wing chun effectiveness

[dungeonworks]

Am in total agreement with dungeonworks here.

Even Chi Sau is a simulated fight, all be it very controlled and restrained.

The fact remains that the best way of validating effectiveness, besides actually being in a fight, is by sparring....simple. I honestly dont get why this is even up for debate????

With so many attributes in Wing Chun, I wonder the same thing.

 

[jarrod]

exactly, WC isn't designed for sport...so maybe design a sport for WC?

jf

 

[bully]

I wouldn't read much into the comments on the bottom of Youtube vids. We don't even know who they are.

I could comment and say "Oh that stance is wrong etc"

And what the hell do I know? What is my background and experience.

Your VT might be different to my WC. I watched a guy do a dummy set, it looked a bit different to some I have seen but he seemed to have skills.

The comments were slating him for pivoting on his heels. He still moved around the dummy very well (imo) and seemed to have all the basic shapes.

As for me validating my WC, I used it once along time ago, it worked.

Alot of guys have also used it to good effect. WSL used it plenty of times.

It may not always work though, sparring with other styles will show holes in my WC. I have not done that for a while, due to physical limitations on my part.

When I hit a bag/pad my punches are strong. If I hit someone in the face with them they will do damage. Same with palm strikes. Bil Gee? I have never hit anyone in the eyes with one but I am sure it will do damage.

Kick wise, the same. My low (thats all I can do) heel kicks will cause damage.

Whether I can use these weapons under pressure in the real world is another question these days. I would certainly try if I was in fear for my life or my families. Practicing multi opponents/hard pressure tests will help but are not the be all and end all.

Back in the day when I trained hard in my 20's, we sparred a lot, hit each other a lot and got split lips and black eyes. No way would I do that now but It did help with conditioning of learning to take a shot and not freeze. We also used to back hand each other on the chest and top of legs until we couldn't take much more. Again this toughens you up.

I hope some of my ramblings give an idea of how I think you can prove WC effectiveness.

The only true way is to go and have some street fights, in this day and age that would be pretty stupid. You could go in the cage and do a form of WC and it would help to test you. You would modify it though to conform to the rules.

Lets put it this way, the first shot I would try to get in on the street is a heel kick to the knee cap and take the guy down as fast as possible. That wouldnt be welcome in a sport enviroment. I practice my heel kicks on bags and on my dummy. I do a controlled version in "play sparring". To validate it I would need to go and actually perform this kick on a real person and pop their knee. However the fact that the knee can only withstand a certain amount of pressure and the fact that I can perform a pretty hard kick leads me to believe that a knee would pop IF I ever got the shot in in the real world.

Lets hope I dont, but the way the world is going the odds are going the wrong way that I will.

With regards to the more tech stuff, someone with far more skill than me can comment I hope.

Good debate and very hard to answer. Cheers.

 

[chisauking]

Poor guy, your going off on a tangent now.

All scientist should know that the results of any test is only meaningful when the experiment is conducted under 'truthful' conditions.

What are the truthful elements found in the ring that relates to actual combat?

 

[chisauking]

dungeonworks sez: Where I am truly seeking an answer is how does Wing Chun validate its' effectiveness?

If you are so interested in how wing chun validates its effectiveness, let me ask you 'how does any other method validate its effectiveness?'

 

[Poor Uke]

dungeonworks sez: Where I am truly seeking an answer is how does Wing Chun validate its' effectiveness?

If you are so interested in how wing chun validates its effectiveness, let me ask you 'how does any other method validate its effectiveness?'

Bizzare have you never done any other martial art?

Simple answer sparring-randori. Most martial arts incorporate fighting against fully resisting partners.

exactly, WC isn't designed for sport...so maybe design a sport for WC?

I dont know why the majority of WC players get the idea that sparring is just for sport from?

It is a tried and tested (over the many millenia of MA training) method for prooving the effectivenes of your training.

 

[Poor Uke]

Poor guy, your going off on a tangent now.

All scientist should know that the results of any test is only meaningful when the experiment is conducted under 'truthful' conditions.

