IWTA - Worlds Largest Martial Arts Organisation
Great Grandmaster Leung Ting began to teach martial arts in 1967. In 1970 he opened a well-equipped school in Hong Kong and made teaching his main profession. The "International Wing Tsun Association" (IWTA) and acts as the worldwide umbrella-organisation to which other multinational branches such as the International WingTsun Organisation (IWTO) or the European WingTsun Organisation (EWTO) are affiliated.
The IWTA has schools in over 60 countries, and has gained a large
following in the western world. There are now over 2,000 WingTsun
schools in Europe, most of them in Germany and its neighboring
countries. With over 1,000,000 practitioners worldwide, the IWTA is
currently one of if not the largest martial arts organizations in the
world. This growth owes mainly to Leung Ting’s German headstudent,
Keith Kernspecht.
Leung Ting Gym, Nathan Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Grandmaster Keith R. Kernspecht made the acquaintance of Leung Ting, the world's highest-ranking WT Master, in 1975 and invited him to Germany in 1976, where he gave Germany's first public demonstration of WingTsun, a Chinese martial art previously completely unknown in Europe. Since its formation in Kiel in 1976 the European WingTsun Organisation (EWTO) has carried out three major functions: 1) to maintain and develop the theory and practice of WingTsun, 2) to act as an umbrella- organisation for all European WT-students and instructors and 3) to represent WingTsun towards the public. The EWTO the European WingTsun Organisation is situated in Langenzell Germany which teaches WingTsun full time over six hours a day.
