Qualifications:

There are three formal qualifications:

Level 1 – 1st Degree
Level 2 – 2nd Degree
Level 3 – 3rd Degree

Certificates are issued on completion and are globally recognized as professional qualifications in their own right.
Level 3 students hold what could be perceived to be a PHD in Kung Fu and are permitted to set up and teach with Sifu Johns support and permission.
If you are interested in building a school, becoming a part time/full time instructor, please contact Sifu John for additional details.

Balance:

Balance can be split into three aspects.
There is balance on a physical basis as in stability, there is balance in terms of equivalence, (ambidexterity and potentiality), and there is balance as in harmonise, regulating the relationship between mind and body. Physically, Wing Chun practice works to foster a heightened degree of stability with regard to your bodies working parts and your connection to the ground.

The most dangerous time for a human being when engaging in combat, is when he loses physical balance. The biggest risk would be falling to the floor and hitting your head. Wing Chun helps you to master proprioception (a strong sense of where your body, centre of mass and balance lie in time and space) so timely corrections can be made and safety maintained through a variety of movements and positions.

Wing Chun has equal requirements of both left & right sides.
The process of learning Wing Chun promotes ambidexterity so left and right sides can operate simultaneously, co-operatively and equivalently.
Cohesion within the joint system on left and right sides is also of importance to aid connectivity between the arms, the legs, and the floor, regulating posture and power.

When mastered, this can be viewed as the body working optimally, as well as you gaining the ability to carry yourself functionally through time and space.
Utilising good postural habits aids the practice of combat, as well as operating as an injury preventative in all life tasks from walking, pulling, pushing, lifting, and carrying.

Old people in Martial Arts are often perceived as fit and agile. Wing Chun offers you the tools to meet maturity with both grace, confidence and good health.

Wing Chun is a deep practice because it encompasses so many individual strengths working cohesively to a single aim.

It is both a mental and physical puzzle.

A number of activities are often promoted as benefiting mind and body.

After a short time practicing Wing Chun, you will definitely identify this practice as being both a physical and mental work out, enhancing the synergy that operates between brain and body.

This is a guarantee.

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Posture:

Posture has been touched on above and is necessary for maintaining the health and function of the body as a whole .
Viewed as an attribute and skill in its own right, posture carries deeper importance pertaining to a broader connection to the floor as a basis for power production.
Posture and balance are inseparable and allow the body to work to its strengths against pressure from outside forces: (pushing/pulling/punching/compressing).
Learning to work with pressure and gravity as much as we can, as opposed to adopting postures and movement that overly exert against it, is a skill in its self, and a dedicated focus at this school.

Balance:

Balance can be split into three aspects.
There is balance on a physical basis as in stability, there is balance in terms of equivalence, (ambidexterity and potentiality), and there is balance as in harmonise, regulating the relationship between mind and body. Physically, Wing Chun practice works to foster a heightened degree of stability with regard to your bodies working parts and your connection to the ground.

The most dangerous time for a human being when engaging in combat, is when he loses physical balance. The biggest risk would be falling to the floor and hitting your head. Wing Chun helps you to master proprioception (a strong sense of where your body, centre of mass and balance lie in time and space) so timely corrections can be made and safety maintained through a variety of movements and positions.

Wing Chun has equal requirements of both left & right sides.
The process of learning Wing Chun promotes ambidexterity so left and right sides can operate simultaneously, co-operatively and equivalently.
Cohesion within the joint system on left and right sides is also of importance to aid connectivity between the arms, the legs, and the floor, regulating posture and power.

When mastered, this can be viewed as the body working optimally, as well as you gaining the ability to carry yourself functionally through time and space.
Utilising good postural habits aids the practice of combat, as well as operating as an injury preventative in all life tasks from walking, pulling, pushing, lifting, and carrying.

Old people in Martial Arts are often perceived as fit and agile. Wing Chun offers you the tools to meet maturity with both grace, confidence and good health.

Wing Chun is a deep practice because it encompasses so many individual strengths working cohesively to a single aim.

It is both a mental and physical puzzle.

A number of activities are often promoted as benefiting mind and body.

After a short time practicing Wing Chun, you will definitely identify this practice as being both a physical and mental work out, enhancing the synergy that operates between brain and body.

This is a guarantee.

Fitness:

A healthy body is a moving body.
Every human being should engage in physical activity, if only to offset the time we spend sat at desks or hunched over machinery.
It is massively rewarding to pass free time on an activity that benefits our health and well-being.
Physical exercise has a direct effect on the bodies hormonal output creating a natural high. Practising Wing Chun diminishes stress and anxiety, relieving aches and pains as the body comes into balance and strengthens its self.
These are some of the benefits you will experience with daily Wing Chun practice.
So much upset and medication could be avoided, if individuals used physical activity on a regular basis to increase their health, improving their strengths and perception of self.

