I am a dedicated martial artist who has made Wing Tsun an integral part of his life and his personal development. As Bruce Lee said: “By being himself (…) the individual is more important than the style.”
When I was no older than about seven years, I wanted to learn martial arts, specifically Chinese martial arts, probably being influenced by the “Kung Fu” magazine I devoured regularly back then.
For forty years then nothing happened until I read an article in the Sunday newspaper by the Austrian writer Thomas Glavinic on the occasion of his new book, in which he describes his own Wing Tsun career.
Immediately my old passion was rekindled!
My decision was made: I will learn Wing Tsun. Yet, before I enrolled in a martial arts school, I had to find a way to train on a daily basis. So I thought through and organized my daily routine accordingly.
Because my life experience has been this: If you want to learn something, whether it’s a language, a musical instrument, or a sport – you either engage in it daily or you don’t do it at all.
To minimize the risk of learning something wrong at home, little by little I wrote down all the exercises from class. This resulted in a kind of textbook, which has now reached a considerable size of over ninety pages.
Not only are new exercises being added on an ongoing basis, but existing ones are also being revised and expanded. All of this is part of my learning strategy. (One could also say, I’m lazy and just want to learn as much in as short a time as possible.)
For me, this also includes studying Chinese history, culture, religion and language (as far as my limited time allows, of course). After all, my reading goes back to the late 1980s, so I didn’t have to start from scratch.
Since I am a language nerd, it was a no-brainer for me to dedicate a certain amount of time every day to learning Chinese. So Wing Tsun motivates me to learn Chinese and Chinese motivates me to learn Wing Tsun. What more could you want?
Wing Tsun comes along with a lot of health benefits. This is because in traditional Chinese thought, adaptation to the rhythm of the universe is the basis of wisdom. In this vein, Yip Man, the founder of modern Wing Tsun, said that one should never confront a problem head-on, but rather control it by swinging with it.
So why shouldn’t you be able to exercise completely alone, without a partner? The answer comes from Shaolin Kung Fu Master Yap Boh Heong and what he says can easily be applied to Wing Tsun, namely that only in martial arts, i.e. in physical contact with your partner, can you check whether your movements are correct.
So that was about my little journey and even though I have only been part of the Wing Tsun family for eight years, sometimes it feels like I have been there since I was a child. From the very beginning, I have been training Wing Tsun every single day and I still enjoy it as much as I did on the first day.
[July 2025]