Wing Chun and sparring - staying true to techniques

[Kung Fu Wang]

Im wearing the red gloves, i think at :25 you can clearly see a tan da and at :27 a lap da, etc.. My sparring partner here is way more skilled then me, and has been training for much longer. Any constructive feedback is much appreciated.

Do you use YJKYM? What's your opponent on using YJKYM in sparring?

 

[Juany118]

That's my view of every art, Juany. Others have different opinions, but to me, it's all about what fits within the principles.

Oh I am on board with that idea as well but WC was the first non-hybrid MA I encountered that explicitly says it of itself vs me saying it as a practitioner. It's probably one of the reasons I was attracted to it.

 

[Hyoho]

wrong post

 

[Bino TWT]

The ones who say you shouldn't spar because they don't want to blunt the edge of their deadly techniques are generally the ones that can't chain punch their way out of a wet paper bag and get clobbered by the drunk untrained guy in the bar with the extra medium Tap Out shirt on.

 

[Phobius]

My problem is that I do not call training for sparring even if I perhaps should.

Sparring is a bad word in people's mind. Instead it is better to do alive training and execute it just like sparring. That way people only hear "alive training" and don't think it is about getting their head smashed in.

Fighting three people at once that are limited to simple kicks and boxing only, this is not sparring. It is simply drilling against multiple opponents.

Having people move around avoid getting hit and trying to find a good position, angle, distance and timing to strike back. That is not sparring but rather a drill to remove stiffness, maintain structure and train your mind to see what is and is not there.

So in truth, I do not do as much sparring as I would like. More alive training in what I do so far, or when educating others I often prefer to have them hitting me and do my best to avoid being hit while trying to demonstrate why or how they should move. Being unprepared by what will come I have to step up my game and if my focus drifts then in worst case scenario I can always show them in a more structured drill fashion with a hint that they need to explore it for themselves eventually.

Problem I have still is talking and instructing while taking hits that does not necessarily look at all like WC is good training but whenever I lost track of what I was trying to say or how I should say it.... it can sometime cause me to get hit myself. Leading to some laughter from my students.

Then again I am not my sifu as I have told the students. I have still much to learn and make many errors myself so they should never trust me... or my sifu... only trust what they figured out themselves.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Better to educate people about sparring and the various types of sparring, than to make up a term for the sole purpose of easing someone's mind. Educate them and explain what you do and what you don't do. Don't baby the mind with feel good terms.

Not saying that Alive training is bad or useless just saying that it's different from sparring. If you do alive training instead of sparring then great. If you do alive training because people don't like the word sparring then you could be degrading the things that help people learn how to actually use your system.

 

[Martial D]

Better to educate people about sparring and the various types of sparring, than to make up a term for the sole purpose of easing someone's mind. Educate them and explain what you do and what you don't do. Don't baby the mind with feel good terms.

Not saying that Alive training is bad or useless just saying that it's different from sparring. If you do alive training instead of sparring then great. If you do alive training because people don't like the word sparring then you could be degrading the things that help people learn how to actually use your system.

Alive train...sparring..whatever. just words.

What it boils down to is simple..to get good at an activity you must do the activity. Therefore, if the activity is fighting...fight.

This is of course not practical to those of us that need our arms and legs for other things(ie we would prefer not to be injured all the time), so we must decide for ourselves how closely we want to simulate 'fighting' in training. It's the classic risk vs reward scenario.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Alive train...sparring..whatever. just words.

Words matter and have meaning. Define how you see Alive training. Now is it the same as Tai Chi push hands that beginners do in training. Is it the same as sparring at a slower pace for the purpose of giving each of the students an opportunity to learn and see their mistakes. Is it the same as no contact sparring? Or in my case partner shadow boxing sparring, where students start off by shadow boxing and but using each other to help visualize our imaginary target. Would any of these be the same as alive training?

 

[DaveB]

Words matter and have meaning. Define how you see Alive training. Now is it the same as Tai Chi push hands that beginners do in training. Is it the same as sparring at a slower pace for the purpose of giving each of the students an opportunity to learn and see their mistakes. Is it the same as no contact sparring? Or in my case partner shadow boxing sparring, where students start off by shadow boxing and but using each other to help visualize our imaginary target. Would any of these be the same as alive training?

Words do have meaning but individual usage varies and once we step into the murky world of terminologies it gets even more individual. My own definitions of sparring vs alive training is different to both of yours.

No amount if chest beating will bring everyone aroundbto one way of doing things. Sometimes you just have to ask what people mean.

 

[Martial D]

Define how you see Alive training.

I thought I just did. Alive training would be training in a way that mimics the activity you are training for as closely as possible.

 

[KPM]

When I was doing FMA, the term "alive training" meant really anything that departed from a rote drill. In other words, you could do a drill that repeated the same motions over and over....like single sticking hands in Wing Chun, or you could do a drill that was much more unpredictable and variable....like "free" double sticking hands in Wing Chun. The second would be considered "alive" while the first would not. Certainly sparring would be considered "alive", but other forms of training were considered "alive" as well as long as they required "responding on the fly" and were unpredictable.

 

[wingchun100]

Sparring is needed in more WC schools. That is my opinion. Full stop.