Wing Chun - an overview of its training methods and effectiveness.

[sherwinc]

You are a very very wrong........

As for wing chun I do not think their punches are as good as kickboxing or boxing. I have kickboxing in my tkd and my straight punch will break a noise without a problem. I know how to do wing chun punches and they are weak. There is not enough hip action. All your power comes from the hip. I can punch very fast with regular punches. I wouldn't hold that punch up too high. My friend takes wing chun, and I don't see any power in that punch. I have sparred aganst him and he did well. I wouldn't knock the art. I think the monkey form is a bad idea. I wouldn't want to get in that position in a fight. Unfortuantly we had to stop when he blocked my hook kick and broke his finger . I'm not bad mouthing at all he got me with a nice eye strike and I lost a contact, lol. I am wondering if all this talk about their magical chi stories are real or bs. I say magical because I havn't seen anything they described before. I dismiss the school though, because I do not want to be feed bs (if the chi thing is) He tells me some wacked out stuff that I am unsure of with energy. It is also totally different than kenpo karate and taekwondo/kickboxing. Kenpo mixes very well with tkd. I don't thing wing chun would at all.

Punching power comes not on the Hip, but..... punching power comes from the Waist.

1. TaeKwonDo is a very stupid cause they punch power comes from the Hip
2. Karate is an extremely stupid cause they punch and power comes from the Shoulder
3. TaeKwonDo's kick power comes from the Hip and that is good!!!!!
4. KungFu punch comes from the Waist and not from the Hip.

Note:
although Wingchun's delivers 2 rapid chainpunching, the power doesnt comes from the waist but the last fist delivered of chainpunching - that is the time you get power from your Waist!!!!!!!!!!

CONVINCED???????

[Tiger Claw]

You are wrong at my dojang we punch just like boxers do (boxers are the best punchers). We cannot beat a boxer with punches but we got a good punches just need to practice them more on my own when I get my bag. Why would bruce teach jeet kune do if it was just for movies? He saw some big flaws in your system. All systems have flaws. I love what he did with wing chun. I may be wrong about the punch being weak. I will give my friend some more time to develop it. I don't think don't think it can compare with the power of kickboxing/boxing type punches. You cirlce your punches which makes it lose power (extra motion). It reminds me of a backfist which has little power. We use more weight in our punches that is why urs is faster. Kenpo punches the same way as my tkd school and has the same stances. My wing chun is not fake because I never practiced it other than the punch my friend showed me from wing chun. Talk to a jj guy about hips. Thats one of the first things they try to take control of so they don't get hit hard. Most of it is in the hips, should and legs. We also use our abbs that is why I have a six pack. Wing chun has far better moves than that punch. I do not like to diss arts at all. You are generalizing karate. The word karate is a broad term. I know of 2 karate systems that punch just like a boxer would. They just do not specialize in punches only like tkd. This is why a boxer is better at punching. You sound young and if you are allowed to go to a gym and hit a heavy bag try your punch on it rather than light fast punches on some wooden thing or air.



"CONVINCED???????"

No saying your punch comes only from your waste makes me think the punchs is worse than I thought. In tkd our kicks come from back muscles, leg muscles, abb muscles, ass muscles, and hip. On impact is where muscles are used the most. I even use my foot muscles somtimes on impact for round kicks to strike with the ball of my foot. It is all timing. Punches are the same but with different muslces using as much weight as possible. This is why I am a hard striker.


For the record I respect wc and think it is a good system but the punch is held too high in this forum. It is not the best nor could it beat boxing puches or kickboxing. It could beat tkd (if they do not train their punches enough) or karate (depends on school and system). I bareknuckled with a wc guy and that punch was not even used.

[sherwinc]

You are wrong at my dojang we punch just like boxers do (boxers are the best punchers). We cannot beat a boxer with punches but we got a good punches just need to practice them more on my own when I get my bag. Why would bruce teach jeet kune do if it was just for movies? He saw some big flaws in your system. All systems have flaws. I love what he did with wing chun. I may be wrong about the punch being weak. I will give my friend some more time to develop it. I don't think don't think it can compare with the power of kickboxing/boxing type punches. You cirlce your punches which makes it lose power (extra motion). It reminds me of a backfist which has little power. We use more weight in our punches that is why urs is faster. Kenpo punches the same way as my tkd school and has the same stances. My wing chun is not fake because I never practiced it other than the punch my friend showed me from wing chun. Talk to a jj guy about hips. Thats one of the first things they try to take control of so they don't get hit hard. Most of it is in the hips, should and legs. We also use our abbs that is why I have a six pack. Wing chun has far better moves than that punch. I do not like to diss arts at all. You are generalizing karate. The word karate is a broad term. I know of 2 karate systems that punch just like a boxer would. They just do not specialize in punches only like tkd. This is why a boxer is better at punching. You sound young and if you are allowed to go to a gym and hit a heavy bag try your punch on it rather than light fast punches on some wooden thing or air.



