pvwingchun

I know there is no such thing as a complete art, every art has weaknesses somewhere but on the other hand the art you train can be as complete as you want. Every third Thursday where I train and teach is ground fighting nite. We train against the takedown and what to do if it happens. We use and incorporate the principles of Wing Chun into it. We have a few who have wrestled and trained groundfighting arts so that helps. We have taken a stand up art and practiced it on the ground, of course as long as we maintain principle it can be applied to the ground. We lose none of the stand up and gain on the ground game.

I have always said bad kickboxing, good jiu jitsu, jiu jitsu wins. Bad jiu jitsu, good kickboxing and kickboxing wins. The same can be said for any combination of arts. And then sometimes being good has nothing to do with it, it is luck and how things fall in your favor. Although we all take arts we believe in sometimes all the training in the world won't help if the other guy is lucky, or has a gun. But you are right usually those spouting off the loudest about how they would or have whipped someone who is supposedly a good fighter with years of experience in a proven art are the ones who don't have a clue. It is not really about ignorance but preconcieved notions of what works in a real fight on the street.

No one has mentioned being calm ansd staying relaxed. This is of the utmost importance. Trying throwing a strike tensed up then try throwing one relaxed and see which has more power.

No, not at all. Keep it up.

I never said you couldn't adapt it to the ring. If it is something you desire then do it. But can you do it without taking the essence of any fighting art away? So wouldn't you consider that a watering down of what you do? Are you using the same techniques and strategies? If not then why not use those techniques and strategies in the ring? This is the crux of my question about WingChun? I believe this is a personal issue and I know the answer for myself. I believe that taking away the techniques and principles that are Wing Chun and imposing rules, as was mentioned, takes away the essence of Wing Chun. You can still use it but it isn't really Wing chun. I would like to hear more opinions and see what others think. Please feel free to include any art you are involved in that is primarily used for self defense.

These are the kind of issues I was hoping to bring up. Look at it this way, the ring isn't a self defense situation the street obviously is. Can you use those techniques at a lesser level and still be effective or does the effectiveness lessen. I think people are trying to answer it. I can't see "watering down" my Wing Chun for use in the ring. I train to end a confrontation as quickly as possible and those techniques aren't going to be the same as those used in the ring, but can I use them in some modified fashion and still maintain principle. I don't believe it has anything to do with a lack of adaptibility or self control. I believe in taking the confrontation one step further than my opponent. I have to utilize great self control and be highly adaptable to be one step ahead of my opponent. Let's put it this way, if you throw a punch I am going to disable you in some manner (break it if possible) so you can't throw another. I can't do this in the ring. This is in my opinion staying one step ahead of the opponent. In other words yes if rules are applied how does it work? A drunk buddy is another situation. Just a question isn't this more like sparring than a fight? Do we lessen the art by putting it in the ring?[

These are the kind of issues I was hoping to bring up. Look at it this way, the ring isn't a self defense situation the street obviously is. Can you use those techniques at a lesser level and still be effective or does the effectiveness lessen. I think people are trying to answer it. I can't see "watering down" my Wing Chun for use in the ring. I train to end a confrontation as quickly as possible and those techniques aren't going to be the same as those used in the ring, but can I use them in some modified fashion and still maintain principle. I don't believe it has anything to do with a lack of adaptibility or self control. I believe in taking the confrontation one step further than my opponent. I have to utilize great self control and be highly adaptable to be one step ahead of my opponent. Let's put it this way, if you throw a punch I am going to disable you in some manner (break it if possible) so you can't throw another. I can't do this in the ring. This is in my opinion staying one step ahead of the opponent. In other words yes if rules are applied how does it work? A drunk buddy is another situation. Just a question isn't this more like sparring than a fight? Do we lessen the art by putting it in the ring?[

TJS I understand what you are saying. But I am talking about the present not the past. Wing Chun has not been modified or adapted to work in the ring at the present time so how much would you or did you have to change it to work in the ring.

Wing Chun in the ring, how effective? Not very, not what it was developed for. Have you used it effectively and if so how did you adapt it and still maintain principle? It is hard enough to spar with because of what is taken away. Your opinions please.

