How Long Does it Take to Master a Wing Chun Technique?

Let’s talk about how long it takes to master a Wing Chun technique.

I think it was Malcolm Gladwell who said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill.

Lets apply that principle to Wing Chun. We have a lot of techniques but for our example, let’s use Tan Sau.

It takes me about 1 second to do Tan Sau. If I were to follow this maxim of 10,000 hours of practice, let’s break down how many times I need to do Tan Sau before I can master it.

There are 3600 seconds in an hour. Since we need to do it for 10,000 hours, that’s essentially 3600 x 10000 = 36,000,000. This means I need to do Tan Sau 36,000,000 times before I can master it. That’s only with one arm too!

The reason I bring this up is, even though it’s a large number, it’s definitely attainable. Actually, you can do Tan Sau non stop, without rest, and you can probably reach that number in a little over a year.

But the point is, I don’t think mastery should be the end goal. I can’t speak for you but for me, my goal is to continue learning, and never stopping, so I can keep expanding my Wing Chun.

Question: What is your ultimate goal in Wing Chun?