Team Work:

If you are goal oriented, (and there are set levels to be attained and Mastered in Wing Chun Kung Fu), Martial Arts is an excellent pastime.
Working as a team will always get you to a goal quicker than working as an individual.
Senior students are on hand to assist juniors, juniors are around to assist new-comers, Sifu John is around to assist everyone!
There are set teaching roles ascribed to senior students who operate as excellent coaches in their own right, based on their individual competences and strengths.
The power of team work is the shared knowledge and support of the group which works to uplift all members as dedicated participants.
As a result, everybody becomes skilful, and everybody is aware of their importance to the whole. Everybody improves with an integral focus to becoming the best they can be – with the help of their teammates (obviously).

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Training Partners /Group Activities/Family:

Learning Wing Chun requires co-operation from two individuals.
Non-competitive drill work is necessary with friendly, assistive training partners, so time and attention can be spent focusing on attributes and pressure states that would appear in a non-compliant and potentially dangerous situation, (if you were to use this Martial Art in the context of the design).
Culture in a Martial Arts school can either create a wonderful learning environment with a comfort and openness that promotes learning and fun, or it can create a selfish, competitive mess, which fosters secrecy and a lack of respect amongst its practitioners.
Warrington Martial Arts Studio has many members who have been involved in Martial Arts for over a decade.
Many of its members are past or active coaches in other Martial Arts.
There is too much passion and work to be done, and too many professional attitudes here, for individuals to be hindered by immature attitudes that do not conform to the schools ethos of learning and improving unanimously.
Therefore, individual characters are vetted and anybody seen to be disruptive to the cohesion of the group and unwilling to contribute to the learning and improvement of others is removed.
This school prides its self on the fact that it is a family.
We train happily with one another and look forward to our time together in each other’s company, as well as inviting new personalities into a safe and friendly environment where they can work constructively on becoming the best version of themselves they can be.
We run monthly in-house seminars, where practitioners from the school come together for training from all corners of the British Isles as well as members from France and Greece and occasional International guests from Germany, Canada, USA, Taiwan etc.
We eat together Birthdays & Christmas, and there have been regular trips to California to visit my teacher (Sifu Gary Lam), which double up as short holidays for the group where we can hang out and have an enjoyable time practicing Kung Fu, mountain climbing, kayaking and socialising in a fresh outdoor location.
The best thing about belonging to a Kung Fu school is finding an affinity with like-minded individuals who share a common interest and goal. A family.

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Team Work:

If you are goal oriented, (and there are set levels to be attained and Mastered in Wing Chun Kung Fu), Martial Arts is an excellent pastime.
Working as a team will always get you to a goal quicker than working as an individual.
Senior students are on hand to assist juniors, juniors are around to assist new-comers, Sifu John is around to assist everyone!
There are set teaching roles ascribed to senior students who operate as excellent coaches in their own right, based on their individual competences and strengths.
The power of team work is the shared knowledge and support of the group which works to uplift all members as dedicated participants.
As a result, everybody becomes skilful, and everybody is aware of their importance to the whole. Everybody improves with an integral focus to becoming the best they can be – with the help of their teammates (obviously).

Employing Wing Chun/Technical Prowess: Female vs. Male / Small vs. Large

Wing Chun is a great leveller for smaller practitioners.
Employing the Wing Chun concepts and principles enables a person of smaller stature to ‘level the playing field’ because they are not reliant on weight, reach, height, or swing for power production.
If we assume that most aggressors would be either our size or larger, there are massive advantages to be had by the smaller individual, or female individuals in learning this system.
Big individuals also benefit from technical prowess and precision skill, attributes not often associated to those of a larger frame, who can be labelled as callous and cumbersome, with Wing Chun training this is not the case, with large individuals embodying incredible talent.

Personal Development:

Learning Wing Chun is like learning to play a musical instrument – the more you practice, the better you become.
You are only bound by your knowledge base, your technical regime, and the time you donate to practice.
Obviously to begin with, the teacher is responsible for these things, therefore, the teacher is the most important factor in your potential to obtain a degree of self-mastery inside any Martial Art.
In the right school, Wing Chun offers you unlimited progression, it is a practice that can remain fresh for a lifetime.
Regular transfer of information and a practical physical focus, should operate to stimulate your interest and elevate your personal performance session by session.
As Wing Chun is a practice that uses the sense of touch as a guidance mechanism, a knowledgeable group of hard working practitioners is also important so that you may increase your skillset via exchange.
The strength of the group and your relationships within that group will always strengthen you and refine your skill and progress.
As long as you donate time to practice you will always be changing and improving.
Warrington Martial Arts Studio has many dedicated practitioners from all over the country, many of whom were practicing Wing Chun at a different location before adopting Warrington as their home. There is a wealth of experience on the ground here, most importantly, people who have gone through a major refinement process at Warrington to rid themselves of dangerous or inappropriate habits relating to their training and fighting skill.
Because of this, similar mistakes in new students can be easily identified and eradicated, so that the student may improve quickly, confidently, and intelligently.

