What does wing chun look like?

[chisauking]

Wing chun is such a difficult art to apply in real time, most people seem to form the opinion that wing chun doesn't look like wing chun in action.

Lots of wing chun practitioners post their wing chun sparring clips on the net, and it looks like anything other than wing chun. One can't see any of the 'tools' in use (tan, bong, fook, wu, gan, kwan, bil, etc) and more often than not, it resembles more to kickboxing'.

In fact, many people say wing chun doesn't look like wing chun, and under pressure, all fighting looks like MMA actions.

If you are a wing chun practitioner, and you can't apply your wing chun tools under light or medium sparring, have you ever wondered why?

If you believe wing chun should look like MMA under pressure, then may I ask why are you still practising wing chun? Would it not be easier to just learn MMA techniques, since it's closer to your objective?

 

[teekin]

Well it has noodles and often some sort of vegtable. It can have beef or shrimp or chicken as well.
What? Ohhhhh . . . . Never Mind.

Lori

 

[mook jong man]

I believe Wing Chun does look like Wing Chun in action , but it comes down to how you were trained.

People these days are in such a rush to learn a new trick every training session that they don't spend enough time on the basics like stance , Sil Lum Tao and pivoting.

Countless hours have to be spent on this stuff in order to build a good foundation and ingrain it into your mind and body.

I heard that Tsui Seung Tin would spend five hours just practicing pivoting , what modern day students would have the patience and fortitude to train like that these days.

Of course the commercial reality these days is that most schools would be empty if they trained this way still , these days they expect to be learning the wooden dummy inside a week of joining.

Once the basics are perfected then and only then should a student be allowed to progress to learning chi sau and all the various deflections and kicks.

These deflections must also be taught in a systematic way with the partner attacking in a predetermined sequence so that the student performs many hundreds of repetitions of the various defences.

Then the speed and intensity of the attacks are increased , if the student is coping ok with that and showing a certain degree of speed and correctness of movement .

Finally you can start to add mobility and limited randomness to the equation and then later total random attacks.

I remember watching my seniors spar and it didn't look like kick boxing or mma , I can see the strikes being executed in those styles.
But when I watched my seniors there would be an attack and then the counter attack would come and be over in half a second .

The hand techniques were so fast it was hard to say exactly what they were using , but you could certainly hear the noise on the other guys chest protector and then would come the finishing stamp kick , hook kick or elbow strike and sweep etc.

They could apply what they had learned by reflex because they had been there for years and put in the hard yards and many thousands upon thousands of repetitions .

I remember people asking Sigung Tsui all the time ,
Student: How can I make my punching faster and more powerful.
Sigung: Practice Sil Lum Tao.
Student: How can I make my kicks better.
Sigung: Practice Sil Lum Tao.
Student: How can I improve my reflexes.
Sigung: Practice Sil Lum Tao.

His answer was always the same and not really what they wanted to hear , because they thought it was so basic , they wanted some sort of magic bullet that would fast track their training .

But the answer was simple , you just have to put in a lot of work and time and a lot of that time is spent doing the form.

I truly believe that a person with a good grounding in Sil Lum Tao will beat the crap out of somebody who has completed the whole system in a rush.

 

[geezer]

I believe Wing Chun does look like Wing Chun in action , but it comes down to how you were trained.
...I truly believe that a person with a good grounding in Sil Lum Tao will beat the crap out of somebody who has completed the whole system in a rush.

Another good post and I agree with the basic sentiment. Long hours training your foundation, reinforcing basic techniques through repetition of simple drill, gradually freeing it up and moving into sparring under the vigilant eyes of a good sifu... and above all never rushing to learn more, instead focusing on learning better.

On the other hand, I think endlessly repeating a form by itself, without understanding and drilling the applications is a dead end. The forms are not a magic dance that will make you a great martial artist. SNT especially, is like an alphabet. You must know it by heart, but just as knowing the alphabet alone will not make you a writer, SNT alone will not make you a fighter.

Oh and to address the OP, when I spar it looks like WC (actually like the stuff taught in the NVTO). Sometimes it looks good, and sometimes it looks crappy, but that's what it looks like, because that's all I know. Unless I'm holding a stick, then it'll look like Eskrima.

 

[yak sao]

I believe Wing Chun does look like Wing Chun in action , but it comes down to how you were trained.

People these days are in such a rush to learn a new trick every training session that they don't spend enough time on the basics like stance , Sil Lum Tao and pivoting.