What are the truthful elements found in the ring that relates to actual combat?

Again isnt this obvious?

As has been mentioned by a number of posters, there are elements of aliveness, pressure and unpredictability. These things are all present in actual fights and so prepare you in some way for that environment. How can you say that these things arent useful???

 

[KamonGuy2]

Sparring is essential in any form of combat system. What I think people get confused over is the definition of sparring

I think it is extremely important to work against pressure. Sparring brings up the idea of two guys with gloves on tapping at each other and this is wrong. Sparring could be two guys rolling around on the floor in a clinch, or two guys standing an inch away from each other finding gaps in defences, or it could be gloving up with 14 oz gloves and going at it

In Kamon we have started working heavily on sparring with heavy gloves and there is nothing better to improve your overall game. Once you get comfortable taking a few hits and dealing with aggression, then you can start utilizing your wing chun in a more effective manner. I didnt realise how effective a fut sao was from distance until Master Chan showed us last week. He almost took an instructors head off with the power

Sparring is not the be all and end all, but like chi sao, or lok sao, or feeding techniques it is another way of helping your art grow

 

[dungeonworks]

dungeonworks sez: Where I am truly seeking an answer is how does Wing Chun validate its' effectiveness?

If you are so interested in how wing chun validates its effectiveness, let me ask you 'how does any other method validate its effectiveness?'

a QUESTION for an ANSWER?? :disgust:

As I have already stated, by sparring and sport competition such as kickboxing, MMA, grappling tournaments depending on the style.:boxing: I will say again because you seem to miss a lot of what I write, sport and sparring are not the the be all end all, but aside actual fighting, it is the best testing ground for techniques. You claim that it is not and I have asked you several times, what does Wing Chun do that allows a practitioner to KNOW what works and what doesn't.


.....aaaah forget it ChiSauKing. Just never mind. This is about the 4th time I have reworded and put my question into a posting and you still do not get the jist of it. :deadhorse

 

[dungeonworks]

I wouldn't read much into the comments on the bottom of Youtube vids. We don't even know who they are.

I could comment and say "Oh that stance is wrong etc"

And what the hell do I know? What is my background and experience.

Your VT might be different to my WC. I watched a guy do a dummy set, it looked a bit different to some I have seen but he seemed to have skills.

The comments were slating him for pivoting on his heels. He still moved around the dummy very well (imo) and seemed to have all the basic shapes.

As for me validating my WC, I used it once along time ago, it worked.

Alot of guys have also used it to good effect. WSL used it plenty of times.

It may not always work though, sparring with other styles will show holes in my WC. I have not done that for a while, due to physical limitations on my part.

When I hit a bag/pad my punches are strong. If I hit someone in the face with them they will do damage. Same with palm strikes. Bil Gee? I have never hit anyone in the eyes with one but I am sure it will do damage.

Kick wise, the same. My low (thats all I can do) heel kicks will cause damage.

Whether I can use these weapons under pressure in the real world is another question these days. I would certainly try if I was in fear for my life or my families. Practicing multi opponents/hard pressure tests will help but are not the be all and end all.

Back in the day when I trained hard in my 20's, we sparred a lot, hit each other a lot and got split lips and black eyes. No way would I do that now but It did help with conditioning of learning to take a shot and not freeze. We also used to back hand each other on the chest and top of legs until we couldn't take much more. Again this toughens you up.

I hope some of my ramblings give an idea of how I think you can prove WC effectiveness.

The only true way is to go and have some street fights, in this day and age that would be pretty stupid. You could go in the cage and do a form of WC and it would help to test you. You would modify it though to conform to the rules.

Lets put it this way, the first shot I would try to get in on the street is a heel kick to the knee cap and take the guy down as fast as possible. That wouldnt be welcome in a sport enviroment. I practice my heel kicks on bags and on my dummy. I do a controlled version in "play sparring". To validate it I would need to go and actually perform this kick on a real person and pop their knee. However the fact that the knee can only withstand a certain amount of pressure and the fact that I can perform a pretty hard kick leads me to believe that a knee would pop IF I ever got the shot in in the real world.