Exactly the closer the better. Wing Chun is known for closing the gap getting in close and taking away the long range weapons. Quoted from another thread. Precisely the point you either stay out or get in, there is no in between, bridge the gap and make short work of your opponent and if you are out of range there is no fight. We tell our students Wing Chun could fight in a phone booth (exageration but makes the point) and much of that is due to the development and history of Wing Chun.

Let me say this again. This is fighter vs fighter argument being made not a pro vs con Wing Chun post As Guy_Who_Fights described. Very simply from the post it was obvious that almost every Wing Chun principle was broken so of course he found weaknesses. If principles were adhered to he would not have those weaknesses. Let's get back to talking about pros and cons not what we are talking about which is a debate based on the better fighter in the ring. I will present the first pro and con. Wing Chun is very effective in a street or self defense situation. Wing Chun is not good in the ring against a boxer using rules.

Guy_Who_Fights I offered up pros to your cons. You offered up red herrings which you presented as pros. You are are right there were an awful lot of pros being thrown out maybe there is a reason for that.?.?.? It seems to me you posted up what was supposed to be a balanced argument and someone called you on it. Good Wing Chun is not effective in the situation you described so yes that is a bad point of Wing Chun. If you want to do a pro and con argument in Wing Chun you have to compare apples to apples. Wing Chun is not meant for the ring in the manner which you were testing it therefore the results you received. Take the gloves off and get nose to nose with a good Wing Chun fighter and try and duplicate the results. I would characterize this as a fighter vs fighter argument and not a pro vs con argument. You were clearly the better boxer by not allowing your opponent to fight his fight. I think you would find it a different story if you got someone with superior skill and took your boxing away from you. What it really boils down to is a superior Wing Chun man will beat a good boxer and a good boxer will beat and inferior WingChun man. This is true of any martial art.

I was being fair. One experience does not represent all of Wing Chun which was how he portrayed it. I could have been a lot harder but I wasn't, I was very fair. I could have turned what he said around put in a few different words and put any art in there instead of Wing Chun. I just get really tired of hearing the same stuff about Wing Chun when somebody has one or two experiences.

This usually means it is. You offered no pros only cons. Your opinion of good Wing Chun is probably very different than mine. Being young, muscular and in good shape does not make a good Wing Chun man. We train our students to end the fight in 10 seconds or less to go any longer on the street is not a good idea. The ring is not the street and the Wing Chun people I know while in good shape would be exhausted after a minute or so, we would never allow a fight to last that long, if we could help it. Training for the ring is totally different. Once 8 years means nothing, I know people who have been in Wing Chun a long time and couldn't make it work if their life depended on it they are there for different reasons. Being crisp means nothing either. A good Wing Chun man would never allow you into this range where you are effective. He would either stay out of your range or get inside and take that away also. Wing Chun needs a bridge to fight and without that bridge there is no fight. A good Wing Chun man would simply have stepped out of your range instead of standing and trading punches with a boxer. We don't train to trade blows we train to end the confrontation. The game you are talking about is totally different than what the Wing Chun I train is used for, many of my techniques simply could not be used in the ring. I know it is cliche but they are simply to dangerous and are not intended for the ring. You fake it creates an opening and expends energy which a good Wing Chun man takes advantage of. Everything thrown at us is considered a strike and therefore countered as such. Therefore we don't sit back and wait, we attack on any movement stepping in and breaking your structure which it is obvious your opponent did not do or you would be writing an entirely different post. I realize this wasn't intended to be a burn post but you offered up some very weak examples of Wing Chun and its uses. Besides it sounded like a "burn" post right from the start.

Drunken Monkey Very good, that is what I was trying to get across, you said it much better and to the point.

We have all of these. So do most other lineages, the problem is most people don't know enough about the system to put them to use. They aren't init long enough to learn the systemand explore it then go off and learn something else because what we do doesn't fit there idea of combat, which usually entails being able to compete in the ring. Only through careful exploration of the system and its principles can it be found. Define real sparring. We spar, light contact to medium contact, primarily because we don't want to hurt each other. From there it is an easy adjustment "turn up" the power. WQhat is sometimes defined as medium contact is really much more between two of the more advanced students, but control is a must...... Groundfighting is there you just have to get on the ground and utilize what you know and apply the principles on the ground. I don't know how many times I have heard a new student who comes in with groundfighting experience (wrestlers, BJJ, etc.) say he can't be beat on the ground by a WC man, or that he can lock one of us up and we can't get out.... I can tell you how many of those guys ate there words, all of them. We practice joint locks all the time. No they aren't standard fare in WC but all you have to do is have a collection of several effective ones and utilize them. As for the pros I would agree, plus add, powerful, simple to learn the basics, good for almost all ages, effective, efficient, very good for self defense, etc., etc.,.............