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Safety:

Wing Chun is a refined body skill. It is a technical practice. In the Martial World, it is about as ‘Hi Tech’ as it gets.
It requires a lot of comprehension and patience as well as subtle alteration of the body via coaching, until postures and attributes become physical habits.
The majority of training involves set drill patterns between two individuals which are low impact and of minimal risk to participants.
This helps to maintain concentration, and provides the students an opportunity to think about what you are doing to help them refine their skill.
Later, the opportunity to increase pressure and risk becomes an option. It is a personal choice for practitioners and pressure is pre-agreed between two individuals prior to engagement.

Because Wing Chun is a Combative Art designed to finish violently in minimal time frame, the focus of highly pressurised exchange is quite different to the majority of Martial Arts which use combative exchange in a competitive arena or sport basis.
In Wing Chun, the ideal is to develop habits that have the capacity to quell violence with violence almost immediately.
If MMA was the 1,500 meters, Wing Chun would be a 100m sprint.

On average, students at Warrington Martial Arts Studio must complete a minimum of twelve months training to instil the safe habits prior to engaging with sensible force.

All contact work is administered with protective equipment, injury is extremely rare, and is usually something minor like bruised knuckles or a pulled muscle.

If you are interested to see some of our combat work, it is documented on video embedded in this website and also available on our YouTube and Facebook page. You will see varying degrees of skill and pressure between participants. You will also notice unique equipment utilised for individual safety so that, if you are interested in experimenting with the Wing Chun system under pressure that resembles real time violence, you can be secure in the knowledge that you are operating in a manner that is as safe as we can make it minimising risk to yourself and your partner.

As previously mentioned, although there are a multitude of benefits attached to highly pressurised training, it remains the individual’s choice.
Some of our students have pre-existing conditions that make this type of training inappropriate. Your medical history and status as well as your age and disposition are all taken into account, leaving this aspect of the training at the discretion of both the student and instructor.

National Seminars & Overseas Travel:

This school is a family that enjoys time together.
We are part of the wider Wong Shun Leung Wing Chun Kung Fu community. (Wong Shun Leung was the most famous fighter belonging to Ip Mans school, and mentor to Bruce Lee, as well as Sifu Gary Lams Instructor for sixteen years).
We regularly host Sifu Gary here in Warrington, usually once a year. This is an opportunity for practitioners from far and wide to refine and share their skill, under the guidance of a world authority in this form of Martial Art.
Sifu John also runs a monthly seminar event for the students of his school, bringing all the local and national students together to address set topics on an intensive basis.

He also visits London on a regular basis to deliver Seminars hosted by his students.

There are events to promote exchange between schools within the lineage that take place inside and outside of the UK.

In the past they have been held in Hong Kong and North America. We like to show our support of these endeavours as well as running our own overseas Kung Fu retreats in California and other destinations.

This is something we will continue to do as team building exercises and also an opportunity for the group to come together and train intensively over a period of days.

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Body Mechanics/ Body Awareness/Human MovementLearn How You Function

The Wing Chun System is concerned with ceasing violence (with violence), in the shortest possible timeframe. Efficiency is top of the agenda.
Wing Chun therefore is governed by a set of principles and concepts which operate as a guideline for movement and choices, to enable the user to realise the most economical way to solve a violent problem.
It draws on geometry, mathematics, and physics to do this as it is primarily concerned with physical truths that pertain to the human body regarding force, movement, fortification, time, space, and energy.
These ideas are utilised mentally and physically to aid in the development of focus, timely selection, modification and change, speed, power, balance, precision and efficiency.
Wing Chun’s fighting capacity is hinged on the dissemination, comprehension, and physical embodiment of these guidelines, so it is appropriate to invest in a teacher knowledgeable in these aspects, and a drill regime that is underpinned by these ideas as the guiding theme.
At Warrington Martial Arts Studio, there is continuity between the open hand forms, the drill work, the sticky hand (chi sau) work, the pressurised contact work, and the weapon work, where these principles and concepts are applied to human movement contextually – their nature, their function, their attributable importance, and their relevance from situation to situation.
One of the themes within this set of principles is body mechanics, knowing how to position and modify a moving body to bring about the most powerful or economical result.
When taking this idea and applying it to human movement (and all the permutations across a ‘fight specific/random chaotic’ event), body mechanics becomes a very deep subject.
This context specific knowledge, is the cornerstone of success or failure in using a system like Wing Chun as you must move spontaneously in tandem and in touch with another moving body until you have completed your task.
At a very basic level, knowing how to unify and align aspects of your body to produce postural integrity and strength, carry across into every aspect of your life: standing, sitting, walking, twisting, jumping, lifting, carrying are all enhanced by this knowledge and practice, helping you in your day to day, as an injury preventative, as a daily meditation, as a mechanism for confidence, as a way to age gracefully and empowered.