Lets hope I dont, but the way the world is going the odds are going the wrong way that I will.

With regards to the more tech stuff, someone with far more skill than me can comment I hope.

Good debate and very hard to answer. Cheers.

Thanks Bully. I can relate to some of the stuff you did when younger ! LOL

With regards to the knee kicks....sure they "can" cause fight ending damage, but it is a lower percentage that it wll than will not. They are not always as dramatic in results as most people believe. Watch Brandon Vera fight in the UFC. He has done the WC heel kick (Muay Thai equivalent anyways) and it did nothing on three occasions. Anderson Silva did the same thing to Thales Leites for three whole rounds to no avail.

This is what I am meaning by validation in a sporting environment.

 

[dungeonworks]

Again isnt this obvious?

As has been mentioned by a number of posters, there are elements of aliveness, pressure and unpredictability. These things are all present in actual fights and so prepare you in some way for that environment. How can you say that these things arent useful???

I feel your pain brother! there is only so many ways to re write one thing.

 

[Poor Uke]

LOL bonkers or what?

 

[dungeonworks]

LOL bonkers or what?

DEFFINITELY not "...or what?"!!!

 

[profesormental]

Greetings.

I have pressing issues concerning the government here trying to regulate martial arts, thus my replies have been left in generalities.

To answer your questions in a satisfactory way, Mr. Poor Uke, would require a book length monograph which I have scheduled for the future, hopefully near. So forgive the general statements. If you ask for specific aspects, then I can answer as best I can with the references and experiments to back it up. Fair?

Also, I think I've been misunderstood on the sparring issue.

I love simulations and sparring. They are important learning tools. I've never argued that. I love training San Da and MMA. Yet my quoted statement said that it is not the be all end all of validation. You can use it as a PERSONAL gauge of skill compared to another SPECIFIC individual.

i.e. if the opponent you have is really good, no matter who fight him, the other guys *** will be kicked, so everyone else would suck.

That is not a good validation procedure. You should know.

Simulations and Practice Combat Scenario Training, on the other hand, better prepare you for specific instances of self defense, law enforcement and even military type situations.

The thing is that in sport type situations, it is not the same as self defense type situations, because both opponents are in a sportive mindset of offense and defense...

not a raging head ripping mental state of violence.

More later.

Not to get off topic just to mention... I will post in general martial arts or wherever appropriate on this regulation thing... I need the help of all members... in short, they want to obligate us to pay for licensing (in our school, $50 per instructor plus $150 for the school, every year or 2), employ random drug testing (even though they are not our employers), only approved styles by the Department of Recreation and Sports can be licensed, etc. Crazy stuff...

Back on topic.

I kick *** on a regular basis, my *** doesn't get kicked on a regular basis...

STAMP OF VALIDATION. APPROVED.
P O W ! ! ! ( x_*)O--('.' Q)

\m/ (>.<) \m/ ALRIGHT!!!



Sincerely,

Juan Mercado-Robles

 

[chisauking]

I feel as despaired as you, dungeonworks.

I’d spent time trying to explain to you & poor guy – supposedly a scientist – that one can’t validate the effectiveness of a method conceived purely for combat in a sports arena. It’s like trying to validate the fire resistance of a material without using fire! Or, testing the capabilities of an airplane underwater. Off course, just like wing chun in a sporting context, it wouldn’t do well simply because it wasn’t conceived for that particular purpose.

I also illustrated clearly that the results & achievements of any \ all sporting events is specific to its own rules & competition environment. Winning a kickboxing or MMA competition simply means that – you are good under those particular rules \ environment. It only validates the effectiveness of the style\methods being used within those rules & parameters. Change the rules \ environment slightly, and you would get different results. This is very easy to prove. Put the best MMA people in western boxing, and they would have trouble with any professional boxers. Put the best wrestlers in Thai boxing, and they would be beaten easily under Thai boxing rules \ conditions. Put the fastest F1 cars under conditions which doesn’t allow it to exhibit its strong points, and it will lose. It’s the rules & parameters of the sport which dictates the best approach \ method to be used. Unfortunately, wing chun doesn’t do well under any rules. But of course, some people who buy into the pepsi & popcorn mentality and TV shows can’t or refuse to accept that.

