Is Wing Chun being used the wrong way in fighting?

[drop bear]

On another thread, Nobody Important posed the following question:

Clearly, and feel free to argue, Wing Chun as a fighting art has failed miserably when put to the test. Perhaps Wing Chun isn't supposed to look like your doing the forms when fighting, but more importantly, about learning how to refine gross motor skill to combined motor skill and fine motor skill when under duress. Is the art of Wing Chun being used wrong?

It's an old question, but one worthy of further discussion. What are your thoughts?

yes and no.

But mostly yes.

Ok. A basic premis of fighting is that straight punches beat round punches. So if I am going to kick off a fight that has an element of ambush or verbal. Hitting the guy off the bat with three or four straight punches down the pipe works pretty well.

So lets go to the street. And someone comes towards you with a bit of the stink eye. And when he gets in range you drill him it works well.

But if the mechanics of the fight change at all and you hang on to that same mechanic you start to fight a loosing battle.

An extended toe to toe depends on cardio and your ability to be hit. If chun does not develop that. Or you just dont want to be involved in a meat grinder. As soon as your strikes stop becoming effective you need to GTFO. and start using a different method of striking.
Eg. a hockey fight.

Wing Chun doesn't and will stick to the center line and forward pressure while considering what they are doing will work against a more athletic harder guy.

If you are fighting at range. Straight boxing 1,2s have more juice behind them and more range.

So you try to enter with a shorter less powerful punch into a guy with a longer more powerful punch you better have some crafty foot work.

Ok. Crafty foot work. Honestly running straight at a guy doesn't count. You seed to bait people into overcommiting so you have time to enter and throw. Baiting people generally requires you to fight going backwards. And escape when things start to go south. this would mean a lot more moving off line and even god forbid some head movement.

This is without mentioning zero takedown defence. Zero ground work.

 

[KPM]

Anyways, I also agree on your second part, that as long as the principles are present so is the system, however, there has to be some semblance of technique that makes it identifiable as what it represents, otherwise, whats the sense in different systems that use relatively similar principles and theory. Style structure is also important in delivering the technique, its what hones the weapon.

Yes, here I agree with you. A system is more than the concepts and theories. It is also the biomechanics, or "engine." Otherwise one would have to say that JKD and Wing Chun are the same system since they share so many concepts and theories.

 

[KPM]

See this is a problem I think, the idea it should look a particular way. I posted a video elsewhere of Jerry Devone in a fight where he knocked a guy out a couple times. Was it Donnie Yen movie perfect? Nope. Could you see the Wing Chun in what he did though? Yes. Maybe this is just me but I have always looked at the way we train WC as being about teaching techniques to understand the principles with which you fight. If my bil or bong isnt at a perfect angle but I adhere to the principles I am still using WC. This may also come from the way Sifu Keith Mazza teaches (as he is the Sifu of my Sifu's). At one seminar he took a picture perfect stance, and said "this is how we train but this isn't how anyone is going to fight irl. The picture perfect man and wu sau are there to program you to know/protect your center and to stay relaxed vs tense with clenched fists.

I have always found it odd how WC is called a conceptual martial art, yet at the same time people expect it to have that picture perfect appearance. /shrug

Granted, nothing is going to look like "picture perfect" Wing Chun under stress. But I still maintain that there is a problem if, during a bout, you can't tell which fighter is the Wing Chun guy and which fighter is the kickboxer. Why spend loads of time training a specific powerbase or biomechanic for sending and receiving force, and then totally abandon it when sparring or fighting? Makes no sense to me.

 

[Flying Crane]

Granted, nothing is going to look like "picture perfect" Wing Chun under stress. But I still maintain that there is a problem if, during a bout, you can't tell which fighter is the Wing Chun guy and which fighter is the kickboxer. Why spend loads of time training a specific powerbase or biomechanic for sending and receiving force, and then totally abandon it when sparring or fighting? Makes no sense to me.

How do you know it has been abandoned?

I agree that the power base and biomechanics should not be abandoned. Developing those things is the point of the training. However, it can manifest in different ways, it can look different, and still be there. You do not need a certain shape for those items to be in place.

