Forms
Forms or Katas are within many different martial arts, and the forms are there to teach you how to do certain movements and techniques. Other martial arts have lots of different of forms or Katas which means there are a lot of different sequences and techniques to remember.
The problem with having lots of complicated forms or Katas means that the student tends to concentrate on remembering the sequences instead of learning that particular form of self-defence.
Wing Chun is different and has 3 open hand forms:
These are follwed by a wooden dummy from and two weapon forms, a Pole Form and a Butterfly Sword Form.
The forms are like an index; they provide a sequence of movements and different application(s) of the tools in the correct positions and how they should be applied. Therefore any Student then can go back to the forms and see how the techniques or tools should be applied.
In my experience every form whether it be Wing Chun or another martial art is open to interpretation from the public or fellow martial artists. Therefore there are a lot of different opinions with regards to why and how certain things are applied. The longer you study Wing Chun you will look deeper into the forms and see different techniques that may be hidden to a new student.
Everyone who studies Wing Chun is different, so opinions and application of the Wing Chun tools may differ.
The reason that you have multiple forms is to teach the student different theories and techniques at different stages of their development and each of the forms in Wing Chun increase in complexity and ability. The basic form Sil Lim Tao teaches the practitioner basic movements where as the more advanced forms like Biu Tze and the Muk Yan Chong (Wooden Dummy) form teach the student advanced techniques.
With this in mind you cannot baffle the student with complex theories and techniques from advanced forms at an early stage of their development
When ever you are training the forms you need to clear you mind and go into almost state of meditation thus being able to concentrate on what you are doing.
Each form is based around a concept or theory and contains well over 100+ movements. This may sound a lot of movements but this includes a lot of repetition as the saying goes "practice makes perfect." The reason for this repletion is because certain techniques are harder to do than others therefore repeating them throughout the form the practitioner gets used to doing them.
As wing theory is based around simplicity, each form is also broken down in to sections, this way it much easier for the practitioner to learn the sequence of movements and techniques and then join the sections together to create forms in their entirety.