Countless hours have to be spent on this stuff in order to build a good foundation and ingrain it into your mind and body.

I heard that Tsui Seung Tin would spend five hours just practicing pivoting , what modern day students would have the patience and fortitude to train like that these days.

Of course the commercial reality these days is that most schools would be empty if they trained this way still , these days they expect to be learning the wooden dummy inside a week of joining.

Once the basics are perfected then and only then should a student be allowed to progress to learning chi sau and all the various deflections and kicks.

These deflections must also be taught in a systematic way with the partner attacking in a predetermined sequence so that the student performs many hundreds of repetitions of the various defences.

Then the speed and intensity of the attacks are increased , if the student is coping ok with that and showing a certain degree of speed and correctness of movement .

Finally you can start to add mobility and limited randomness to the equation and then later total random attacks.

I remember watching my seniors spar and it didn't look like kick boxing or mma , I can see the strikes being executed in those styles.
But when I watched my seniors there would be an attack and then the counter attack would come and be over in half a second .

The hand techniques were so fast it was hard to say exactly what they were using , but you could certainly hear the noise on the other guys chest protector and then would come the finishing stamp kick , hook kick or elbow strike and sweep etc.

They could apply what they had learned by reflex because they had been there for years and put in the hard yards and many thousands upon thousands of repetitions .

I remember people asking Sigung Tsui all the time ,
Student: How can I make my punching faster and more powerful.
Sigung: Practice Sil Lum Tao.
Student: How can I make my kicks better.
Sigung: Practice Sil Lum Tao.
Student: How can I improve my reflexes.
Sigung: Practice Sil Lum Tao.

His answer was always the same and not really what they wanted to hear , because they thought it was so basic , they wanted some sort of magic bullet that would fast track their training .

But the answer was simple , you just have to put in a lot of work and time and a lot of that time is spent doing the form.

I truly believe that a person with a good grounding in Sil Lum Tao will beat the crap out of somebody who has completed the whole system in a rush.

Well said.......to add to it if I may, I think many schools, Wing Chun, TKD, karate, whatever, start sparring too soon and as such they haven't given the student enough time to develop their reflexes/techniques and so the student reverts back to what he does (or doesn't) know.

 

[wushuguy]

depending on how one has learned and practiced, that is how their WC will look like. having the hand positions drilled in you by repetition, and learning to free flow the techniques in mon sau or gor sau, those are the steps to bringing the WC techs to real application. more one practices mon sau (asking hands) and gor sau (speaking hands), then the more eloquent one will be in conversation. Without foundation, one will look like common bickering or unintelligible speaking.

in conversation, one will still find lop sau, biu sau, tan, pak, cao, bong, jaam, wu, etc. but it may be blended or very momentary as to not be noticed by those who are untrained in WC. or it may be done in an "unorthodox" manner but still recognizable by practitioners. for example, wai kwan sau (outside rolling hands) is normally practice both arms moving simultaneously, one arm becomes tan, the other a low bong, but it might be used as a staggered low punch followed by a quick tan to clear the upper gate which then would flow into the next technique and position ....

 

[mook jong man]

On the other hand, I think endlessly repeating a form by itself, without understanding and drilling the applications is a dead end. The forms are not a magic dance that will make you a great martial artist. SNT especially, is like an alphabet. You must know it by heart, but just as knowing the alphabet alone will not make you a writer, SNT alone will not make you a fighter.

You've got a point there , its crucial that you also work on the applications and seek to understand how they work not just mimic your instructor.

I believe the applications and the form work together hand in glove , the form helps the applications and the applications help the form .

Whenever I have had a problem performing a particular application I have had to go back and re- examine the movement in the form.

Most of the time this solved the problem straight away , but there were other times when it didn't.

Those times I just had to play around with the technique and use trial and error until I got it right .

Usually the cause of the problem was that I had been performing the corresponding movement in the form slightly incorrect , so my reference point was screwed up to begin with.

But it was all good because it uncovered something that was wrong and enabled me to make slight alterations to the way I perform the particular movement in the form and make it right.

That sort of thing has happened time and time again , they're only minute adjustments and from looking you probably wouldn't be able to tell , but they make all the difference in the application.

 

[Vajramusti]

The key is whether the observer knows enough about wing chun to recognize wing chun in action. As an example- the biu shooting motion in the forms usually has the arms straight-to learn how to release the energy when you are working out alone. Against an opponent the arm may look bent in order to adjust-spring like- to the opponent when contact takes place.

