We consider the low energy effective action of QCD below the chiral symmetry breaking scale, including, in Wilson's spirit, all operators of dimensionality less or equal to 6 which can be built with quark and chiral fields. The effect of gluon interactions is contained in a number of coupling constants, whose running is studied. The resulting model is an extension of both the chiral quark model and the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio one. Constraints on the coefficients of the effective Lagrangian are derived from the requirement of chiral symmetry restoration at energies above the chiral symmetry breaking scale, from matching to QCD at intermediate scales, and by fitting some hadronic observables, In this model two types of pseudoscalar states (massless pions and massive Π-mesons), as well as one scalar one arise as a consequence of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. Their masses and coupling constants are studied. We also predict a number of low energy structural constants. We find out that QCD favors a low energy effective theory which is largely dominated by the simplest chiral quark model, whereas higher dimensional operators (such as those of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio type) can be assumed to be small.