About Me
(photo of my second long pole class, I’m second from the right)
I started my martial arts journey during my freshman year of college in Binghamton NY when I briefly belonged to the wrestling team. I found that wrestling was one sport that I was actually good at, and within a couple of months I felt that I was able to handle myself on the ground against much bigger opponents. However, I quit wrestling when I discovered the college party lifestyle. Later on though I joined a Kyokushinkai karate school. The sensei was a man in his forties who had a day job as an executive for IBM. After I graduated I moved to NYC where I continued to train in Kyokushinkai at a school located in the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The sensei there was a high ranking japanese instructor who was an adopted son of the founder of the style, the famous Mas Oyama. This was a hard core, hard contact school.
I later switched to a school which was located in the Times Square area. It was called the American Karate Academy and although nominally a Shotokan school it actually taught an eclectic blend of techniques from many different karate styles, including spinning kicks, flying kicks, hook kicks, backfists, etc.
I eventually got a brown belt and was about ready to test for first degree black belt when I read an article in Black Belt Magazine about wing chun kung fu. I was so enthralled with the article that I quit karate and joined a wing chun school run by Lee Moy Shan, one of Sifu Moy Yat’s top disciples. I remember the Sifu, then a very young man, as a quite skilled wing chun practitioner. He used the “traditional” Chinese teaching method, which means that there was no formal class. You just picked a partner and worked on whatever you both wanted to work on. Every so often, maybe once a month, Sifu would ask you “what have you learned up to” and then would show you something new. Although I was initially very excited about the style, after a while I became more and more frustrated about my lack of progress. Eventually, I quit martial arts completely. I blamed myself, not the teaching method or the style, for my inability to grasp wing chun. As I recall I trained there for about a year.
After this, I took a very long hiatus from the martial arts, during which I went to Law School, became a practicing attorney, and started a law practice. I also started training zen meditation and became interested in health and longevity. I learned the extreme importance of exercise to health, but I knew that jogging, the exercycle, etc would be just too boring for me to stick to. I decided to give wing chun one more try. This time I looked for a school where I could take private lessons because I had a good experience learning ballroom dancing that way.
After doing my research I decided to go to City Wing Tsun. I had some slight misgivings because I had read on the internet that Leung Ting wing chun was quite controversial. However I liked the website and the sifu after I visited the school. The sifu was quite young and was one of these people who looks a lot younger than he actually is, but I quickly found out that he was the real deal. I found out that the European branch of the Wing Tsun system used to own part of a castle in Germany where full time training was offered, and that Sifu had dropped out of college to go there for 3 years and train full time, 6 hours a day, five days a week. He was so gung ho about training that he also trained with a couple of his buddies at night and went to seminars on the weekend.
More importantly, I found out that Sifu really knew his stuff and gave 110% to trying to help each and every student continually improve. The Leung Ting system is quite different from the other wing chun styles in that there is a system of ranks and uniforms, and more importantly a brilliantly thought out curriculum of instruction. After over 4 years of training which included formal classes, private lessons, and seminars, I achieved the rank of Technician 1, roughly equivalent to a second degree black belt.
In May of 2011 Sifu Richter resigned from the International Wing Tsun Association, making his school an independent school. I chose to remain with Sifu Richter, thus ending my own ties to the Association.
Paul Matthews