 

[chisauking]

Well, all the people that's responded so far agree with me that wing chun should look like wing chun in application.....so that's buggered things up! Left me with not much to add, lol.

Come on, let's play the white man, I know many of you guys out their apply wing chun like kickboxing, so don't be shy and let's hear your perspective why you apply wing chun the way you do.

 

[chisauking]

The key is whether the observer knows enough about wing chun to recognize wing chun in action. As an example- the biu shooting motion in the forms usually has the arms straight-to learn how to release the energy when you are working out alone. Against an opponent the arm may look bent in order to adjust-spring like- to the opponent when contact takes place.

Joy: I think most wing chunners would know what wing chun tool are when they see it.

In general, wing chun should look like wing chun, right? If so, how come most clips on the net doesn't portry this?

 

[chisauking]

I believe Wing Chun does look like Wing Chun in action , but it comes down to how you were trained.

People these days are in such a rush to learn a new trick every training session that they don't spend enough time on the basics like stance , Sil Lum Tao and pivoting.

Countless hours have to be spent on this stuff in order to build a good foundation and ingrain it into your mind and body.

I heard that Tsui Seung Tin would spend five hours just practicing pivoting , what modern day students would have the patience and fortitude to train like that these days.

Of course the commercial reality these days is that most schools would be empty if they trained this way still , these days they expect to be learning the wooden dummy inside a week of joining.

Once the basics are perfected then and only then should a student be allowed to progress to learning chi sau and all the various deflections and kicks.

These deflections must also be taught in a systematic way with the partner attacking in a predetermined sequence so that the student performs many hundreds of repetitions of the various defences.

Then the speed and intensity of the attacks are increased , if the student is coping ok with that and showing a certain degree of speed and correctness of movement .

Finally you can start to add mobility and limited randomness to the equation and then later total random attacks.

I remember watching my seniors spar and it didn't look like kick boxing or mma , I can see the strikes being executed in those styles.
But when I watched my seniors there would be an attack and then the counter attack would come and be over in half a second .

The hand techniques were so fast it was hard to say exactly what they were using , but you could certainly hear the noise on the other guys chest protector and then would come the finishing stamp kick , hook kick or elbow strike and sweep etc.

They could apply what they had learned by reflex because they had been there for years and put in the hard yards and many thousands upon thousands of repetitions .

I remember people asking Sigung Tsui all the time ,
Student: How can I make my punching faster and more powerful.
Sigung: Practice Sil Lum Tao.
Student: How can I make my kicks better.
Sigung: Practice Sil Lum Tao.
Student: How can I improve my reflexes.
Sigung: Practice Sil Lum Tao.

His answer was always the same and not really what they wanted to hear , because they thought it was so basic , they wanted some sort of magic bullet that would fast track their training .

But the answer was simple , you just have to put in a lot of work and time and a lot of that time is spent doing the form.

I truly believe that a person with a good grounding in Sil Lum Tao will beat the crap out of somebody who has completed the whole system in a rush.

Just to digress off topic a little, I would say I agree with the gist of what you say, mook jong, but I would add the following.

Although I truly believe that wing chun skills take time & hard work to aquire, I aslo believe the curriculum -- a well organised & logical approach to teaching -- plays an extremely important part. With one of my wing chun teachers, I'd to sit in the YJKYM for ages before he would even let me progress to yat chee keun. I would be taught 1 or two techniques only after he thought I'd performed the last techniques to a high standard, and it took me quite a long time to finish the first form. In fact, because it took me so long to complete, having bit & peices fed me over a long period of time, I had problems stringing the whole form together and remembering the sequences. However, with another teacher, he would teach you the whole form in a day, and he would be very casual about it. He's a very relaxed person, giving you no pressure to perform. With this later approach, I could remember everything very easy, and my skills advanced at a very rapid rate. Also, the specific drills which he conceived, brought out my attributes very quick. In all my travels seeking out high level wing chun, I've yet to see another method that brings out one's wing chun skills faster. In comparision, I would say students of over 20-years' experience would have problems with his students of 1 or 2-years' training.

Yes, hard work & time is a factor, but the quality of teaching is much more important in my opinion.

People would be surprised that I teach all my students SLT in less than 4-weeks, with 2 lessons per week. And if it were private lessons, I would teach them in 2- to 3 lessons.

