Fitness++ Wing Chun Kung Fu Classes
EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST CALLED FOR NEW STUDENTS IN REDLANDS AREA
REDLANDS – Alexandra Hills, Cleveland, Wellington Point, Ormiston, Capalaba
**INFORMATION\INTRODUCTORY NIGHT – MONDAY 16TH OCTOBER**
CLASS TIMES
ADULTS – Monday, Tuesday 5-7.30pm
KIDS – Monday, Tuesday 4.30-5pm
Saturday 10-11 – All Welcome.
CONTACT DETAILS
email: joem_au@yahoo.com
FEE’S:
Insurance and AWCF membership $120 Yr or $40 Quarterly or $20 month.
Seasonal Gradings $45
Shirts: $15 Kids, $20 Adults
Redlands (1 day a week)
Kids – $12.50 Casual, Month $45 or Term $160 inc Insurance (**great value**)
Adults – ($20.00 Casual, $65 Monthly)
Redlands (unlimited)
Kids – $12.50 Casual, Month $80 (unlimited training and Term $250 – term price includes Insurance)
Adults ($20.00 Casual, $120 Monthly unlimited, $340 – 3 Months NB includes Insurance)
N.B. Some Seasonal Gradings may be held with our sister school at Lawnton to increase the efficiency and consistency of the grading outcome and increase the learning experience for you and your child. They will meet other kids from around S.E QLD who are learning the same curriculum and get to see material from different levels and other exciting demonstrations.
What is Wing Chun
Wing Chun is a self defence system that places emphasis on technique and minimal use of brute strength. This philosophy allows Wing Chun to be used to defend oneself with efficient and devastating results. Wing Chun is based on 5 underlying principles of Simplicity, Directness, Practicality, Economy of Movement, and Minimum Use of Brute Strength. Once learned correctly, these principles can be applied to any movement and reduce the need for over reliance on specific technique.
Lineage & History
Lineage is very important in Wing Chun as it traces the master that you have learnt under and the purity of the form of Wing Chun you have learnt. This can be very confusing to the inexperienced person but is perhaps easier to understand in the context that different forms of Wing Chun exist just like different forms of Karate and Tae-Kwon Do exist. However like other forms of Martial Arts there are vast difference between varying schools even though these systems evolved from the same source and/or country.
Direct Lineage to Masters
You will have access to our senior instructors who trained directly under the late Master Jim Fung, or have been trained by a direct student of Sifu Jim. In addition, many of these instructors have had the privilege of training with Sifu Jim’s teacher, the late Grandmaster Chu Shong Tin, in Hong Kong during their time training, himself a student of the late Yip Man.
History
Wing Chun was devised by Ng Mei, a Buddhist nun in the Shaolin Temple during the early 1700’s. According to legend, she wished to streamline her knowledge to devise a more efficient fighting system.She witnessed a fight between a stork and a rodent and was impressed by the way the stork defended itself with the use of its wings and feet simultaneously, and so she went about adapting this to the human frame and formulated her fighting system.
She befriended a young girl named Yim Wing Chun who was being forced into a marriage with a local warlord. It was agreed that Wing Chun would consent to the marriage on the condition that in one year’s time the warlord could overcome her in a fight. Yim Wing Chun learnt under Ng Mei and then defeated the warlord in combat winning the right to marry the man of her choice. After this fight she continued training in Ng Mei’s fighting system which was later named after Yim Wing Chun.
Wing Chun translates to poetic praise of Spring-time. It is a system that even to this day is continually evolving and improving.
Our Family Tree
Yip Man
Yip Man was responsible for introducing Wing Chun to the public in Hong Kong as he was forced to leave China when communists took over in 1948. The communists banned the study of kung fu completely and went about imprisoning and executing all martial arts students and teachers. As a result martial arts almost completely vanished from China.
Yip Man taught many thousands of people including the late Bruce Lee. Yip Man had four closed door students, three of these closed door students Yip Man maintained a traditional master student relationship. They lived with him, taking care of daily chores and in exchange learnt Yip Man’s Wing Chun.These four closed door students were Leung Seung, Lok Yu, Tsui Seung Tin and Wong Shun Leung.
Ip Man performing all three weaponless forms.
Tsui Seung Tin
Tsui Seung Tin’s (or Chu Shong Tin) first martial art was Tai Chi, which he began training in as a child. He took up Wing Chun after watching Yip Man’s class at Sham Sha Po, which was conducted in the building where he worked as secretary of the H.K. Restaurant and Beverage Workers’ Union. His first class was on January 1, 1951, and he has practised the art from morning until night ever since.
