There are thousands of Moy Yat Ving Tsun practitioners, but very few of them will achieve the caliber required to become a legitimate Moy Yat Family Sifu. It takes around ten years of dedicated training under one’s Sifu and literally thousands of training hours (10,000+).
The Sifus of the Moy Yat Family put an extraordinary amount of work into passing down the Ving Tsun system. Grandmaster Moy Tung has spent his entire adult career dedicating himself to the art of Ving Tsun under his Sifu, Moy Yat, who did the same with his Sifu, Yip Man. Sifu Moy Sup Tung of the Austin school continues that tradition of hard work, dedicating himself to his Sifu, Moy Tung, and the Moy Yat Family by passing the pure, unchanged Ving Tsun system down to his students and grandstudents. Because of the dedication of Sifus, the Kung Fu that is taught today is the same as the Kung Fu that was taught to Moy Yat by Yip Man.
In order for the Ving Tsun system to continue to be passed down to future generations and preserved in its purest form, it is important to remember that the focus of our school should always be on the Kung Fu.
During the course of your training, you will encounter distractions. One of the most common is the temptation to socialize. Talking during class should be kept at an absolute minimum out of respect for the Ving Tsun system and to avoid disrupting the focus of other students. The Ving Tsun school is a place of study, not a social club, or a networking opportunity for students to build their own interests outside of Kung Fu.
Another common distraction is the tendency of students who are young in their Kung Fu to compare their progress to others’. Seeing other students playing more advanced forms or working on chi sau can be exciting, but it can also distract by making you want to skip over your current training to “advance” through the system more rapidly. It’s good to be excited about what you’ll learn in the future, just be sure to stay focused on the Kung Fu that your Sifu wants you to work on at the moment. Everything else will come in time.
Remember that your Sifu is passing the Ving Tsun system down to you. The details that he teaches have been acquired over the course of decades of study with his Sifu and the Kung Fu family. It’s these details that combine to make up the Ving Tsun system; they’re very important and students should pay careful attention to them. If Sifu gives a detail in class, it should spread through the school like wildfire, with students putting effort into actively focusing on that detail until it becomes ingrained habit.
While details should be shared between students, it is never a student’s job to teach another student. Only Sifu, or people he has specifically trained to instruct the system, should be teaching. This ensures that the system is being honored and passed down pure and unchanged.
Do your best not to fall for any distractions you may encounter inside or outside the school; stay focused on your Ving Tsun. To show respect to all the dedicated work of your Sifu and the Sifus that came before him, all you need to do is show up to class on time, wear your uniform, pay attention to what’s going on around you, train consistently, and represent the school well. This Ving Tsun work ethic will serve you well in all areas of life.
