What good is a skill learnt long back but may not work in today’s world. With deep thought and foresight the IWCA Core team envisaged the “International Wing Chun Cultural Exchange Program(IWC-CEP). The IWC-CEP is a unique program where International Wing Chun Sifus will get a wonderful opportunity to interact with the IWCA’s rich pool of Wing Chun enthusiasts in India. This special program is a melting pot where the best of the Wing Chun knowledge will get passed on to the students regardless of the barriers of country or lineage.
The objectives of the cultural exchange program is to
- Create a platform for experienced Wing Chun Sifus to interact and understand each other’s system.
- Explore the training methodologies and tools used by different Wing Chun schools, get acquainted with their logic and the expected results.
- Comprehend the depth of the system, applicability to various situations and scalability from the point of view of transferring the knowledge & skills. Effectiveness in ensuring the instructor quality and skill up-gradation.
Sifu Artyom visited India from AWCF’s Russian chapter, after an adventurous Wing Chun competition in Russia where many AWCF students won many matches. With multiple skype meetings before the face to face meeting with Sifu Shiv of IWCA, the stage was set for launching the 1 st episode of IWC-CEP. On 30 th July Sifu Artyom took the IWCA Delhi team deep into the theory and logic which forms the basis of the AWCF’s interpretation of Wing Chun.With multiple martial arts under his wings before he accepted Wing Chun as his passion, Sifu Artyom started with a logical approach of understanding the evolution of martial arts in the ancient times, right upto today’s interpretations of Wing Chun across the world.
With lots of interesting questions from the IWCA students and practical answers from Sifu Artyum, the session bloomed like a garden where multiple fragrances inter-mingled. The knowledge exchange was not just theoretical but also live demos of beginner and advanced concepts, where not just the IWCA team got to dive-in but also some very new participants got to taste the flavor of Wing Chun. The Centerline, the Yin & Yang, the Man’s approach vs the Woman’s approach to solving a martial arts problem, the Fight or Flight response during a real self defense situation and how to Wing Chun transforms the bodies’ natural response into a highly effective weapon, the distances and ranges of combat, the outer gate footwork, power generation with body alignment, use of low kicks were some of the concepts which got touched to great detail. For the advanced students this was a full course dinner of Wing Chun goodies when they got to do Dan-Chi Sau or Single Hand Chi Sau with a real Wing Chun master. The beginners got to understand the bridging concepts and quick to learn & easy to implement Wing Chun solutions.
In words of Sasanka – IWCA Delhi representative: It was a great opportunity to meet and interact with an international Sifu of Wing Chun. During the seminar, Sifu Artyom shared his knowledge of various martial arts prevalent across the world and its relevance in today’s times. His emphasis on the principal & system of Wing Chun as an art was very enlightening. His informed views on self-defense as well as combat sports were worth listening to.
This platform gave us an opportunity to understand the essence of Wing Chun style followed by Armenian practitioners. It was seen that a considerable emphasis is given on relaxation of the muscles, joint alignment in technique application and speed in applying a technique. To prove them, Sifu Artyom demonstrated techniques wherein frontal dummy knife attacks, roundhouse punches, straight punches were nullified with lightning speed and accuracy. It was interesting to see how he applied the Wing Chun’s semi-circular movements with economy of motion in minimizing the distance with the opponent. I would like to thank Sifu Shiv for organizing such a unique program like IWC-CEP and wish to be part of many such sessions planned in future.
Time was flying by and Sifu Artyom’s energy level was only going up with every passing minute as the session kept getting more and more practical. The knowledge exchange session concluded with our mind and body bloated with lots of pratical info capsules on the European Wing Chun interpretation and hordes of Wing Chun applications. While we bade a warm farewell to Sifu Artyom, we looked back to see that while our objectives of the cultural exchange program was achieved beyond our wildest expectations we realize that this is just the 1 st step. With many more chapters the IWC-CEP will be one of the key projects to be taken to newer level and raise the bar for the future generation of IWCA’s Wing Chun enthusiasts.
How you or your academy / association / federation can be a part of IWCA’s IWC-CEP program ? If you are an authorized and experienced Sifu / Sensei or Martial Arts trainer and wish to conduct a program with IWCA, please send your proposal at indiawingchun@gmail.com. The IWCA team will review your proposal and revert to you at the earliest.
Sifu Shiv –Chief Instructor IWCA
