Customer Reviews

Wing Chun Kung Fu Vol. 4 with William M. Cheung

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wing Chun Kung Fu, Volume 4 by William M. Cheung

Wing Chun Kung Fu Volume 4 is part of a 5 volume series by William Cheung. The series is available on VHS or DVD. I strongly recommend that you buy the DVD version. DVD's can be played on a home DVD player attached to the TV, a small, portable DVD player which can almost fit in your pocket, if you wear pants with large pockets like those military style dungaree pants some police and paramedics are wearing now days, or you can play DVD's on a laptop or note book computer that has an installed DVD/cd player. This would enable you to take your DVD lessons with you where ever you go and to view them whenever you have time. You can watch DVD's in Slow Motion or speeded up. You can freeze a scene to examine it as a still picture. You can capture images. DVD's have an interactive potential for the viewer which the VHS machines lack. This characteristic supports the viewers learning requirements for understanding a subtle or difficult move or concept being studied.

This volume of Wing Chun Kung Fu has William Cheung Demonstrating the Butterfly Sword form as well as its applications and fine points of the moves used against an opponent who is also armed with Butterfly swords and against an opponent armed with a staff or Dragon Pole as William Cheung calls it.

Then, the use of the Dragon pole staff is demonstrated in form followed by its applications and fine points. In the use of the Dragon Pole the staff is held from one end to maximize speed and power in the other end to strike an opponent as opposed to holding it from its center as is done in many other styles.

William Cheung has also authored or co-authored two books about the use of the Butterfly sword and Dragon pole weapons which are consistant with his performance in this video demonstration of their use. The two books are:
"Kung fu butterfly swords" ISBN: 089750125X

"Kung Fu Dragon Pole" ISBN: 0897501071
by William Cheung, Mike Lee

I was pretty satisfied with this Wing Chun DVD by William Cheung.
Vol. 4 shows both Butterfly sword forms and Dragon Pole forms and their applications vs each other. (Title/Cover from volume number does not give information on what it will teach...amazon reviewers, please include current reviewed DVD vol. and what it will cover if others not done so). William Cheung's 3x repetition was helpful for me catch up without rewinding too much. His vocabulary was somewhat limited that slightly hinders it from being a perfect instructional DVD but its nothing to worry bout after continuously watching it over again.

The only thing I didn't like was the DVD options was very limited. There are no chapter select, so I have to manually fast foward the DVD all the way to the last 24 remaining minutes that teaches Luk Dim Boon Kwan (Dragon Pole form) Takes me bout 2-3 minutes realtime to wait til it reaches the Dragon pole part.

I find when it comes to the wing chun butterfly swords, that there is hardly any agreement on the form. I have seen many different sequences, moves, etc. Is that a real problem? Maybe not, you can argue that the more you know the better...but knowing a form or really knowing what the moves are supposed to do is a difference. In this video, both are covered, including the dragon pole. I can recommend this to anyone, even beginners are able to learn this...although not recommended as Master Cheung speaks of Tan Dai, it is really helpful if you know that this is like Tan Sao, but instead of the hand it is the knife!

William Cheung does an excellent job in teaching
both butterfly knives and dragon pole.
You get an easy to follow step by step instruction of both forms
and also excellent applications.
I understand that in the Wing Chun world there exist a lot of politics,
but if you don't take your lineage as a religion and keep an open mind you will find excellent instruction on this DVD.
So: highly recommended, five stars.