Is It Possible To Learn Wing Chun Online For Free?

Wing Chun is no longer the secretive martial art that it once was in the 1940s. Since the creation of youtube, the popularity of videos has skyrocketed around the world, creating access to a vast amount of information to places that could not previously get it. To have learned wing chun from Ip Man, you pretty much had to be in a certain part of Hong Kong during the 1920s-1960s. Due to youtube and other websites, you can learn wing chun from whoever puts up a video in almost any country of the world.

It is possible to learn wing chun online, 100% free. However, there are some drawbacks to doing this listed below in greater detail. In short, you should only really be learning wing chun online if you have no other alternatives. This could be because you are deployed in a country with no wing chun schools or happen to live in the middle of nowhere. Or it could be that you are a busy person with an awkward schedule, such as working nights. If you are working anti-social hours, it can be difficult to find time to socialize and train with regular people.

Drawbacks Of Learning Online

Who Is The Teacher?

This is applicable to all forms of martial arts and in fact any other skill you want to learn online. You must be very careful of if the wing chun sifu is who they say they are. The advent of facebook and instagram has allowed people to become anyone they want. You may have seen losers from your high school now become “millionaire day traders” who are selling their courses for $699 per month only to disappear a year or two later with several angry customers.

Whilst wing chun hasn’t been infiltrated to this degree, there are still some bad actors lurking in various corners of the internet. If you do not know much about wing chun to begin with, your best bet is to stick with the most popular videos on youtube. Not only are these free, but due to their popularity, they have the best chance of being realistic.

You are also able to check the lineage of each sifu by performing a simple google search. Of course, this is not a bulletproof way to see who is legitimate and who isn’t but does give you an extra degree of confidence. If you’re unable to see who the instructor has learned from in the first place, it may be more of a fantasy story than reality.

No “Real” Practice

Perhaps the main drawback of learning wing chun online is that you’re not able to interact, counteract or improve with the help of others. Nobody can see what you’re doing other than yourself, so you will make mistakes – some of which you won’t even notice. To compare this to another skill such as learning to drive a car, obviously this is a terrible idea to try and learn alone.

Secondly is the issue that you have no real life sparring experience. When learning online, your eyes can take in at most every ounce of information they see. This will not prepare you for blocking strikes from an aggressive opponent, nor will it help you strike a resisting opponent. Some of this can be offset by using a wing chun dummy, but even still – this is a block of wood and will not react to your movements.

As mentioned previously, learning online is more of a last resort than something you want to do out of choice.

Why You Probably Shouldn’t Pay For Wing Chun Online

All of the above points make a good case for why you shouldn’t pay for wing chun online. Whilst there will be some exceptions to this rule, as a general point it is very true.

Wing chun is learned best in a traditional gym setting and nothing else comes close. Humans learn best when there is some kind of real world exposure which simulates a resisting opponent, unexpected strikes and any other variable that cannot be reproduced by a video.

Not only this, but you can easily learn wing chun online free from websites such as youtube. All over the internet there are a plethora of free wing chun videos that are not really too different from a paid website. Unless you are able to find a significant difference in the quality of teaching from the best free videos to a paid subscription website then you really should not be paying.

This goes against what a lot of online teachers will tell you, but remember, they are the ones that benefit from your money. At Budodragon we have no affiliation with any martial arts teachers and therefore can offer an unbiased opinion on the industry.

Using Online Wing Chun Learning As A Supplement To Training

This is probably the best way to use online wing chun videos – and is a real bonus if they happen to be free. By watching techniques and forms online as well as training, you open yourself up to a new way of learning. Sometimes you can be tired in a class, zone out or simply have no energy left to pay full attention. Therefore you will miss key details that you otherwise would have learned.

By using a wing chun online program, you are able to watch and re-watch techniques and movements as many times as you wish. This allows you to zone in on specific details, as well as have a broad overview of wing chun in general.

Theoretically, learning wing chun in this way is best served if you are looking for something very detailed on a specific form. Whilst you can learn a bit of everything, this is ideally what a physical class is for. Then when you get home, you will be able to drill down into the advanced mechanics and see what separates good technique from excellent technique.

Want to learn more about wing chun? Check out this book by the legendary Ip Man.