Phillip Red Mond

On The Traditional Side Of Being effective

- Kleber Battaglia

SIFU PHILLIP REDMOND is one of two closed-door students of Grandmaster William Cheung in the United States. He has been training in the martial arts for over 50 years. In addition to Wing Chun, he has studied Hung Ga, Fu Jow Pai, Vee-Jitsu Te and Aiki-Jujitsu. He fought in full contact events in New York City.

Sifu Redmond began his Wing Chun training in 1970 and has had eight different Wing Chun Sifus—four of them were direct students of Grandmaster Ip Man. Two of his Sifus were from Wing Chun lineages outside of Ip Man’s.

In 1983, he became a student of Grandmaster William Cheung and became a Sifu of his Traditional Wing Chun system in 1991 and became a Master in 2004.

Sifu Redmond also taught Wing Chun at Yale University from 1990 to 1994.

In your opinion, what are the most important attributes to be developed through Wing Chun training?

The Wing Chun muscle memory development trained in the Siu Nim Tau form comes to mind. Subconscious movement is essentially moving without thinking too much about it. It comes from learning how to perform a task as efficiently as possible and then repeating it until it becomes second nature.

The slow repetitive moves of the form develop muscle or procedural memory. With repetition, the motor cortex part of your brain cements an action into its neural pathways so that it can “remember” where your hands should be in relationship to your centreline. The movement thus becomes second nature.

I started playing the trumpet when I was eight and my brain still remembers which muscles to fire next even after stop playing for a while.