If you ever turned on Youtube and typed in “Wing Chun,” you have probably heard of our guest Jin Young “The China Boxer.” Jin brought up some really good points about how the BJJ and Wing Chun Community different.



If you want to contact Jin, feel free to look him up on his Facebook page. Click Here To Get In Contact With Jin “The China Boxer

Below you will found our podcast/audio interview with Sifu Jin Young. Enjoy!

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Wing-Chun-Interviews/Sifu+Jin+Young+-+China+Boxer.mp3



Audio not your thing? Check out the transcripts below:

Scott:

Alright, so I am sitting down here with Jin Young, he has approximately 20,000 subscribers on youtube! I think over the past couple years you really blew up. We just want to sit down, have a conversation, and get to know you.

Jin:

That sounds great. Good to meet you Scott.

Scott:

Nice to meet you too.

Jin:

That’s for putting this all together, I really appreciate it.

Scott:

Oh are you kidding me. I’m so happy you decided to accept our little interview here. Just to get started, can you tell us a bit about your background? Who you trained with?

Jin:

Sure, I think, in order to understand, you have to start where I grew up. I grew up in a very small town in Illinois, it’s a farm town. There were about 4 to 5,000 people in that town, so it was very tiny. Growing up I saw the Bruce Lee films, I’m sure you saw them too, the Chuck Norris movies, and all that kind of stuff. Those back then were my idols.

I was always very active in school and I wrestled, as I got older, I wanted to do those things. I wanted to do martial arts. Unfortunately, in such a small town, you don’t have a lot of options.

Scott:

That’s my first question. What was it like finding a teacher in such a small town?

Jin:

Yea exactly, So in this rural farm town there was one school. It happened to be an Okinawa Marital Art called Ryukyu Kempo. That’s how I stated training, I really enjoyed it. As I got better we went into point competitions and things like that. It was really popular back then.

As I got older, I was about to graduate high school. I was athletic, in love with martial arts, and just horrible at school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew somehow it had to relate to all these things I was interested in, and I knew I was not mentally ready to go to college.

Scott:

Wow, did you just up and go to California?

Jin:

No. I went and I joined the Marine Corps HAHA.

Scott:

Well, that works.

Jin:

Yea exactly!

So I got to travel. Leave the small town and finally travel. In the process, in the Marine Corps there is a lot of martial arts clubs. There was a lot of martial arts practitioners from all over the United States and they all got together to train. I got there and wanted to train with everyone and learn as much as I could. That, for me, was the start of my own big journey of what’s out there in the world.

Back then, you really gotta realize there was no Youtube, no cell phones, no internet, no network. Everything in martial arts was word of mouth. The who’s who, you had to know who they were by talking to other marital artists.

In the Marine Corps I fought in the Persian war, the gulf war. I became a veteran from that. I did search and rescue for the Marine Corps in a helicopter unit. Then I got out and I was stationed in Irvin, in Southern California. It was the first time I had even seen so many Asians in my life. I was like “Oh my gosh, wow!” I fell in love with Southern California and there were all these great martial arts schools.

When I got out of the Marine Corps, I had to do something, so I went to continue my college education, and worked for the Southern Illinois Gas Company. This kind of gave me time to think about what I wanted to do. When I was working for that company, I knew one thing, I did not want to do a 9-5 job. I did not want to do something where it became very routine and didn’t involve my one passion in life, which was martial arts. So I was like, “this sucks” I need to get out.

I packed up and just took off to Southern Californian. I did whatever I could to survive, I took small jobs, crashed on my friends couch. Anything to go back to training. It never occurred to me that one day I would teach, it was always “I want to go train and learn as much as I can.”

When I came back to California it was probably the mid 90s and I had the “Tao of Jeet Kune Do” by Bruce Lee.

Scott:

I was going to say I think everyone has that copy.

Jin:

Yea! I had a whole collection of martial arts books. I used to love to read about all those great legends. Musashi Miyamoto who wrote “The Book of Five Rings” I think you did something about that.

