WingChun Articles
23rd February 2007
Grandmaster Klaus Brand Seminar
On 23rd February 2007 Grandmaster Klaus Brand visited us here in the UK for the second time amidst a buzz of anticipation. On the Friday evening the Pre-Primary and Technician Level students attended Sifu's first Technician Class where we were treated to an overview of the Technician chi sao programmes and an explanation of their purpose before getting detailed explanations and training tips for the Third and Sixth chi sao sections from the First and Second Technician Grade level programmes respectively. Sifu would first demonstrate the entire sequence with his assistants and then break it down into parts for the training, during which he went around the class giving individual tips and corrections, always with a clear and concise explanation of his thinking. It was, by all accounts, an eye-opener for the attendees who started to understand how they could apply their chi sao programmes for combat when Sifu gave a few examples of individual applications.
On Saturday 24th Sifu taught a seminar for all students levels and focussed on the core training material for student levels 1-4. The students got stuck in immediately with this 'basic' training and soon began to sweat. Sifu taught a great amount of detail on the core hand and leg techniques of the WingChun system and the reasons for the way they are performed. Although there were a few knocks and bruises to the arms and legs there were plenty of happy faces as Tony and I looked around the training hall.
In addition to programmes 1 to 4, Sifu gave explanations and demonstrations of parts of the student level chi sao, footwork, defending against multiple assailants and even of one of the Wooden Dummy chi sao sequences in order to help explain various points. The amount of information he imparted was amazing and the explanations were always enough to satisfy all levels of student. It was great to see a few light bulbs illuminating above the heads of the senior students!
On the two subsequent days Tony and I were lucky enough to spend a great deal of time with Sifu, both in private lessons and in conversation, and on the Sunday we were very proud to be accepted as the new UK Head Instructors of the International Academy of WingChun (IAW). We would like to take this opportunity to thank Sifu for this honour and for another fantastic weekend. Thank you also to his assistants, Sifu Alex and Sihing Igor who helped Sifu to demonstrate and assisted the students over the weekend, and thank you to all of our students who showed great enthusiasm at both events. We are already looking forward to the 18th August when Sifu returns...
Sifu Ed Pettitt © 2008