What does Wing Chun need? The traditonal answer is
nothing. The old way is best! Proper Wing Chun as taught by
my sifu (insert name here) is a complete system. People just need to have faith, believe in what their sifu tells them, and humbly train harder to do things
correctly. Only then will they acheive the unmatched skills of our Wing Chun ancestors!
...Also the earth was created 6,000 years ago, is flat, and all you have to do is sincerely
believe in (insert religious belief system here) ...and trust me
, all will be hunky dory.
Now if you agree with what's written above, this is
not the thread for you. I'm more interested in the perspectives of those of us who have practiced traditional Wing Chun/WingTsun/Ving Tsun (or a simialr system) and have become disillusioned with the way things are going. As the years or
decades pass, is the system you are training really giving you all that it promised? Or is it becoming marginalized, and becoming the domain of hobbyists and magical thinkers who would never dare get in a fight?
In this day and age where martial arts and combat sports are put to the test, and fails are spread all over youtube and social media, backward looking traditionalism and magical thinking are not a recipe for an effective and complete fighting system. So what, if any changes do you think are needed to revitalize Wing Chun in the 21st Century, and who are the people who we might look to move the art forward?
Unfortunately I'm mostly in agreement with ShortBridge in that I fear I already know what most every regular poster is going to say before they respond. I also think I'll probably regret getting involved as well, but I'll make a good faith effort. For those who hate long posts you might want to skip this...
I think there are waves of popularity with most martial arts as they get exposure through film, competitions, marketing, whatever and that there's generally a pattern of early adopters that want to actually do the art to learn to fight. As time goes on and the wave of popularity crests more and more people get involved because it's what they've heard of and what "everyone knows" works. We're at about this point right now with MMA related arts where they've sucking all the air out of the room for TMA. Most of those who
really want to fight go do MMA and most of those who don't
really want to fight go do TMA's.
This leads to the vicious cycle that geezer describes in which TMA instructors can't actually teach fighting if they want to run a commercial school because few of their students want to fight, forcing those few students to either stick with something watered down or leave for the MMA school down the street. Eventually, when everyone takes these martial arts that "everyone knows" are the most effective they too get watered down into kiddy day care or LARPing because the vast majority of people, even the majority of people who want to do a martial art, don't actually ever want to get hit, or at least not
really hit.
Since I saw the genesis of this thread elsewhere I'll say that in 50 years MMA may be seen the same way TMA is today. Boxing has definitely hit an interesting tipping point, at least in the Seattle area. There are 2 "boxing" clubs near my house. I was interested in both of them before I got a better look at what they're doing. The closer of the two states on the second question in their FAQ:
"I don’t want to get hit; is this a contact workout?
No—not ever! Each person in class has their own heavy bag to workout on, plus their own space to move around the bag. Trust us, you won’t even realize anyone else is in the class because you’ll be so focused on the workout! And, rest easy, we never allow sparring or fighting at ****** Boxing Club"
The other boxing club only did sparring something like once a week (they're schedule is broken on their web page right now so I can't refresh my memory) and it was a night I couldn't make it so I lost interest. Both of them seem like they're focused on the brogrammer looking for a fun workout, not on people who are interested in actually boxing.
BJJ has some extra immunity to this because you have to be at least half way serious to be willing to get all sweaty with a heavy guy on top of you if you're not already inclined to that sort of thing. I don't know how accurate they are, but even with BJJ I've read some interviews with Rickson Gracie and others that bemoan that the direction it's rules have been going are poor for teaching self defense, so maybe that isn't enough to prevent this decline.
Please note that I'm not saying you can't find legit boxing instruction in Seattle, there's an MMA gym near me that looks like it probably has pretty good boxing classes in fact. I can also find legit TMA instruction in Seattle, it's just not nearly as common as it used to be and it seems to be a tiny minority of the TMA on offer. My point is that in 50 years MMA, Muay Thai and boxing may very well be divided into two kinds of schools, 1) for pro fighters and those who're trying to be pro fighters and 2) (the vast majority) watered down schools for people who want an MMA "experience" without having to really get hit.
Where does this leave Wing Chun and what should it do going forward? That's a harder question. Projecting forward the hypothetical 50 years from the other thread a lot can happen. Right now we've got the lowest violent crime rates of my lifetime. Unless someone lives in a really bad neighborhood or their work exposes them to violence self defense is unimportant for most people for practical purposes. If that changes then there may be a resurgence of interest in TMA training that's focused on fighting. Outside of that I'm not sure what Wing Chun as a whole can do to ensure it's success. Individual schools can take a variety of approaches to maintain relevance and they're going to vary depending on how you define relevance.
To a larger extent I think the question is what do you or I want out of MA training and what do we think is relevant? If you want to fight in MMA style matches or teach people to be successful at that then you probably need to go study the arts that are made for that rule set and like Martial D adapt what you've learned from Wing Chun for that purpose. I'm not terribly interested in participating in MMA for a variety of reasons but I'm also disappointed with the lack of sparring and actual fight focused training to be found at most non-MMA schools these days.
What I'm working on for myself is slowly putting together a group of people with diverse backgrounds in MA to do some free sparring and drills to experiment with and test various techniques in a heterogeneous environment. It would be a private club not a commercial school so we'd be able to curate the membership and keep out the lunatics. I've got a friend who's fixing up a space for this purpose and when he's done I'll go into high gear recruiting some skilled people that I know. If I can get it off the ground I'll let you know how it works out.
