Chelmsford Essex Combat

Smart Wing Chun Kung Fu
Association

The late Master Derek Jones through our eyes

The first time we heard of the late Master Derek Jones was through Peter Pete our Wing Chun instructor at that time, who came from the Victor Khan system. He was always talking about a person called Derek Jones who was the no1 Wing Chun man at that time in London.

He told us about Master Derek Jones because he felt he had taught us everything he could at that time, so he told us to train under Master Derek Jones as he had just opened up a club in Shepherd's bush (The British Wing Chun Kung Fu Association) and he had a vast amount of experience in street fighting. We phoned up and made arrangements to go along to one of his lessons and from that first phone call we knew he had a strong sense of discipline.

On our first encounter with Master Derek Jones we went down stairs into a cellar where he trained, filled in our forms and explained we were Wing Chun Instructors in which he took no notice of, we explained again we were instructors and again he just ignored this and carried on teaching. He then invited us to do some fighting sticking hands with him and he just took us both apart, this is when we learnt how focused this man could be, then he told us we still had a lot to learn, at that point we realized that this master could teach us a great deal more than we already knew, that was the start of our training under Master Derek Jones.

Only a few Master's came out of Master Derek Jones club, as well as myself and Frank, we are still teaching and, in our opinion, improving the Wing Chun system that we were taught in the beginning, we are not all about money, we are just interested in teaching Wing Chun, we were shown and passed 10 grades, which is exactly what we teach today.

At the end of our training with Derek he changed the name from The British Wing Chun Kung Fu Association to The World Body Mind and Spirit Association, because he was improving the art, also there were so many modified Wing Chun clubs opening at that time. Myself and Frank chose to keep the Wing Chun name and carry this on, which Derek had no problem with, Derek taught us not to stand still and neither should the system, the name of the system was not of the up most importance to us this is just a name it is what you learn from the system that matters. We all learnt the differences between modified and traditional wing chun and Derek enhanced the system of traditional wing chun as this is what he called it at that time, then over a period of time changed the name to The World Body Mind and Spirit Association.

DEDICATED TO MASTER DEREK JONES THE BEST MASTER WE EVER TRAINED UNDER.