"CONVINCED???????"

No saying your punch comes only from your waste makes me think the punchs is worse than I thought. In tkd our kicks come from back muscles, leg muscles, abb muscles, ass muscles, and hip. On impact is where muscles are used the most. I even use my foot muscles somtimes on impact for round kicks to strike with the ball of my foot. It is all timing. Punches are the same but with different muslces using as much weight as possible. This is why I am a hard striker.


For the record I respect wc and think it is a good system but the punch is held too high in this forum. It is not the best nor could it beat boxing puches or kickboxing. It could beat tkd (if they do not train their punches enough) or karate (depends on school and system). I bareknuckled with a wc guy and that punch was not even used.

If you been hit with a fast bullet train in Japan you will die too.....

then why prefer hitting with an oil tankered ship which is too slow compare to a bullet train??????? a bullet train can hit you a thousand times before an oil tankered ship hit you once.......

it simply means.......

chain punching of wingchun hit you a thousand times before you can hit him using your stupid boxing punch only once.......

convinced?????

[Tiger Claw]

If you been hit with a fast bullet train in Japan you will die too.....

then why prefer hitting with an oil tankered ship which is too slow compare to a bullet train??????? a bullet train can hit you a thousand times before an oil tankered ship hit you once.......

it simply means.......

chain punching of wingchun hit you a thousand times before you can hit him using your stupid boxing punch only once.......

convinced?????

Bullshit, we punch fast. I bet the ratio is 2:1 with your silly fast punches. We have combos you know that also give us more strength. We love to combine kicks with our punching as well. If I can do a roundhouse spin heel combo under a second then I am sure my punches are fast as hell. I recorded my punches for a speech class before and the camera could not pick up my punches. I also had to slow down my kicks this is how I know the speed of that famous combo. It looks nice that is why I did it for my speech. The teacher loved it too . Great idea to record moves and show for a speech. Your school must feed you alot of shit. It is sad that you eat it up too. Your wrong about bruce as well.

[Tameo]

If I can do a roundhouse spin heel combo under a second then I am sure my punches are fast as hell.

If you do a spin kick you will usually get kicked in the back no matter how fast you spin.

[Tiger Claw]

You have to hide spin kicks. They need to be set up. I have never been kicked in the back during a spin kick (I can actually block during spin kicks). I only use them sometimes in sparring. I perfer a sidekick to the ribs in sparring or roundhouses to heads or ribs. Kenpo does spin kicks and that is geared towards street fighting. I doubt I would use them in a street fight. I never did. Most street fighters grapple or punch, so I doubt that you would be kicked in the back.

[Hot Sauce]

I trained WC for approximately 1 year. I put my heart and soul into it and rarely missed a day. Even when there was no lesson I spent my time refining what I had been taught.

I have also now experienced many other fighting styles, including Karate, Japanese Jiu Jits, Grappling, Thai Boxing and Combatives. As a police officer I have fought for real many times.

So here is my overall review of the Wing Chun style. I do, of course, recognise that there are now many versons of it but, for the most part, I believe that to be people merely trying to remarket the same core system in an attempt to gain money.

Forms

There are three main forms (or Katas for our Japanese stylists) in WC. I trained the first one only. Often the movements were both repetitive and slow. Practice was meant to somehow enhance your understanding and feel for a technique and this would lead to you becoming more effective. They were also mean't to keep some kind of record of te WC syllabus.

It didn't and it doesn't make you more effective. And in this day of video and DVD there is no need to keep this record. Los of training time was wasted erforming these useless movements. There was no opponent, no resistance, no timing, no power etc. etc. etc. Forms are part of martial arts mythology, and they were a substantial part of the training.

Put it this way, Mike Tyson never needed Forms, and he got pretty effective. Wasted time.

Basic Techniques

The basic punch held the fist vertical and relied on alot of speed in delivery for power. There was only limited body projection behind it. As such it was quite weak. I saw heard a well known WC practitioner write that "a highly trained WC punch can be as hard as the average man's wild swing". Hardly something to brag about. In fairness, though, a good WC man could throw 3 or 4 of these punches before the average mans wild swing was complete.

The style is structurally very fast. Movements are kept to a minimum, and straight punches are the norm. Remember Bruce Lee taling of "economy of motion"? Well, he got it from WC. They have Bil Jee (or "thrusting fingers"), and I do think that this is an excellent variation for self defence. However, this could only be used in the most extreme conditions, and it's use could be nullified by the grappler. Structurally fast yes, but also structurally weak.