Scott:

That’s a great book, if you haven’t read that book, you gotta check it out. I think I’ve read it at least 7 or 8 times. It’s a pretty sure read too.

Jin:

Right! It’s a book you can always go back to. Its short, but that doesn’t mean easy. You can always go back and take away from it where you are at, at that time. Even outside of martial arts, a must read.

In the Tao Jeet Kune Do e , it was about Dan Inosanto and Bruce Lee. After reading that I was like “MAN I want to go and study this JKD stuff. ” Where can I find Dan Inosanto?” I looked and looked. Again you have to realize this is before you can look it up on google. I remember there was a section about him teaching in a high school here in LA. I even went there to find him. How ridiculous is that?

Finally I found his school which was located in Manchester and Lincoln. I fell in love with that place, it was like a gym, not a marital arts school. I loved it.

Everyone was hitting the banana bag, the boxing ring, sparing mattes rolled out, people grappling. I was like, “This is awesome!”

Scott:

That’s awesome. Same thing happened to me I went to the Gleeson’s gym in Brooklyn. I was like “I have arrived.”

Jin:

Yea exactly! I did everything I could, work wise just so I could train there. I’ve always been obsessed with training and martial arts. Its almost like a compulsive disorder. When you are chasing that lifestyle there is one thing you can’t have, and that’s a regular 9-5 job. It just doesn’t seem to work on a martial arts schedule.

I got offers from the FBI, sheriff’s department, all over, but I knew if I did that I would not be happy. So I trained at the Dan Inosanto Academy for many years and did the Jun Fan program, I also did the Street Fighting program with Eric Calstin and they are all amazing martial artists.

Scott:

What was it like training with Dan Inosanto?

Jin:

He was great. All the knowledge that he threw away, that he didn’t find useful, from his research of martial arts, I would loved to have. He is so knowledgeable in many different marital arts, he really impressed me. The biggest thing is that he inspired me, he was doing what I wanted to do. He would always say “think of yourself as a white belt.” He was always leading the way, always researching other martial arts, researching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu before anyone knew what it was.

Scott:

I find it interesting that you say “researching” instead of “studying.”

Jin:

For him, it was always what worked for him. I’ve taken that philosophy, basically using what Dan Inosanto taught us. When you are learning, the instructor has a suit, the suit is custom tailored for him. The problem is all these students try and wear the same suit. Everyone fits different, when you try and fit into his martial arts suit, it’s not going to fit properly. It’s not going to work properly. By researching what works for you, this is the difference, not so much learning technique, it was about studying the concepts of martial arts. This way you can teach yourself how to saw, how to cut, how to make a pattern. By learning this way you can teach yourself how to make your own suit. This is really what he pushed onto us. Learn to use the tools to create your own suit. Studying the core concepts, this is what I still do to this day.

Scott:

When did the Wing Chun come in?

Jin:

They had a Wing Chun program over there, it wasn’t nearly as extensive as what you might be used too. It was just Bruce Lee’s Wing Chun. At the time it was very simplified, didn’t have the forms, only the simple drills. We did punching drills, dan chi sau drills, pok sau drills, simple drills like that.

Scott:

No forms at all, just the drills?

Jin:

Yea, the terms, Chi Sau, all that. I didn’t know this at that time, but the Wing Chun understanding back then, the way we were doing it, it was more like we really didn’t get it. We tried, but we didn’t get it.

The reason I can say this is because I studied the Jun Fan over there, the Bruce Lee method of Wing Chun. Of course Bruce Lee’s mentality was you had to go in the ring and test it. Everything you do has to be proven in sparing. For him this is the validation. Everyone who was studying the Jun Fan would try it out and go against the Muai Tai guys or Shoot fighting guys or the grapplers, and we couldn’t get it to work. Nobody could get it to work. No one could get Pure Jun Fan to work. Or at least that’s how it seemed. We would always go back to our other training, like Muai Tai or grappling. I just couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get this stuff to work. I was young, I was very fast, strong, and I felt like I was very dedicated, if I couldn’t get it to work, I don’t see how the average person could get it to work. It just didn’t make any sense to me.