If only people bothered to conduct their own researches thoroughly, they would comprehend the profile of the wing chun combat method a little…

1. In wing chun fighting, the objective is to inflict as much injury to your enemy as quick & as efficiently as possible, doing whatever it takes with no rules. The intent is to damage, destroy, and kill.
2. We attack the weakest points with our strongest weapons, not relenting & without mercy until our opponent is defeated.
3. Wing chun has many fighting strategies. For example, we use the surrounding environment to our advantage. If a big window were available, I would try to divert \ deflect my enemy into the glass, hoping the broken glass will slit his throat as he falls through the glass. Or, I would try to ram my opponent’s face into the corner of a brick wall.
4. Be totally ruthless once engaged in combat, being totally calm, cool and collective.
5. We sacrifice absolute power for speed & accuracy in our attacks.
6. We use the easiest methods to apply. For example, clawing out a large chunk of your face with our nails; poking into your eyes; biting; kneeing into your testicles. These tactics are so easy to apply, even a female can do it easy. Off course, people say your opponent can apply those techniques as well. Yes, they can, but unlike trying to punch someone out, or grapple them to the ground, these tactics can be applied by anybody, so it’s a question of who can apply it first.

Any one with a little intelligence can see from some of the key points above why wing chun can never be applied in any sporting events. We can never use what makes this method of fighting so effective. Even if all those techniques were allowed, no moral person with conscious would enter a ‘sporting’ event with such intent & mindset.

It’s also apparent that you have ‘duel’ standards or\and bias towards kickboxing, MMA, and related events. You say other styles’ effectiveness can be validated by kickboxing, MMA, sparring….but you can’t accept the same regarding wing chun.

Again, if you only took the effort into researching wing chun a little, you would know that wing chun adopts a large sparring syllabus into their training, starting with chisau and then progressing into gwohsau. Some people will say chisau & gwohsau isn’t sparring, but that’s down to their own training limitations. When I use to train intensively, my trousers use to stick to my shins from the congealed blood sustained from kick sparring. I’ve lost a lot of blood from bleeding noses, mouth, etc. I’ve even sent opponents’ to hospital from gwoh-sau practice – not intentional, but accidents happen when people spar intensively. When I was with my first teacher, Kan wah chit, people were taken away on a stretcher, from friendly demos! Wing chun gwoh-sau isn’t fighting, but the intensity is what you & your partner is capable of, and it’s just as intensive, if not more so, than any other form of sparring methods adopted by other styles.

I will conclude by saying that in this day and age of the gun, it’s rather pointless to focus too much on the effectiveness – or disparity – of different styles. Just practice what you believe in, but more importantly, what you enjoy doing the most. In truth, people who invest so much time & money in obsolete fighting methods are dinosaurs anyway, who still don’t realise that there are far easier & quicker ways of doing things. I don’t know about the US, but here in the UK, any streetwise kid with money can arm themselves with weapons. Only a few weeks’ ago in my city, gang members were caught with M10s – submachine guns that would pump metal into your sorry *** regardless of whether you practiced kickboxing or wing chun. Even if we discount firearms, picking up a iron bar would more than dissuade any K1 champion from fighting with us. Further more, most fights nowadays don’t start on a 1-to-1 basis, it’s usually multiple thugs attacking 1. So, how does your ‘sports’ derived style deal with that?

For my part, I love wing chun because I don’t see it purely as combat; I enjoy it because I see it as human ‘chess’. The sheer enjoyment from competing with my fellow martial arts brothers on a skill level, and to push my own personal limits to new boundaries, is the real reason for my perseverance & determination. Using it for bashing people or competing in a sporting event is the last thing on my mind.

