At what age

[Xue Sheng]

I had this conversation with my first Wing Chun sifu awhile back and I was wondering what the Wing Chun people here thought was a good age for children to start training Wing Chun or is it better to start as a teenager or older.

 

[ella_guru]

I am of the opinion that it's better if they can sort of find it for themselves later it's much more valuable. I mean sure they will be really really good at it but often it is relegated more to just "something they do" because it is so natural to them, and not ever really digging in...

 

[WC_lun]

I think it really varies from person to person. The student must be able to focus and be able to follow direction to learn. Having said that, I do think tere is much Wing Chun that we don't teach until someone is an adult.

 

[ella_guru]

To sort of rephrase what I meant...

I dont think teaching really exists so much as guidance does. You can't TEACH someone in the sense that they just learn it after you share the ideas with them. They have to experiment, think, non-think, try new approaches before they can come up with really questions to ask the Sifu so that they might be further guided. A good student should be asked Sifu lots of questions as a result of wanted insight on his own experiments.

That being said..... actually, as I type this I realize that a child instinctually is going to want to experiment, but most Sifu's will be trying to force them into a certain way.

Oh jeese.

Because the most adult minds are so analytical, and stoney and non-dynamic, most Sifu's end up having to come up with approaches that "work" with that sort of mind. Now, this approach cant and shouldnt work with a child. The child should be guided, it's mostly the adults who really want to be "taught" . Most adults want directions to follow so that if they do, they feel like they did a "good job" , pretty much the opposite for the "child", they just want to do their own thing and ideally not get in trouble for it...


So to answer your question, Xue, I have no idea.:cheers:

 

[Domino]

Kids have no ego and copy or mimic what someone else does quite easily so I think in this sense they would have no problem from 5+.
In China, youngsters are very proficient and is quite strange to see, not a problem for them, just whether this is something they actually want to do from a young age.

 

[matsu]

as with all of my martial art pursuits i wish i hd started sooooo much younger.
it is so much easier to learn stuff at 5....10 or 13 even
as domino said i think the younger the better. even if it is for a physical version of brain training or for fitness or for learning to work and play with others and all at the same time your teaching them a skill that will help them in later life.
i think the social interaction of sports is much overlooked in schools in "western" thoughts- i think it teaches respect,how to lose but more importantly that life is one massive competition and you need to be in it to win at it!!

phew rant over lol
matsu

 

[Domino]

as with all of my martial art pursuits i wish i hd started sooooo much younger.
it is so much easier to learn stuff at 5....10 or 13 even
as domino said i think the younger the better. even if it is for a physical version of brain training or for fitness or for learning to work and play with others and all at the same time your teaching them a skill that will help them in later life.
i think the social interaction of sports is much overlooked in schools in "western" thoughts- i think it teaches respect,how to lose but more importantly that life is one massive competition and you need to be in it to win at it!!

phew rant over lol
matsu

Agree, can guide a student on discipline and 'life lessons' etc...if they wish.

 

[geezer]

I agree with a lot of what's been said already. Kid's will decide for themselves what they want to do, and each one matures at a different rate. That said, I tend to agree with the traditional thinking that WC/WT/VT is most suitable for older kids, say around 13 years old or above.

Along these lines, I know an excellent sifu who has developed a kid's kung-fu program directed at younger children, but heavily based on WC. Still, it has other material included, and has a realy healthy element of play thrown in as well. Good stuff by itself, and an excellent lead-in to the adult WC/WT/VT program down the road.

 

[Xue Sheng]

I tend to agree with the traditional thinking that WC/WT/VT is most suitable for older kids, say around 13 years old or above.

That was roughly the age my first sifu picked too (12 to 14).

 

[BloodMoney]

We train rather brutal self defense, and as such are classes are not open to children. I have instructed kids before and found most of them lack the attention span or mental capacity for Chun, as opposed to say Karate. I guess you can leave out the internal thought etc behind the movements till they get older though.

Our school is only open to students 18 years and older. We have a 16 and a 17 year old though, whome I deemed to be mature enough to train with us after knowing them for some time.

 

[matsu]

thats a valid point bloodmoney but i would imagine most schools have a kids curriculum that is a less aggressive version of what we really can do.
i wished i had taken up the advert that i saw with my sifu so mnaay years ago and been able to benefit when i was much younger,the things i,m enjoying now
matsu