Confidence:

Anything you can do once, you can do again better. Learning to invest through failure.

Confidence is experience, and experience is born through repetitive practice.
We live in a fast paced world, information and tasks are completed as quickly as possible.
The speed in which we are expected to complete tasks, (in the modern world), does not always allow for reflection and absorption.
As a result, sometimes we may find that when revisiting the same problem a second time, we are not attacking it with useful information gleaned from the previous occasion in mind – we may not be approaching the problem with the level of confidence we should, as we have not taken the time to process and bank the previous experience intelligently.
Without filtering and prioritising positive knowledge gained from unsolved problems, we run the risk of dwelling on the mishaps.
Negative mind-sets relating to learning new skills can prevent us from considering that we may need to tackle a problem from a different angle with a fresh approach.
Shying away from the potential to fail and change is not useful – it can become a self-imposed block. It is not healthy for individuals to build internal dialogue or a perception of personal capabilities, based on minor failures or the worry of failure itself.
Failure is only the result, if you fail and stop. When you fail and try again, failure becomes part of a growth process.
Self-doubt or an unwillingness to try new things, blocks action and interaction necessary to attain and achieve all things new.
This type of behaviour can inhibit learning, and in a broader sense, place strain on relationships and stunt personal growth.
Failure and deliberation, should be understood as intrinsic to success. A call to action, a challenge still to be met.
Rather than build a culture of avoidance based on experiences that did not meet our preconceived expectations, we should be open to chance, both failure and success – and willing to try consecutively, to create opportunities for modification and growth.
Some of the best things that ever happened to me, happened whilst taking a chance.
I can tell you first hand that the positives greatly outweigh the negatives, especially when being self-reliant, creating change, and when addressing similar themes with friends or students that echo a time that harboured failure on my part before I could manoeuvre into success.
Fear of judgement or failure is presently magnified by a society that shares its self so readily via social media.
With so much self-imposed attention we can create a great deal of stress and apprehension.
Concerning new activities, requirements, and choices, it is easy for people get caught up in thinking about a process, or making assumptions about a result before they experience it for themselves.
It is also very easy (and sometimes lazy) to be guided by ideas held as popular opinion.
Just because an idea or opinion is popular, does not mean its foundations are imbedded in truth or practicalities. Most importantly, if these ideas do not stem from our personal experience, they are but borrowed assumptions.
It is useful to qualify external opinions before they are accepted as truths, because sometimes they have nothing to do with the actuality of an activity or event.
Sometimes external opinions and ideas do not relate to the capacity of an individual to be successful at a ‘thing’.   People are complex creatures. We are all very different.
Self-knowledge rather than borrowed knowledge is firmness of mind.
To be truly confident, you must carry your own set of experiences.
Doing things is testing, exploring, refining.
When faced with a problem, without ‘doing’ something, personal growth is on hold. Conclusion is slow. Letting people do things for you, does not make you better at doing them yourself.
Collecting popular opinions belonging to others rather than trying things ourselves can stifle an individual’s potential and their capacity to do and be something new.
Today when most people say ‘I think’, what they actually mean is ‘I read’ or ‘somebody told me’. This is not thinking.
It is always useful to distinguish between retention and reflection.
It takes great honesty to divide the opinions we built from an external source and opinions we built through practice and reflection.
When running this process, we become much more aware of what we truly know, and what we do not. It highlights the importance of doing things for ourselves.
We have to recognise borrowed from built, assumed from earnt, belief from ascertained.
Confidence is self-knowledge through practice, and practice is confidence in self-knowledge.
Society is bombarded with so much information, that it has become very difficult for people to differentiate between information that is useful and information that is not.
Sometimes physical/practical indulgence with the goal of knowledge in mind, can draw a very quick conclusion, eradicate confusion, and provide concise timely answers for the doer.
It is useful to be this way inclined.
Having swathes of information fed to us constantly, leaves us very little time to process the important things concerning the relationships, interactions and skills most pertinent to our day to day.
Information may expand our knowledge base, but our confidence, through lack of focused action, may be left to stagnate.
Thinking is a function used to produce choice, and choose you must.
You have to ‘pick’ – Yes or no. Now or later. Left or right.  Without exacting choice little happens in accord with our desires. External influences are usually imposed upon you.