In the meantime, perhaps you & the scientist could verify whether wing chun is effective or not in actual combat and not in the ring. Go and look for the wing chunners that has a reputation for fighting and threaten them & their families (you have to do this because they may not take you seriously otherwise and therefore have no ‘intent’ on fighting you). Take your handycam to record the proof. Of course, if wing chun was as ineffective as all those ring events prove, those chunners would never be able to pull off their bs ‘too deadly’ bilgee to the eyes techniques, or the silly stomp kick to the knee nonsense, as no-one has been able to execute them in the ‘ring’. You’d be able to post the proof on ********do, and expose wing chun for the fraud that it’s.

All in the name of scientific research, and the ONLY way to validate a fighting methods effectiveness.

I will exit this thread now, as I feel there's nothing further to add, and hope people don't take what I'd said as an insult. My point was, and still is, that you can't validate a method's effectiveness in anything other than what that method was conceived for.

 

[KamonGuy2]

Exactly. I bash my head against the wal on other forums where they say that because wing chun does not appear in the cage it is rubbish. I have fought in the cage. In bare knuckle tournaments. In gloved up boxing matches. I will testify now that whilst it is nice understanding how pressure works, those environments are not realistic in any fashion.

The classic example was the finale of UFC heavyweights where one of the fighters was disqualified because he used the tip of his elbow in a downward motion in the ground and pound position. It was a banned technique. The opponent was smashed to smithereens. Yet the rules of the cage didnt allow it. Therefore, cage and ringwork are limited by these kind of rules

Being in a street scenario as compared to a ring scenario is completely different. In a ring, the adrenaline still pumps but you are confined to certain techniques

Sparring with heavy gloves is a great training technique because it gets you moving, gets you used to taking impacts and your opponent can really go for you. Yet, it is still only as useful as simulated environments or chi sao.

The true effectiveness comes from wing chun's ability comes from its efficient techniques, its close quarter environment, its ability to use minimal energy and its power/speed

Most arts do not work these, and certainly you will not find an art that works all of these areas

 

[Poor Uke]

The true effectiveness comes from wing chun's ability comes from its efficient techniques, its close quarter environment, its ability to use minimal energy and its power/speed

Most arts do not work these, and certainly you will not find an art that works all of these areas

Now now thats just plain wrong!

Judo, JJ, Sambo and Arnis all train close quarter using minimal energy concepts and using speed and power.

 

[dosk3n]

I can see this thread going on and on and on. There are too many opinions on this which is not really a bad thing.

My thoughts on the subject are the same as many others though.

Sparing, competition and fighting are all different things and WC validates itself through fighting. Either through bar fights, street brawls or any other non orginised fight. These fights can and most likely have happened with people of other martial art back grounds which validates the art.

But to go deeper into my thoughs on the subjects of validating WC or any other MA, I dont think there is one art better than another and each art has pro's and con's and in the end it is the individuals skill in using that art that is validated not the art itself.

 

[seasoned]

I can see this thread going on and on and on. There are too many opinions on this which is not really a bad thing.

My thoughts on the subject are the same as many others though.

Sparing, competition and fighting are all different things and WC validates itself through fighting. Either through bar fights, street brawls or any other non orginised fight. These fights can and most likely have happened with people of other martial art back grounds which validates the art.

But to go deeper into my thoughs on the subjects of validating WC or any other MA, I dont think there is one art better than another and each art has pro's and con's and in the end it is the individuals skill in using that art that is validated not the art itself.[/quote]
This is a very good point, and my sentiments also. In the end, even a good street fighter, could be formative. Know your art well and train from the heart would be my only criteria.

 

[Poor Uke]

Sparing, competition and fighting are all different things and WC validates itself through fighting. Either through bar fights, street brawls or any other non orginised fight. These fights can and most likely have happened with people of other martial art back grounds which validates the art.

But to go deeper into my thoughs on the subjects of validating WC or any other MA, I dont think there is one art better than another and each art has pro's and con's and in the end it is the individuals skill in using that art that is validated not the art itself.

I agree. Ultimatley only a real fight is going to proove anything. The point was more along the lines of how do you know if your training works before you get into a fight.

Do you see where I'm comming from?