I had to take a step back, which made me start to question what I was studying. I thought “Maybe I have to go back to the roots of what Bruce was studying.” Which was the Wing Chun.

That is how I found Gary Lam and of course Hawkins Cheung. When I first met him he was maybe 105 pounds, in his 60’s, he was maybe 5’ tall. Just tiny. He used to ask me, because I used to wear my JKD shorts to train there.

Scott:

Oh gosh, that’s a pretty balls’ie move.

Jin:

Well there was no uniform, you just wore your workout cloths. So when he was me he said, “Ohhhh, you’re that JKD people.” So I became the “JKD guy” He would always criticize me for it.

Scott:

It’s funny you bring that up, because every time I train somewhere new, I just pretend I don’t know anything. When you bring it up, it’s kinda like opening up a can of worms.

Jin:

You know what, I used to do that too Scott. As I got older, I used to just tell people the truth. I just tell ’em “Hey I trained JKD and what’s wrong with that? I studied Muay Tai. What’s wrong with that? I studied jiu jitsu. What’s wrong with that?”

But with Hawkins Cheung he would just slam the JKD, the Jeet Kune Do. He would say things like, “Oh you guys got no power.” and it would just make me so angry in the early days. I would get so mad at him. What kept me there was that he would use me as an example. I think it was because I had a lot of training, he would come over and he would demonstrate. He would say, “Okay JKD guy, come at me, punch at me, kick at me, take me down.” At that time I would try and do it, I would try and land some punches, try to take him down.

He was this little old guy and no matter what I did he just shut me down. At any time he could hit me. I was like, “What is this guy doing that I’m missing!” The thing was the harder I tired; it seemed the easier it got for him. I would use more speed, more muscle, it just didn’t work. It would back fire on me. I just knew I had to learn it. That was my real introduction to Wing Chun and Hawkins Cheung.

From there I just kept studying. I was studying at both places at the time, at the Inosanto Academy and Hawkin’s school. Just trying to figure it out from both ends. At that time I was very stubborn I didn’t wanna let go of my past training. Now, when I look back I kinda shed that part of my training and really started to focus and hone in on Wing Chun.

To this day I’m still studying three things. BJJ and Wing Chun, as well as free style wresting. Those are the 3 arts I am mainly focused on right now.

Scott:

I noticed on your Youtube page that you have a pretty large community. Before we hit the record button you and I were trading a lot of stories of the experiences we had when visiting other Wing Chun schools. Which brought us to talk about the current status of the Wing Chun community in general.

Jin:

My focus has never been teaching. It’s always been training. I didn’t know that there were so many different lineages. Way back when I would go, “Who is Leung Ting?” I didn’t know who William Chueng was. My whole Wing Chun world was Hawkins and Jun Fan from the Dan Inosanto Academy. I had no idea who anyone else was. Again without the internet and Youtube, you really wouldn’t know.

It wasn’t until I started the Youtube channel and website that people used to ask me, “What do you think of this Sifu?” Or “What do you think of that Sifu?” and I would always respond, “Well, I don’t know, I never trained with this person.” This experience would urge me to check out their Youtube videos or channel and start to go out and investigate other Wing Chun lineages. Over here in California, there are so many really good instructors. There is Hawkins, Gary Lam, Eric Oram, Allen Peterson, those are just a few, although they are only the better known schools out here.

We also have the more obscure Wing Chun Instructors who are just as amazing, but people just don’t know who they are. There is Wong Siu up in Monterey Park, Eric Vonrob, he has a meet up group, he is an amazing martial artist, there is Stanly Wong, there is Tom Wong, and Shanta Knight, who is a student of Hawkins also. Prior to Hawkins, I believe he was a Leung Ting instructor. He just opened up a school up here in the valley and I wish him the best.

Scott:

That’s a pretty good point; just because they are famous doesn’t ensure they are a great Wing Chun instructors. Although I’m sure all the people you just listed off are fantastic.

