way to learn Wing Chun quickly is to take the right perspective.
If you think of Wing Chun as a highly refined Women's Self Defense course, I'm sure you'll understand what you need to do to shorten the time it takes to make Wing Chun work for you.
Let's put a quick scenario out: You're talking to your sister/mother/girlfriend/female best friend by phone. She's using a bluetooth headset. In the middle of the conversation you hear her getting confronted by someone either mugging her or trying to subdue her to rape. What would you tell her to do? Get into boxing stance and throw jabs/crosses? Go for a take-down? Or try to kick the guy's balls? You don't know if her enemy is bigger and stronger than her.
Wing Chun is all about survival by letting all hell break loose. In fact, Wing Chun principles say to do whatever it takes to end the threat. That means if you have a gun, use it!
So ultimately, Wing Chun will train you to use your structure and alignment to fight, minimizing the use of muscles as much as possible. That means if you get old and frail, you should be able to decently hold your own against a mugging on the street when you're not in your prime.
HOWEVER, if you WANT to add muscle power to your attacks, nothing is stopping you from doing so.
I guess if you know the basic principle of the movement also the history why there is center line term and why wing chun emphasize on center line, than how come it focused on flexibility and do so many punch in one spot also how to do 1 inch punch, also the principle of chi sao (sticky hands) and another thing is you could study about the stance and the body position than you will get appropriate knowledge about how to do wing chun correctly and not spent your time so long just like Donnie Yen when he learned wing chun for the Ip Man movie sake he could do it faster than any other students who learned wing chun.
You learn in every lesson and you also can train in it as long as you like as many decades as you like...
Ip Chun the son of Yip man stated that Donnie Yen learned in 9 months, for the need of the 2 movies for Yip Man and that he was his fastest learning student. Bruce Lee who have globally popularized Wing Chun was taught Wing Chun from Yip man and Wong Shun Leung for just two years. Some of the champions of Ip Man cups are just students with 1-2 years of experience.
On the organizations aspect of it....
The Wing Tsun branch of Wing Chun is saying that with 2 times per week, in approximately four years students normally pass from the 12 student grades to the 12 instructor grades. They are saying that after that, with 2 times per week, each instructor grade, takes the amount of years of its number. With more times the time is shorter in both students and instructor grades of course...
This is perhaps why some people are stating too many years, they may mean the training and learning some more, rather than what many people mean by learning and practicing adequately even in a high level as Bruce Lee and Donnie Yen.
With other branches is different, for example in the Traditional Wing Chun branch of Wing Chun they are having 10 student grades:)
Have a good training:)
That would depend on how far you want to go in your study of Wing Chun. To learn any martial art well requires discipline in that you cannot slack off - you have to practice even when you don't feel like it.
That you excel at studies speaks well of you because it shows you are willing to do your homework and study at home in such as way that you do more than just the minimum requirement. To progress to the higher levels of your art also requires a certain level of intelligence because quite frankly anyone who is stubborn enough to stick with their martial art will progress fairly well, but to reach the level of mastery you need to be smart enough to go beyond what is apparent and just what you know; you have to be able to build on top of your knowledge.
By "learn" I assume you mean to the level of a master. You need to understand that no one totally masters their art. All you can do is come close to it because as imperfect humans, we do not possess perfect knowledge. A master is someone who has reach a point where he can study on his own without be constantly corrected by a teacher, but a master does not stop learning. If anything, his journey has only just begun and from time to time he will still need advice from others.
As for how much time to invest, for class time in the beginning you will need more because you will need to be corrected more often so at least twice a week. But for every hour of class time, you should also practice at least double that on your own.
Wing chun takes a serious amount of time close to 20-30 years if you you're determined it's hard but every effective i the long run its just how you use your art. Hope this helped.
Yes. 10 years at least.
I'm sorry but any martial art is or should be a huge time investment.
Is wing chun very difficult to learn ? I'm 17 and I excel at my studies so if I do decide to learn wing chun how much time would i have to invest ? thank you.
