Wing Chun - Pros and Cons

[Drunken Monkey]

if you want, wing chun is really a set of concepts/principles:

 

direct hitting

 

straight lines

 

triangles

 

trapping

 

covering

 

centre line

 

borrowing

 

adding

 

the moves/forms, if you like, are just an example of how things can be done.

 

they are by no means fixed.

 

in theory, you can apply the concepts to any fight situation.

 

after all, blocking a hit to the head is more or less the same no matter if you are standing up or on the floor.

 

admittedly, there are different things to worry about but you should still be able to apply the concepts/principles.

[pvwingchun]

Drunken Monkey

 

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

[cymry]

you DON'T NEED to biu gee to hit at every opportune moment.

 

I think Biu Gee is used more as a way of keeping your distance if things go wrong.

[cymry]

good good.

 

you have no idea how often i ask that question and the answer i get is 'i don't/haven't....'

 

anyway.

 

you CAN spar in wing chun.

 

just cos you go in fast doesn't mean you have to hit hard.

 

just cos you are going in hard doesn't mean you have to hit.

 

and when using the elbow, we don't hit with it, we get it in position and just give a push...

 

admittedly it isn't hyper realistic fighting but it gives a good indication of how to get it to work.

 

and there's a fingerless glove out there that allows the hand to flex fully.

 

i'll find the address of the shop that sells it and you can have a look.

 

we've been using them for ages.

 

hmmm, samual kwok.

 

from yip chun.

 

if you can, find a guy from yip ching (probably from ron heimberger).

 

they do chi sau very differently.

 

gives a different perspective on how things can be done.

 

Can you explain a bit more about how you spar?

[Drunken Monkey]

with or without gloves?

 

without gloves, we face off and enter.

 

we grab/pull at full strength.

 

we push at full strength.

 

we do all interceptions at full strength.

 

the only thing we 'pull' is the way we hit.

 

when we play like this we are actually concerntrating more on dealing with the hands.

 

we play a game of 'clear the hands' if you like.

 

our reasoning is that both sides know when one side can be hit.

 

with the gloves, it is much the same.

 

the exception being that we can actually make continous contact.

 

admittedly we also hit differently, using the back of the hand more instead of a full on chung chui.

 

instead of striking with the elbow, we just apply pressure with it (like a push).

 

we've ordered a couple of full 'face-caged' head gear to see what they're like cos we really want to get to use our punches properly.

 

as for biu gee, we use it more for interception/redirection or for rescueing a overcooked movement.

 

there are lots of interpretations of what biu gee (the movement, not the form) is and

 

the thing, all the versions i've heard of, makes sense and 'works'.

[cymry]

Thanks for that.

[Drunken Monkey]

the thing is, we do get hit and we do get hurt and we do walk out with bloodied noses, sprained joints and bruised bodies.

 

that's why we only go really heavy after the normal class.

 

everyone in the class knows we do this but not everyone asks us about it.

 

i'm sure you don't need to train/spar/fight like this in a class.

 

we just feel that it's better to do this in a safe environment among brothers rather than let you get into trouble in the streets (or where-ever).

[delta1]

How effective is Wing Chun (on the street)?

 

I said very good.

 

Since we are "on the street", let's take a not uncommon on the street scenario.

 

You are in close when the (poo) starts. You know the (butt) is carryig a knife on his right hip. Your priority is that knife- you want it before he gets it. Since I don't do WC, I'll leave out the stance changes and foot work I'd do with this and concentrate on the arm actions.

 

His first strike is a left to your face, his right is droping. Check his right elbow with your left hand as you simultaneously throw a clearing horizontal inward elbow strike at his jaw (clearing because the path of the strike also blocks/checks his left). As the strike travels through, crane his right upper arm with your right upper hand, the left is already low and outside so it is in position to grab the knife. As you reach to grab, your body rotation and the crane on his right arm will turn him slightly to his left, disturbing his ballance and momentarily checking his base. The cross body crane is a check on his arms.

 

This same base move can be modified to work off an upward elbow strike, used to keep him checked as you reach for the knife you are carrying, ... your imagination is the limmit.