Jin:

Well just look at me. Like you said I have a large following on my youtube channel. I started making videos because of my students, I had two at first, the only reason I taught those guys is because they would see me train and say, “Hey, can you show me some stuff?” I would always refuse. After a few months, “I will start teaching you guys, I’m not going to charge you, but twice a week you had better show up and you had better practice. If you don’t, I’m going to stop.” I started teaching the small handful of people. Eventually they wanted to start training outside our training sessions, so they asked me if I could make videos and put them up so they could always go back and see them.

I said, “Let me think about that.” It was the first time I had ever punched up Wing Chun into Youtube and up came like a million videos. One by one I started to watch every video and read the comments. What I found out was, there are a lot of lineages out there and everyone would argue. They would battle back and forth. When I saw this, I was like, “Wow, there is so much division in the Wing Chun community.”

So I started to join Wing Chun forums to get a sense of what is going on. Which just validated our point. This kinda scared me, I was like, “What will happen. If I put something up am I just going to get slammed?” But my students were like, “No no no, just put it up and we can use.”

Scott:

You probably also thought no one will ever find it. HAHA

Jin:

Yea ! HA HA! But I finally agreed and put up this little video, I think it was pok sau. I just did my thing on it. I got these comments and they weren’t that bad. People were encouraging me to put up more. The vast majority weren’t coming to argue and I thought, “Wow, this is kinda interesting.” It all happened because of everyone out there, they saw something, saw some value. They just wanted more. Believe it or not, I believed I didn’t know enough.

Scott:

I think a lot of people have the same feeling. I’m not too sure how to label the feeling. The same thing happened to us. My point is there are a lot of unqualified people on youtube.

Jin:

Right! I put up some stuff and the feedback was pretty positive. Then I thought, “You know what, maybe I do have more then I think, maybe I’m not that bad.” I kept learning, I kept studying, and it was never my intent to make lots of money, which I don’t, or become popular. My whole intention was, if there are people out there just like me, who are obsessed with martial arts and want to learn, but don’t have access to the material because they live in a small town or live in a part of the world that doesn’t have Wing Chun. I can relate, I grew up in a tiny town. I can relate to these guys. They are saying, “We have nothing out here and we are putting together groups to practice.” This to me is why I continue to do this.

In the process, I hope I can meet these people and they have experience they can share with me, as well as share with each other, and grow as a community. Because right now I believe, by and large, they just don’t get along very well right now. We are one family, but the problem is that everyone is brothers & sisters that don’t get along.

Scott:

I think a lot of people don’t realize that by training with other schools and other lineages you can actually improve your own stuff.

Jin:

Not only improve yourself, Wing Chun as a whole will continue to improve because: I also study BJJ. Here in the United States it is extremely popular and the quality level is so high in such a short time is because all the great BBJ instructors, Marcelo Garcia, there is Jeff Glover, Bill Copper, Mendez Brothers, all these wonderful instructors, they all know the same things, they all know the same moves, same techniques, but they all play a movement a bit differently because of their shape and size. They don’t horde that knowledge, they don’t’ say , I’m not going to share this with anyone, that community is so friendly that whenever I go out of town I always take my gee because I know that I can go there, any BJJ school and I can walk in there without any appointment. I can say “I’m just here for the day and wanted to know if I can train.” The first thing out of their mouth will be “YEA!” They accept you with open arms and make you feel comfortable and welcome. They ask you, where do you train. They want you to come and train. If you happen to know something they don’t to know, they want you to share, and they want to share with you. This is why I love the BJJ community.

When I go to a Wing Chun school when I’m out of town I get the complete opposite. A lot of times they ask, “Why are you here?”, “What do you want?”, make it feel like I am somehow there to steal the secret knowledge they have.

Scott:

Or to challenge them or something.

Jen:

Or to get challenged! And I am going to steal their students. This is so silly. Because if more people would be willing to get together and train with each other. What would happen is, just like the BJJ community the quality level would keep improving. Because what would happen is the best would keep rising to the top. This way we would keep improving the art. When you have people who don’t want to share, it becomes very hard for the community to progress.