 

[drop bear]

If you can use it in a fight it works and since there are probably millions of people who do wing chun and it's impossible to ask them all so who knowsknows

Kind of like smoking and cancer. If one guy doesnt get cancer. Can we really be sure there is a link.

I guess untill we test every single person who smokes we will never really know.

Smoking. Probably wont kill you. Definitely make you look cool.

 

[KPM]

How do you know it has been abandoned?

I agree that the power base and biomechanics should not be abandoned. Developing those things is the point of the training. However, it can manifest in different ways, it can look different, and still be there. You do not need a certain shape for those items to be in place.

Different systems generate power in different ways. The biomechanic used by Wing Chun to generate power is different from that used by Thai Boxing, and both are very recognizable. If someone is fighting and claims to be doing Wing Chun, yet look just like a generic kickboxer, then they probably aren't using Wing Chun biomechanics. They may be doing "Wing Chun-inspired" Kickboxing or Sanda, but they shouldn't be claiming they represent the Wing Chun system while doing so.

 

[Martial D]

When I read comments like this I suspect that the author either has limited experience in WC, or has a limited notion of what WC entails. Not to be insulting, since you may be a very effective martial artist. But WC is much more than a "condiment", and if viewed that way will probably not function well. It is not a grab-bag of infighting tools to be bolted onto a generic, non-WC base

No, I am simply a realist. WC IS a grab bag, because as a complete system it just isn't effective for combat. I know that's blasphemy and all, but it's something I believe of all classical martial arts, not just WC. They are all grab bags of various worth when it comes to mastering your own body.

Many want to become style. I find it's better to assimilate the style. The baby, without the bathwater.

Again, this is only as it pertains to combat. I love tma and cma especially, it's all very dear to my soul. But I'm a realist.

 

[Juany118]

Granted, nothing is going to look like "picture perfect" Wing Chun under stress. But I still maintain that there is a problem if, during a bout, you can't tell which fighter is the Wing Chun guy and which fighter is the kickboxer. Why spend loads of time training a specific powerbase or biomechanic for sending and receiving force, and then totally abandon it when sparring or fighting? Makes no sense to me.

The problem is, in this context, "abandonment" becomes subjective. I remember when I posted the "Jerry" video on a thread you started on the WC forum. You noted how you could see the Wing Chun in it but there were other people who said they did not see WC on a thread in the general martial arts forum.

It can be hard to tell, outside looking in, whether a principle has been abandoned or not because we are "feeling" the force received or produced.

 

[drop bear]

Has nobody ever been able to defend themselves using their wing chun training?

you mean in the streets?

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=864271410401588

 

[DanT]

You practice:

Lap Da
Tan Da
Gan Da
Pak Da
Etc.

Yet when you spar, or fight, you try to box, even tho you don't know how to box. You practice those techniques, they work, you just suck at them.

The technique doesn't have to be completely changed to work. If you have to completely alter a technique to get it to work, you suck.

 

[Flying Crane]

Different systems generate power in different ways. The biomechanic used by Wing Chun to generate power is different from that used by Thai Boxing, and both are very recognizable. If someone is fighting and claims to be doing Wing Chun, yet look just like a generic kickboxer, then they probably aren't using Wing Chun biomechanics. They may be doing "Wing Chun-inspired" Kickboxing or Sanda, but they shouldn't be claiming they represent the Wing Chun system while doing so.

I guess I fundamentally disagree with this.

 

[Juany118]

I guess I fundamentally disagree with this.

As an example WC generates power like "old school" bare knuckle boxing. Physics is physics. Biomechanics are biomechanics. There are only so many ways the human body can generate power. One art may prioritize one method over the other but in the end there are a finite number of ways. As Bruce Lee said... "...unless there are human beings with three arms and four legs, unless we have another group of human beings that are structurally different from us.."