Stances are poor, with weight often on the back leg. With the weight so far back, a good shove in the chest and over you'd go. Also the movement was effected. So moving around was almost like hopping. And they stick their chins out. Its like a Boxers birthday party.

Blocking and parrying was OK. They had ways to subtley guide attacks away, rather than the Neanderthal linear blocks that I had seen before (from Karate). I did take some of these moves away with me and incorporate them into my training. Again, something of use.

Chi Sao (or "sticky hands")

This is where they learn to react to their opponents energy through touch. The limbs are rolled, and then strikes made. The opponent tries to redirect these strikes and then counter etc.

It s all too civilised. Each person is politely keeping the correct distance, and torso's stay erect. I contrast it with Senshido's idea of tactile sensitivity. Here both combatants are performing standing grappling. training is hard, unscripted and spontaneous. It is also a position much more akin to a real fight. He can sense his opponents energy through his body movement too, but it is a world away from the arm fencing of WC Chi Sao. Wasted time.

Trapping

Linked with Chi Sao, it is where you can momentarly immobilise an opponents limb to create a gap for your own attack. It is much too complex for real fighting and I have never seen it used in a real fight.

There s a case, for example, for grab and remove the opponents lead hand, then fire a puch into the face etc. But this simple move does not need hours of fancy looking training. More wasted time.

WC Dummy

I did no training on this, so my comments do not come from real experience. I opine that it could be of some use, since it provides "limbs" to deal with as you train. But its rigid striking surface is useless for power generation. I personally have a "Spar Pro", which is basically like a tailor's dummy (just head and torso) that you can hit. Something like this is better for striking practice. But, if it had some kind of "arms" like the WC Dummy, it would be better.

Grappling.

None, zero, zilch. Real fights can go to the floor. WC has no answer for what to do then. Sure they have now developed this "Anti Grappling". But it isn't good. We only have two legs and, as such, are relatively easy to knock over. This lack of grappling is a massive flaw in a supposed overall fighting style.

Wall Bags

These are filled with hard beans (or whatever) and hand on the wall like a picture. I trained with one of these alot. OK to hit, but not brilliant. The bag never moves like a real person, so it is too easy to "apply" your techniques. A punchbag moves all over the place. I have seen WC men work out on one and, because of the lack of power and poor stances, they look pretty silly doing it.

Kicks

They never kicked higher than the groin, which is good. But they were rarely practiced, and never against a striking aid. As such, they were not trained to the level required for appplcation. I won't even mentione "sticky legs". It is too ridiculous.

General training.

Most of the training is done against thin air. I do think that this is useful if you are learning a technique for the first time, or "shadow boxing" (but doing it properly, as a spontaneous mental training aid). But to spend the majority of your time hitting thin air? Rubbish. All you do is get better at hitting air, and it does NOT translate into hitting people. No, I don't think you should batter your training partners all the time (but full contact training should occur), but I do believe that you should be hitting things. General training was a general waste of time. It was made worse by the "we are the best" attitude of many of the instructors, who theorised how it was so.

Relevance to Self Protection

Issues like awareness, avoidance, posturing, threat assessment etc etc etc. were not addressed one iota. These isues were totally unknown to the so called instructors. They were training people how to mess around in a training hall. They were not training them how to survive in the big bad world.

I bet there are people who can make WC work. But they will be near the top of the WC tree, AND they will be in the minority.


OK, I know I've been a bit unkind in other threads. But so what? This is my view for all to see. And all this "you only spent a year at it" is really weak. I am an experienced student of fighting arts, and an experienced fighter. One year should be plenty time to learn to apply a GOOD fighting art. Especially the extent of training I undertook. But I couldn't apply it.

From WC I took some of the parrying movements and the bil jee (which I have now rejected in favour of other ways to throw the fingers). Not alot to show for all that work.

Good Post Thai Bri.
I've been training Leung Ting's Wing Tsun in an Alliance school for about 4 months so I'm still a beginner. I will try to "respond" to your post and post why I believe you didn't understand so much of your Wing Chun training based on your story. It seems to me that your teachers weren't very good and that they trained the same sort of WC. Theese are my opinions so keep that in mind and try to have a respectable level at this discussíon so nobody will get banned. I agree with some of your points but I also disagree of some of the other. I have never used WT in self-defence noir have I sparred with other practioners from other styles, but I plan to.

