In my humble opinion

[Paul T England]

One thing I have noticed over my years of study.

I see many wing chun masters actually reducing their skill and ability over time.

Comments?

[poulperadieux]

"La viellesse est un nauffrage" Général de Gaule.

[Graham H]

One thing I have noticed over my years of study.

I see many wing chun masters actually reducing their skill and ability over time.

Comments?

Masters? What's that? Are they like Grandmasters but not as good? :D

Age has a bearing on one's skill. Skill, precision and timing improve with age. That's what comes from years of training. We can achieve more by doing less theoretically. The behaviour of the body improves through years and years of repetition. That doesn't mean to say older guys always beat younger guys. It all depends on how much hard work has been put in over the years and levels of health that are maintained.

[Paul T England]

by masters, I refer to Masters, grandmasters, sijo, sifu, teachers and supreme great-grandmasters

What I mean is I have seen and exchanged with people who I regarded as very knowledgable, skillful and intelligent with their appraoch and application to wing chun but the more they teach the more they go backwards. Now I have my thinking on the reasons but just wondered if anyone else had noticed this?

Maybe they get a Master or grandmaster mentality or maybe they just loose the plot!!!

Maybe the difficulty with wing chun is keeping it smiple?

Paul
www.moifa.co.uk

[wingchunIan]

by masters, I refer to Masters, grandmasters, sijo, sifu, teachers and supreme great-grandmasters

What I mean is I have seen and exchanged with people who I regarded as very knowledgable, skillful and intelligent with their appraoch and application to wing chun but the more they teach the more they go backwards. Now I have my thinking on the reasons but just wondered if anyone else had noticed this?

Maybe they get a Master or grandmaster mentality or maybe they just loose the plot!!!

Maybe the difficulty with wing chun is keeping it smiple?

Paul
www.moifa.co.uk

I suspect what you are observing is the classic symptom of A) replacing training with teaching or B) lack of sufficiently competent training partners.

Falling into trap A is easy to do and is not just the reserve of those in need of ego massaging, there are simply only so many hours in the day. Trap B is common especially when someone with a high level of skill becomes dislocated from their teacher and peers (either because of geography or perhaps the teacher passes away / stops teaching, or politics etc etc). In both cases developing students to a point where they can provide a challenge / become training partners is helpful but there is an inevitable hiatus.
Of course age /ill health also impacts on physical performance at some point. I am also assuming that the idividuals to which you refer had ability to start with there are an awful lot of self appointed "masters" who do not.

[Graham H]

by masters, I refer to Masters, grandmasters, sijo, sifu, teachers and supreme great-grandmasters

What I mean is I have seen and exchanged with people who I regarded as very knowledgable, skillful and intelligent with their appraoch and application to wing chun but the more they teach the more they go backwards. Now I have my thinking on the reasons but just wondered if anyone else had noticed this?

Maybe they get a Master or grandmaster mentality or maybe they just loose the plot!!!

Maybe the difficulty with wing chun is keeping it smiple?

Paul
www.moifa.co.uk

Anybody that refers to themselves as Master or Grandmaster has lost the plot! :)

[stonecrusher69]

One thing I have noticed over my years of study.

I see many wing chun masters actually reducing their skill and ability over time.

Comments?

This is a very general question..We would have to take it one person at a time. It might just be your perception.

[Paul T England]

maybe they had never bene good to start with LOL

On a serious note I think people can easily fall into traps and forget the simple stuff. Teachers often keep making things complicated so to keep the students progressing (or not), you can also use your knowledge to counter people with less experience and the point of good training partners is a valid one.

Paul

[Vajramusti]

[QUOTE=Paul T England;1218612]maybe they had never bene good to start with LOL

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likely

[Wayfaring]

you mean, like, because they age? Astute observation there, cap'n obvious.

[wingchunIan]

Anybody that refers to themselves as Master or Grandmaster has lost the plot! :)

Careful there are a few on here that do just that ;)

[Ali. R]

On a serious note I think people can easily fall into traps and forget the simple stuff. Teachers often keep making things complicated so to keep the students progressing (or not),

And a lot of times there’re some guys you just can’t teach, and they'll (you're students) would just pass down whatever because of their lack of foundation, and that’s what you end up with (complication). Me, myself; I’ll just say you’re right and move on when I see that happening.

Ali

[Lee Chiang Po]

I think the greatest problem today is that of schools period. No matter how good a person may be, when they open a school, eventually they have to have the help of their students to teach. You have people coming in and leaving out all the time. Turnover if you will. A new person comes in and where do you put him and who then teaches him and what. They start at differing levels so to speak, and rather than starting at the very beginning they end up missing out on some very serious learning. Then you end up with 16,000 different lineages of wing chun. Ving Tsun, wing tsun, weng chun, weng tsun. I started my wing chun education nearly 58 years ago now, and I had never heard of any other system and none of the lineages spoken of here. Well, not until I found this forum a number of years ago now.
Wing Chun is like a lot of things. It is easy to learn, but it does take a bit of time to learn to use it efficiently, but not a great deal of time.