In his early days, he enjoyed putting his Wing Chun skills to the test against other fighting styles by taking part in invitation bouts. No protective body gear was worn and Grandmaster Tsui never lost a bout.
Tsui Seung Tin was one of the four closed door students of Yip Man and the longest serving. During this time, he conducted most of Yip Man’s classes on his behalf. His diligent training and incredible insight into the art of Wing Chun saw his skills surpass those of his master, as Yip Man admitted in a newspaper interview before his death. This earned Tsui Seung Tin the unofficial title of “King of Sil Lim Tao”, the first form of Wing Chun which is the foundation for the entire system.
Sadly, Grandmaster Tsui passed away July 28, 2014 after spending 65 years teaching and practising Wing Chun. He was without a doubt the most knowledgeable Wing Chun master alive and is sadly missed.
Chu Shong Tin performing Si Lim Tao.
Jim Fung
Jim Fung’s first martial art was Tai Chi, but he changed to Wing Chun after witnessing a fight in which a classmate learning the art easily overpowered a school bully. He began his training under Tsui Seung Tin in 1960 and trained continuously ever since. As a teenager, he was sent to Australia to study and began training a small group of friends in his backyard. This led to the establishment of his first training centre, the International Wing Chun Academy, in Adelaide in 1973.
A few years later, encouraged by growing enrolments and the necessity to expand, Grandmaster Fung relinquished his administrative position with the South Australian Government to work at Wing Chun full-time.
“My goal is to introduce Wing Chun to as many people as possible, at the same time maintaining the high standards set by my own master and his predecessors,” Grandmaster Fung
Over the years, Grandmaster Fung has been the subject of countless media articles, television and radio programs. He is known as The Man With The One-Inch Punch, a technique in which his fist, placed just one inch from his target, can send a person reeling backwards three metres or more.
In February 2004 Jim Fung was diagnosed with an already advanced case of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. A rare form of throat cancer, it is 100 times more prevalent in people from South East China and Hong Kong. Yip Man also died of throat cancer.
His overseas training visits to Tsui Seung Tin, daily training regimen and teaching continued during treatment, his condition unbeknownst by his students. He continued teaching and training until days before passing away March 18th, 2007, aged 62.
He is sorely missed by his fellow Wing Chun brothers and sisters and his passing is a great loss to the Martial Arts as a whole.
”The reason I signed up for Wing Chun all those years ago was because it doesn’t rely on brute strength. Instead it takes skill, speed and positioning to overcome your opponent. Wing Chun is a science that mixes physics, maths, logic and biology all into one. Even at my level, I find there is always something new to learn.” Grandmaster Jim Fung.
Andrew Withford
Andrew first met Sifu Jim in 1998 and was so impressed that he knew without a doubt he was in the presence of a genuine master.
He then began training full time under Sifu Jim doing the Certificate IV in Wing Chun Instruction. Having completed formal training as one of his instructors, he was sent to the Gold Coast as one of two instructors to open Sifu Jim’s Queensland full time centre of the International Wing Chun Academy.
He continued his training and tutelage under Sifu Jim and was promoted to State Manager of NSW and continued his studies, attaining a Diploma in Sports Coaching (Martial Arts). He has extensive experience in teaching, training and running a successful Academy.
After the sad passing of Sifu Jim and on the insistence of his current students he decided to co-found the Sunshine Coast Wing Chun Academy in Mooloolaba together with Maya Brown and it is principally due to his hard work and persistence that we have such a strong Wing Chun presence on the Sunshine Coast. His aim is to keep Sifu Jim’s dream alive of sharing and promoting genuine Wing Chun skills and knowledge.
Andrew is currently living in Darwin and instructing part-time at the Wing Chun Gung Fu School at Coconut Grove.
Joe Morgan
I discovered Wing Chun and Andrew Withford at Sunshine Coast Wing Chun in 2011 after an Internet search. I was happy to have found the system that suited me in the Chu Shong Tin style of Wing Chun as taught through Jim Fung. I enjoyed Andrew’s patient, relaxed style of teaching, training 4-5 days a week.
I have gone on to study Fitness, receiving the Cert 3 and 4 of Fitness and am now a qualified Personal Trainer. I also hold a Blue Card and I am fully qualified Instructor proudly with the Australian Wing Chun Federation ( AWCF ).
Family Tree