 

[Flying Crane]

As an example WC generates power like "old school" bare knuckle boxing. Physics is physics. Biomechanics are biomechanics. There are only so many ways the human body can generate power. One art may prioritize one method over the other but in the end there are a finite number of ways. As Bruce Lee said... "...unless there are human beings with three arms and four legs, unless we have another group of human beings that are structurally different from us.."

Yeah, and there are some different ways to generate power, but the root of my disagreement is that someone needs to look a certain way when they fight, just because they train in a certain system. I don't believe that at all.

 

[drop bear]

No, I am simply a realist. WC IS a grab bag, because as a complete system it just isn't effective for combat. I know that's blasphemy and all, but it's something I believe of all classical martial arts, not just WC. They are all grab bags of various worth when it comes to mastering your own body.

Many want to become style. I find it's better to assimilate the style. The baby, without the bathwater.

Again, this is only as it pertains to combat. I love tma and cma especially, it's all very dear to my soul. But I'm a realist.

You take a long hard look at yourself find the things you can fix and fix them.

The longer you leave it the harder it gets.

 

[drop bear]

As an example WC generates power like "old school" bare knuckle boxing. Physics is physics. Biomechanics are biomechanics. There are only so many ways the human body can generate power. One art may prioritize one method over the other but in the end there are a finite number of ways. As Bruce Lee said... "...unless there are human beings with three arms and four legs, unless we have another group of human beings that are structurally different from us.."

Yeah. But you are trying to work a system. So your delivery system needs to take advantage of the way you generate power.

So the same person can have radically different methods.

 

[anerlich]

...and to further this discussion...

Is it being "used" wrong...or "trained" wrong?

Subjective. I would counsel both you and the OP to use "wrongly" or "incorrectly", instead of "wrong". Since we're all getting smug here and everything.

 

[anerlich]

The main reason why Wing Chun gets a bad rap from (some) MMA fanboys is because up until the UFC it was hyped (by some) as the deadliest fighting art on the planet and its senior practitioners as invincible.

When this was shown to be incorrect, some thought and some still think quite a few deserved and still deserve to be force fed a diet of humble pie.

 

[anerlich]

But there is a lot of bad instruction out there.

Everyone in Wing Chun or other TCMAs thinks that 90% of the instruction out there is crap, but that they and their lineage belong to the other 10%.

You find a lot less of this in arts that compete regularly. Darwinism plays its part, and the incompetents and their instructors are quickly shown to be so. No one gets to sit on their laurels because their competitors are continually trying to improve, which pushes them on.

If your base of proof of competence is unrecorded "street fights", that doesn't apply. I suspect some people might even exaggerate or lie about such things ...

 

[anerlich]

WC IS a grab bag, because as a complete system it just isn't effective for combat. I know that's blasphemy and all

A grab bag might actually be better as it my cover more bases. I'm not sure a "complete system" can be a "grab bag".

You seem to be worried about blaspheming or insulting people or something. You'll have to try a lot harder if you want to be controversial or create offence. Don't give up, though, I see the beginnings of potential.

 

[Nobody Important]

Everyone in Wing Chun or other TCMAs thinks that 90% of the instruction out there is crap, but that they and their lineage belong to the other 10%.

You find a lot less of this in arts that compete regularly. Darwinism plays its part, and the incompetents and their instructors are quickly shown to be so. No one gets to sit on their laurels because their competitors are continually trying to improve, which pushes them on.

And this, ladies & gentlemen, brings us back to the thread that started this topic. A Wing Chun centric competition based on something other than Chi Sau. Jujutsu, Boxing, Muay Thai, Escrima, Chanbarra, Tae Kwon Do, Karate, Kendo etc. all have dedicated formats to test and guage their arts, they even have avenues to expand into more indepth events like MMA or Dog Brothers if they wish to.

Wing Chun only has Chi Sau competition, on rare occasions some Chunners enter Sanda or kickboxing, but this is far and few between and not a Wing Chun specific thing. I tend to agree with Geezer, if Wing Chun wants to stay away from Sanda & MMA, but still be recognized as a fighting art as touted by the senior generation (as anerlich stated), then a more realistic competative Wing Chun specific format is needed. It can only help the art grow.