All too often, people are spending far too long learning a style that purports to be quick to learn. In my experience, taking so long to learn may not be the best approach and doesn't guarantee quality.

 

[Vajramusti]

Joy: I think most wing chunners would know what wing chun tool are when they see it.

In general, wing chun should look like wing chun, right? If so, how come most clips on the net doesn't portry this?

------------------------------------------------------------
Well folks are so stuck om the media the common assumption is that net representations provide the whole truth.

 

[chisauking]

------------------------------------------------------------
Well folks are so stuck om the media the common assumption is that net representations provide the whole truth.

I whole heartedly agree with you that the net don't represent the whole truth, but again, my observation doesn't stem from the net alone.

What ever the source, one can't deny that most of the wing chun 'sparring' clips out there don't resemble wing chun, and also many seasoned wing chunners advocate the MMA approach.

My intention for posting this topic is not to enrage people, although that seems to be a natrual gift of mine, but to give the people who advocates this approach to have a chance of voicing their perspective. I also hope to provoke some people into thinking a little about the way in which they approach wing chun, and get them to examine the correlation between wing chun training & applying.

 

[chinaboxer]

interesting question, i like it. and it's interesting because this has been on my mind recently and i have been looking for a way to explain it in a video, let me think a bit on the subject and i'll make a video on the subject.

 

[chisauking]

Great, Chinaboxer.......

But can we not have it like kickboxing?

 

[wushuguy]

hey, I just remembered, once when I was in Guangzhou, I saw some taiji practitioners in the park, and my wife knowing I like kung fu, went to introduce me to them. so I got a "lesson" in chen taiji. I pretended to not know anything especially since at that time I had ceased training wing chun or other arts for about 2 years. While doing some tui shou with him, my wife had mentioned to one student that actually I had done WC for a number of years. I could remember the student then went to his sifu and said "Shifu, ta zhidao yong chun quan." (Teacher he knows Wing Chun" then the sifu said, "Wo zhidao le." (I already know.)
so even to that sifu, even though I pretended to not know anything, naturally some motions could still be recognized and felt as wing chun, so if one is doing wing chun right, people will be able to recognize and feel it, even if one tries to hide it.

So when we see someone doing wing chun and it doesn't look like wing chun, maybe it's because the guy lost his foundation or it really wasn't ingrained in him enough?

 

[Vajramusti]

hey, I just remembered, once when I was in Guangzhou, I saw some taiji practitioners in the park, and my wife knowing I like kung fu, went to introduce me to them. so I got a "lesson" in chen taiji. I pretended to not know anything especially since at that time I had ceased training wing chun or other arts for about 2 years. While doing some tui shou with him, my wife had mentioned to one student that actually I had done WC for a number of years. I could remember the student then went to his sifu and said "Shifu, ta zhidao yong chun quan." (Teacher he knows Wing Chun" then the sifu said, "Wo zhidao le." (I already know.)
so even to that sifu, even though I pretended to not know anything, naturally some motions could still be recognized and felt as wing chun, so if one is doing wing chun right, people will be able to recognize and feel it, even if one tries to hide it.

So when we see someone doing wing chun and it doesn't look like wing chun, maybe it's because the guy lost his foundation or it really wasn't ingrained in him enough?

_____________________________________________Thanks for that good story. Since I have done wing chun for a long time- I can also pretty well tell what wing chun lineage a person came from.

 

[CRCAVirginia]

I teach WC as an attachment art. Meaning we need to be in bridge contact for WC tools to be used. Until than it will resemble MMA. I use slight pock sau's to keep the Jab, Cross out and cover like a boxer for the hooks and high kicks. Only when I bridge and make contact and attach to the opponent does WC come in. You need to stay alive on the outside until you can bridge. Through sparring you will find that attempting to stop hooks with Tan Da or Woo Da or what ever is a guessing game that I don't play. I cover and sometimes use the cover as an elbow attack.

Even beginners should spar. What WC techniques we trained at the beginning of class will be the focus in sparring at the end of class.

I train BJJ and we do it the same way. No need to re-invent the wheel, go with what works to build competent fighters.

 

[Poor Uke]

There was a Bullshido Gong Sau recently between two members. One guy was a VT I thnk (although he wasnt representing the VT communittee or even claiming to be doing VT in the Gong Sau)

It was pretty apparent to me that he had studied VT watching the vid.

 

[bully]

What is a Bullshido Gong sau if you don't mind me asking?

Some kind of challenge fight??