Scott;

This reminds me of when my teacher would talk about how to approve other schools. It wasn’t this short thing, it was like a list of things to do and remember.

Jen:

Right Scott. When you go to a BJJ school the first thing they do is shake your hand, the last thing they do is shake your hand. That’s why in my class we always start and end the class like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu schools. You gotta have that, that sense of camaraderie. You can’t have them thinking you have some kind of hidden agenda.

Scott:

Totally true, here and there my Sifu’s students will show up that trained with him back in the 80’s, don’t get me wrong, everyone is very friendly, but folks from that era have a very different mindset. The moment they walk in they are sizing you up and all this type of nonsense.

Jin:

Right, right, right. The thing is in Wing Chun you cannot hide skill. When I touch your arm, I know your skill level. It’s the same in BJJ and Wing Chun. The moment you get a handle of each other, you know that guys skill level. You can’t hide it.

Scott:

Let me ask you a question. When you go to a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school, do you have to work your way up the ladder, roll with lower level guys first before you can roll with the teacher?

Jin:

No, I’m speaking in general terms, but the format is generally the same. You warm up, drills, and then you go over some movements, and free rolling.

If you’re a white belt you should never have a problem asking a higher level person to grapple. Usually the beginners get partnered up with the black or brown belts. The reason is they need someone with the control to teach them. It’s important that someone with high level skill,… It’s important that the beginners know what it feels like, that when they touch that person’s arm, they instantly know what their skill level is. But the guy is very gentle, he doesn’t hurt him. He needs to experience that.

The blue belts, purple belts, and the in-between belts tend to be more aggressive. They are trying to get to the next belt. Anytime I want to join in the class or train with the instructor, it’s always a good thing. You can’t go in there and pretend you know nothing. The moment they touch you, they know you know something.

Scott:

We are getting pretty close to the hour here, a lot of our audience is Sifu’s or are trying to start their own school. How did your videos get so popular?

Jin:

I think it’s because there are a handful of videos where people actually teach. First and foremost, I was actually teaching, 99% of the Wing Chun videos out there are demoing.

Scott:

It took me a while to realize that myself, because when you first start out, you look for cool Wing Chun videos. What you find is instructors beating the crap out of their students.

Jin:

Which is horrible. You know how you can tell if someone is a good instructor? It’s very simple. When the instructor goes to Chi Sau or touch hands with his students, the students are afraid to touch that guy’s hand. Then that instructor is no good. It’s like when you whip a dog when he does something bad?

Scott:

It’s like mentally conditioning someone to become afraid of you.

Jin:

Yea, they become afraid. You cannot install that into your students. A good instructor is someone who when they touch students , they feel comfortable. They aren’t getting beat, not whipped like a dog. I think this is the sign of a bad instructor.

Scott:

I was talking to Mike, my training partner. He had a pretty good observation. When you want to see how good someone is, you look at the other person. When one of the two guys is just standing there, getting the crap beat out of him something is up.

Jin:

I think my tutorial got so popular, I think new upcoming generations of Wing Chun practitioners, when they see my videos, they can relate, because I’m not in a uniform, you don’t see my students bowing to me, calling me Sifu. They get a sense I am just there to help my students. I am trying to do everything I can to help them and help people out there. Where other instructors come out in a robe, you are not allowed to go up to that instructor s without permission.

Scott:

Old school thinking.

Jin:

I put people at ease, I get a lot of people from around the world that want to come and train with me now.

Scott:

That’s a question I wanted to ask you, it seems like you do seminars everywhere.

Jin:

Dude. First of all, they all happen by accident. I don’t organize any of them. They come down and touch my hand. Stay for a week and train. Their next question is, “How can I get you out here, where I’m at? I want to train more.” I tell them, “Well you got to get me out there.” They go back and get a bunch of people together. Buy my ticket and my stay, that’s how it works. I never actually look for seminars.

Right now, I’m going to Chicago next month (March 2013). The only reason I got that, is because Domica Rizzo, the guy who contacted me, has a school around an hour from my house. I went down there for a few hours and train. The first question he asked me was, “How can I get you out here for a seminar?” I said, “Well see if your students want me out here and do what you have to do to get me out here.”