You have made a review of the whole WC style based on the training on different clubs but from the same WC lineage and only with 1 years training. It takes about 5 whole years of hard training with a good and high ranked instructor to learn the whole WT system. This is only possible in Hong Kong from what I've read. Therefore I belive your topic "Wing Chun - a review of its training methods and effectiveness" is completely wrong and should be more like "a review of the (insert linage here)". I have only trained with WC practioners from 2 linages, Leung Ting's WT and Simon Lau's WC. It's very different. Anyway since nobody has really tried to critizise your post here comes my opinions:

Forms
Forms and Katas are not the same thing. Katas are like fighting an invisible opponent without no resistance. The purpose of the forms in WT are totally different. The main reason for practising the first form SNT is to learn to how to relax in the upper body while performing the moves correctly (so you can see what you have done wrong) at the same time having a solid stance. This is very hard and a little but very useful.

Basic Techniques
About the stances, The front stance, all weight on the back leg, is pretty good. If someone somhow gets through the wu and man sao and pushes you towards the center hard then your stance will hold you in position. If the power is to great for you to handle then you redirect it, hard to explain.

There are no blocks in Wing Chun, but I know what you mean .


Chi Sao
Well I don't know about the lineage you have trained but usually you learn dan chi after a while with the SNT.After that you learn the second form, Chum Kiu and then Chi Sao. So it seems very wrong to me that you have learn some chi-sao and skipping the second form.

Chi Sao is not sparring. It's just a drill to improve your sensitivity. In the beginning it is, as you said, very civilised.

From what I've know there are no trapping in WT, perhaps there are in WC? I think that trapping doesn't work in a real fight or self-defence situations.

Relevance to Self Protection
We train the things you mentioned and sometimes we have scenerio based training.

Grappling
I agree that real fights can go on the floor, but fights and self-defence are not the same thing. WT is for self-defence. We do train on the ground and takedown defenses but still it's not the same when training with a WT student who tries to be the bad guy so we try to attack (elbows and knees) as much as we can and not grapple. To grapple is not neccesary is not neccesary in self-defence.

Wall Bags
The purpose of the wallbags is to get you used to punching through the opponent at all time. We usually don't punch if we can't hit.

Kicks
The kicks comes in the CK form.

General training
Hitting thin air, you mean the chainpunches in thin air? If yes then we do it to train up the speed. If no then not schools are that way. We train with (focus) mits, sometimes chest protection to ease the pain.


I might be wrong about the things I have written, feel free to correct me.

[jubaji]

To grapple is not neccesary is not neccesary in self-defence.
.

Until it is

[Thai Bri]

Yeah, come on Hot Sauce. Thats just stupid. Its like a soccer team planning never to never let the other team take a shot, therefore they don't need a goal keeper.

Great plan until they take a shot.

[Hot Sauce]

Until it is

hehe, yeah yeah ....we all know that.
There are better ways than to "grapple" standing. Going to the ground wouldn't be the best thing to do in self-defence. If you want to learn self-defence, which Wing Chun is all about, then learn a Martial Art that do a lot of stand up fighting.

[jubaji]

hehe, yeah yeah ....we all know that.
There are better ways than to "grapple" standing. Going to the ground wouldn't be the best thing to do in self-defence. If you want to learn self-defence, which Wing Chun is all about, then learn a Martial Art that do a lot of stand up fighting.

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

[Hot Sauce]

Yeah, come on Hot Sauce. Thats just stupid. Its like a soccer team planning never to never let the other team take a shot, therefore they don't need a goal keeper.

Great plan until they take a shot.

oohh, upset? Just like at the bullshido board where you got banned? Take it easy and stop flaming, PLEASE.

You can't compare fotball with self-defence. In fotball they all train to hit the ball into the goal, except the goal keeper. The chances to meet a grappler who wants to get to the dirty ground when he attacks you are very low, if not less then 1%.


Jubaji
What do you mean with "until it is"? Could elaborate a little?

[jubaji]

The chances to meet a grappler who wants to get to the dirty ground when he attacks you are very low, if not less then 1%.


?

Considering that you just pulled that 'figure' out of your ass, you should really go wash your hands.

For someone who seems to want to hang his identity on 'self-defense' wisdom, you sure are quick to rely on "I hope that doesn't happen" as your protection. Hell, why train at all? You could just assume you'll never run into any folks with ill-intention and go home and relax.

[Hot Sauce]

Considering that you just pulled that 'figure' out of your ass, you should really go wash your hands.

For someone who seems to want to hang his identity on 'self-defense' wisdom, you sure are quick to rely on "I hope that doesn't happen" as your protection. Hell, why train at all? You could just assume you'll never run into any folks with ill-intention and go home and relax.

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying the chances are very low to meet a grappler who wants to attack you and therefore it is better to first train a "striking" martial art.

[jubaji]

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying the chances are very low to meet a grappler who wants to attack you and therefore it is better to first train a "striking" martial art.

I'm not likely to get into a brawl with a pro boxer. I guess I don't need to worry about someone punching me, right?