Bad idea, at least from a self defense position. Several reasons. 1. Guys have been protecting that for their entire lives, they know how. 2. Unless someone is standing spread legged in front of you not an easy target to hit, much better to aim for a knee. 3. If the adrenalin is flowing, the attacker is drunk or on drugs he may never feel it. He will feel it later but at the time he may not notice. 4. If he does feel it and it is not a clean shot now he is really mad. On the other hand if it is an open shot, take it, you never know, there is nothing dishonorable in living another day. My aim in any fight is to be the one left standing and if that means a good swift kick to the groin then so be it, but it would be well down on the target list.

Thanks for the responses. I am curious because we always tell our students 90% go to the ground although my personal experience tells me less than 50% end up there.

In a confrontation, street fight, self defense situation, How often does it go to the ground? I have heard numbers ranging from 10% to 90%. My actual experience tells me it is low but not as low as 10%. I would like some informed opinions here please and if you have them actual statistics, though I doubt they exist. Please don't respond with the typical ground fighting answer that it is the only way to go proven by the NHB or Ultimate Fighting, or you will never get me to the ground from the stand up guys because it happens. I would like actual discussion and "informed" opinion. Thanks in advance.

Lee Thanks for clarifying my point.

The characters do not translate directly into English so there is no set way of spelling, and depending on the dialect the words take on very different sounds therefore the different spelling and yes some of the lineages have chosen to use the different spellings. Grandmaster Leung Ting chose his spelling because he did not like WC which stands for water closet or "bathroom". Those are his words not mine. Bad instructors do not turn out good students and they don't all teach the forms the proper way, they have added their own intrepretations into it and have changed the core to fit what they beleive to be true. If you do not know and understand the principles then you cannot pass on good Wing Chun. Yes whether you are good or bad is up to you but a good instructor is more likely to turn out good students than a bad one. Wing Chun is in everyone it is the job of a good instructor to bring it out if that is what the person wants. Wing Chun is not easy to learn just learning the forms does not mean you have learned Wing Chun. Wing Chun is not a form or technique based art it is principle based. Therefore just learning the forms does not make a Wing Chun man even if you learn the details. And yes I mentioned details in my first post but it is more than details. I have people now who think they have learned the Siu Lim Tau and they don't have a clue, yes they know the moves but they have not learned the SLT.

Not quite true, it is the Romanization of the characters of the Chinese language that cause the differences. Not quite true again. There is some really bad Wing Chun out there and what some people call Wing Chun is not Wing Chun. There is some very bad Wing Chun and Wing chun instructors out there. The lineages very in the forms and how they are applied, yes good Wing Chun is Wing Chun, because when you really take a hard look at it the principles remain the same. But not all lineages are the same, there are some very striking differences out there. Many believe this is due to Ip Man's style of teaching, not every student was taught the same way or the same thing. This does not make the system easy to learn. There is so much in those three empty hand forms that it takes years to learn the nuances of them. The mechanics of the system yes are easy to learn but the details are where the system sets itself apart form other martial arts. One can dedicate a lifetime of study just to the Siu Lim Tao alone the first hand form. I discover new things about it every day. Sifu Phillip Redmond is of the Willaim Cheung lineage and they train in Traditional Wing Chun which looks very different from the Wing Chun most people see as coming from Ip Man. And yes it is very good.

That seems like more than fair. Just remember "You get what you pay for". Sometimes that is very true. Also everything is market driven and if that is what the market bears it may be alright.

I won't discuss cost personally as an assistant instructor but I can say 5 to 6 nites/days a week. Depending on when I am needed or I want to go for personal reasons.

41 going on 42. Didn't start until I was 38 or 39. I work harder to stay ahead of the "kids". Plus I don't have the distractions of youth. I train 5 to six days a week. Because of this I have rapidly advanced to one the most advanced in the kwoon and have become an Assistant Instructor soon to be a full level instructor. Being a little older has its advantages.