It is always better to ‘pick’ than to never pick at all.
Not exacting choice is like being in a boat and throwing your oars overboard – you end up at the mercy of the river, how things pan out is anybody’s guess. This is not a predicament we should feel confident about.
Thinking is used for direction. It is utilised to create change, but the thinking process is not ‘us’.
It is there to present us with choices.
The German word for character is Persönlichkeitsmuster. The literal translation is ‘people pattern’.  A ‘people pattern’ is an excellent way to perceive human character.
When we embark upon ‘chance’ it is fleeting, in that the choice I made yesterday is not necessarily the same choice I will make today.
Unless the decision is repeated many times it is not my habit (pattern), so should not be qualified as an integral part of my character. Understanding and remembering this reduces self-limitation and judgement. It provides you space to grow.
Taking chances, and learning to calculate risk or occurrence, always work to empower future choices regardless of the result, as long as you remember to draw from that experience, and employ self-knowledge to navigate future events.
The more choices we make, the more well-rounded our set of experiences to draw from.
Through this repetition, the more confident we become in our discernment.
There is no problem in failure unless we are incapable of learning from it, or stretching beyond it.
We have to differentiate and utilise two processes: (thinking and doing), and understand how they are inexplicably linked.
Imagination and choice are two extremely powerful tools.
Imagination is the ‘what if’ function. Choice is the aspect of differentiation and direction.
The result of action is discernment and (potentially), the chance of improved future experiences on the condition that we do not attach emotionally to a singular event. We must repeatedly indulge in chance without an expectation of failure or success until we are in a position to either acquire or create a functional habit that is firmly grounded in a high percentage success rate.
The only way to achieve this is to do things many times.
This is the underlying theme of hard work.
This is the underlying theme of Kung Fu.
Wing Chun helps us to identify with, and cultivate, our doing aspect.
It teaches ebb and flow, bend and stretch.
Dealing in violence, you are working a very dangerous problem in minimal timeframe.
The problem of violently controlling someone before they violently neutralise you is not to be underestimated.
There is marginal room for error and misjudgement in the event that this actually occurs.
The more you play with this problem logically and efficiently, the better you should become at creating logical, practical, efficient strategies holistically, for all other problems you may encounter in your life, producing an inherent self-confidence assigned to your personal way of working.
Healthy persistence, regular growth, and the desire to experience and master something new are the keys to self-confidence, accomplishment, and perspective.
The repetitive cycle of ‘doing’ and investing through loss are cornerstones of success and confidence, but we must be prepared to acknowledge the successful and unsuccessful analytically, and as transient, without necessarily attaching a good or bad value to a set of circumstances until a time when through repetition, we can perceive and assign a designated pattern to a theme. Embracing failure teaches us resilience, responsibility and depth.
Confidence is earnt via a thorough, practical exploration of our nature and learning how to drive the chariot that is you.
Positives and negatives are symbiotic, useful, and overall persistent, inseparable from the human condition. Embrace them.
Wing Chun practice operates as a microcosm of broader physical, mental, and sociological themes that pertain to all human relationships and pursuits.
Hopefully from this, Kung Fu practice helps us to administer practical choice and understand how we work and grow in a complex, demanding world as beneficiaries and moreover, as confident individuals with the capacity to elevate wider society with our self-knowledge and ultimately, empower others to go out and do the same.

 

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Problem Solving/Personal Goal Setting:

Most things in life require regular change with a view to improvement or renewal.

Learning Kung Fu is all about goals and problem solving, some focuses may be set by ourselves, and others set by our Instructors. Goal setting and problem solving is about clearing pathways so that we may move forward confidently and with the attributes and components necessary to attain higher levels of skill.

In the Wing Chun System taught at the Warrington Martial Arts Studio, there are four designated Levels in place to assist your learning and to reward you for adequate retrieval and performance. There is a clear syllabus to be followed that operates like a plan. When you come to class you can be clear about what you have to work on, and move through each designated task aware of what you have accomplished and what you need to do next.

Learning and achieving regularly is a massive confidence booster as you meet your goals and take credit for your personal accomplishments. It is an empowering process and after a time something you may choose to implement in other aspects of your life without great effort, maximising your time and energies in every endeavour.