 

Not real technical or very pretty, but it works. And it sounds a lot like what the WC guys practice all the time. I'll leave it to one of them to clean up the technique, add their terms and footwork. (They can even delete my parenthesis and insert the proper explatives if they want )

 

Edit: Just thought I'd add, that's not something I came up with- it's a method taught to some law enforcement agencies. Just FYI.

[Guy_Who_Fights]

This is not meant to be an aggressive "burn" post, saying that Wing Chun is useless or anything like that. This is only an account of my experience sparring against Wing Chun practitioners.

 

E.g. Recently I sparred with a man in excellent physical shape with over 8 years of Wing Chun experience (and you could tell, watching him warm up. His techniques were very crisp). He used Wing Chun and I used boxing. We went for three 3-minute rounds. I used boxing gloves and he used small, open-finger gloves.

 

Since Wing Chun is not a long range striking style like boxing can be, but more of a medium/close range style, it was surprisingly easy to keep out of his range while continually hitting him with good boxing punches.

 

(Please don't post a bunch of denfeces about how Wing Chun can be a long range style is you know what you are doing and truly understand the techniques and blah blah blah - this is not a burn post. This is just my experiences with these fighters. Also, be honest with ourselves here, we know that the main focus of Wing Chun techniques is at medium or close range compared to this distance many boxers can effectively fight from. Again, please don't bother with the defensive posts).

 

So since his techniques focused on a range that I was able to effectively avoid, I ended up watching a lot of techniques being attempted in the air as I used the good footwork developed of hours and hours of sparring to hit at will, then move out of the way and any counters. The techinques I was faced with were somewhat unorthadox compared to the very basic boxing repetoir I was used to facing, but they just weren't able to land once I had devised a solid strategy to keep him away from me (our reaches and heights were very close to identicle).

 

When I opted to go in close now and then, we did end up both trading blows and he managed to get a number of shots in (for obvious reasons).

 

One thing that became prominant in the fight was that he had not experienced the feigns and deceptive techniques that boxing entails. Thus the use of feigns successfully lead to a lot of openings. Granted feigns are something I hone a lot more than the next guy, but they worked particularily well compared to usual. This may be because he sparred primarily against people within his own style, and thus hadn't encountered feigning as much as boxers tend to (I honestly do not know how much feigning is taught in Wing Chun classes, and am sure it depends entirely upon the teacher), or it could have been that Wing Chun does not stress blocking with minimal movement to prevent these openings as much as it could (this is not to say that it ws horrendous and any feign would have worked until the end of time, just that there was definately room for improvement). Another very likely possibility is that the Wing Chun principle of manipulating whatever tool is presented to you in order to create openings, though good against a real attack, definately has the weakness of being succeptable to feigns.

 

The last important factor in the fight was that, though muscular, young, and in good shape, he just wasn't used to fighting for as long as boxers are. By the end of the fight he was exhausted while my boxing conditioning had me still a fresh fighter. So perhaps Wing Chun practioners who are training as more than just a recreational activity can improve their endurance training a bit to avoid this. I can see many people already, all wanting to argue that a real fight wouldn't have lasted that long and he wouldn't have needed that conditioning. We were fighting at high contact and I was in control to the point where I could have made the fight last an hour had I wanted to. So even though he had 8+ years of training (much more than the amount of boxing training I have), he truly needed that extra conditioning.

 

Now, this is not a huge post about how greate boxing is; boxing has a lot of downfalls that we are all aware of. Again, this is not a burn post about how bad Wing Chun is and how greate boxing is, so please don't go nuts with counters to everything I have said here. I train in much more than boxing for the very reason that I am always the first to admit that it is not perfect. This thread, however, is about the pros and cons of Wing Chun, and I noticed a lack of cons (and all styles have cons...). All of this is an account of a particular high-contact match I had against a very good Wing Chun practioner whom I respect very much. Thank you all for reading this with an open and mature mind.

[Drunken Monkey]

that's exactly what i mean.

 

a lot of wing chun guys just don't have experience outside of their own training hall.

 

and it's a well known fact that we don't like boxing jabs.

 

it's not uncommon for us to enter tracking the first jab only to walk into the following one....

 

well i have anyway (thanks michael).

 

could just be that i'm crap.