All my seminars happen as a result of training with the people.

Scott:

Amazing. You get to see the world in exchange for Wing Chun.

Jin:

I’ll be in the Caribbean in May 2013, the island of Martinique. It’s a small island, but they do Wing Chun there, as a result of my videos! I’m really proud of that! It’s a group of 8 guys, all in the medical field.

Scott:

Interesting. I’ve noticed a lot of subscribers to our page are doctors and smarter folk.

Jin:

To really understand and enjoy Wing Chun you’ve got to have a brain. It caters to intelligent people.

Scott:

Not that you have to be a doctor to understand.

Jin:

You also find intelligence in other martial arts. But like Boxing and Muy Thai, you tend to get more brawlers. In Wing Chun, its more like chess. More thinking style of marital art. I think that’s why.

In June 2013 I’ll be out in Sweden.

Scott:

What part of Sweden?

Jin:

Not sure, there is a gentlemen out there who just started his Wing Chun school. Now he has a following and wants me to come out there, I’m really excited for that.

Scott:

I’ve been to Stockholm, its amazing.

Jin:

I can’t wait. What I want to make very clear to everyone, the Wing Chun that I am teaching its my Wing Chun. Not anyone else’s. I’m not calming, not saying its Hawking’s Wing Chun or Gary Lam Wing Chun, its just all my years and years of experience.

To be honest, 90% of my knowledge comes from outside of Wing Chun training. I really owe a lot to the martial arts that I studied outside of Wing Chun.

Scott:

Very cool. We should get around to wrapping it up. Do you have any training tips for anyone?

Jin:

Training tips. Always remember to practice your root. You really have to understand it, your stance is the key to everything, another thing is maintain perfect form. We all want to go fast. Wing Chun at the height of it is using as little muscle as possible. If you take muscle out of the equation, you have to replace it with something. Perfect skeletal alignment of the body creates a structure, once you lose that structure, it becomes like a slippery slope, you start making all these mistakes and use too much muscle.

Pay attention to taking your time, only go as fast as you can maintain that perfect form. Remember the details, like elbow position.

I’ve been saying this for a while. We have been working on a DVD. Everyone seems to be looking forward to it.

Scott:

It’s going to be a DVD you can download?

Jin:

Yes, download or mail. The reason why it is taking so long, is that I am very picky. I want to make it jammed packed with information. I want people to really understand my Wing Chun. I don’t want to put out a product that I’m not 100% completely proud of. I’ve had to redo it several times. I have to be completely satisfied with it. If I’m happy with it, I know everyone else will be.

I’m a product of buying DVD’s and they are just junk. You spend $100 and you learn very little. Often very vague in instruction.

Another thing is that it’s about the content. It’s not about production value. Of course you want it to look nice and pretty, but when it comes down to it, it’s about what’s IN the video, it’s all about the content.

This is why I am taking my time. When I finally do release it, I hope everyone will be proud of it.

Right now I will be moving everyone over to my facebook page.

Scott:

If we want to find you, go to your facebook page?

Jin:

Yea, head over to my China Boxer fan page. It will be strictly for answering questions. I’ll be posting or linking to my videos. I’ll also be putting up videos that are not available on Youtube. Facebook allows me to do a few things. It allows me to interact and blog more with the members. On youtube it’s hard to do that with the videos.

It will also allow people to ask questions. Man, I get so many messages on Youtube and I can never get to all of them. On Facebook I think it will be a lot easier.

Scott:

Greaet! We will throw a link up on our website.

Jin:

I just want to thank you for doing this. Anything I can do to bring the Wing Chun Community together. My big dream is that I can bring all the Wing Chun schools together. I want it to be just like the BJJ style, you go there, you’re welcome with open arms. They want to see what you know and they want to share what they know. I really hope the Bjj and Wing Chun community will be similar one day.



Scott:

I think that is an excellent closing statement. I just want to thank you on behave of the Wing Chun Geeks Community for an interview.

Jin:

Thanks a lot and take care!