Wing Chun Kung Fu certainly didn’t start in Lakeland Florida. It actually has the fascinating legend of being a form invented by two women. The story of Yim Wing-Chun goes that a woman named Yim Wing-Chun was desired by a local warlord. As she rebuffed his advances, she finally challenged him to a martial arts match. If he won, she would be his bride. Not being very adept at martial arts, Yim Wing-Chun sought training from a Buddhist nun named Ng Mui. The nun developed a form of martial art specially for Yim Wing-Chun which was born of watching a crane battle a snake. The young woman beat the warlord, and the new kung fu form was passed on by Yim Wing-Chun and her eventual husband Leung Bac-Chou, to be known as Wing Chun Kung Fu.
The story of Yim Wing-Chun is inspiring, and it’s also inspired the training of people as legendary as Bruce Lee and Ip Man. Are in Lakeland Florida, Sifu Och Wing Chun carries on that fascination and inspiration, offering numerous summer camp programs in Wing Chun Kung Fu. The basis of the Wing Chun martial art roots itself in the belief that the better fighter is the one with a better body form, so practitioners are taught body and movement awareness, to perceive one’s own senses as orienting from various parts of the body. In fact, Wing Chun Kung Fu stresses softness of tension and relaxation prior to the strike. The Story of Yim Wing-Chun lives on with each and every student trained in our Wing Chun classes or after school martial arts programs. In our summer camp programs students learn not only the benefit of the fighting form of Wing Chun but the beneficial body and mind effects of techniques to reduce unwanted muscle tension. Wing Chun seeks to overcome strength in an opponent by conserving energy and using looseness of movement to exhaust the opponent’s energy.
If you follow the Story of Yim Wing-Chun, you don’t go far before you understand that the style was first popularized by Bruce Lee, who actually never learned the entire technique. Instead, he incorporated what he learned of it into his own form, the Jeet Kune Do style. More recently, Robert Downey Jr has credited Wing Chun Kung Fu with changing his life, making him healthier and more able to focus. The self-defense benefits of Wing Chun are valuable for both men and women, teaching how to overcome an opponent by directing energy to opportunities to punch and kick and releasing energy when the opponent grabs or tries to restrict your movement, by loosening your body into fluid movements of detachment.
