Billericay Wing Chun

Smart Wing Chun Kung Fu
Association

Colin Handling

I started training in martial arts after watching the „Kung Fu” television series with David Carradine and Bruce Lee films. There weren’t any kung fu schools in Edinburgh at the time, so I started learning Shukokai karate. However, a few months later I enrolled to learn Lau Gar kung fu. Progress was slow at one hourly lesson a week but it was fun. After about 4 years I left to study at university. There I joined an Aikido club but I did not find it enjoyable and so left after a short time. After graduation I accepted a job in London. I immediately started looking for a kung fu club to resume training. Unfortunately, lessons were (for me) quite expensive and there was no free lesson and they wouldn’t let me watch a lesson. So my interest waned in martial arts. Then in 2005 I got the bug again. Don’t know why but I started looking for a kung fu club. Remembering that Bruce Lee learned Wing Chun, I looked around for a Wing Chun school. The first one I found on the internet offered a free lesson. So what did I have to lose? I went along and was shown a variety of techniques that were so much different to what I had learned previously and what I saw on TV and in films. There were no showy moves and they seemed to flow into one another and the techniques worked at close range: this was the style for me.