I fractured my wrist a couple of months ago, but I’ve continued to train with limited use of my left hand. My SiFu pointed out awhile ago that if you were to get injured during a fight and you lost the use of a hand or leg you would still have to fight, but be intelligent enough to improvise.
One of my SiHings was visiting recently and hurt his arm pretty badly during training and with just one arm continued to train, defend himself very well and managed to put a hurting on everyone.
My question is has anyone ever had to fight without the use of an arm or leg. And since it is assumed that most Wing Chun uses alot of hands - how effective would you be without them? Would you be able to defend yourself with only your legs? (running away does’nt count) How dependant are Wing Chun practitioners on the usage of hands?
I’ve trained (not fought) with lots of injuries. Good thing … I’m injured in some sense or other a great deal of the time (from life and inherent vulnerabilities, not Wing Chun). Examples: rotator cuff injury, shoulder bursitis, epicondolitis (tennis elbow), recovery from foot/toe surgery, continuous knee flare-ups (arthritis), flared up carpal tunnel, sacroiliac issues, etc.. I’m an orthopedic anomaly. :rolleyes:
I’ve another knee surgery coming up this year; I don’t plan to be entirely out of training more than a week or two, if even that much, though the healing time will be longer. There is always something I can work on, and everything needs work. Instead of saying “I can’t work on [this or that]” I try to ask myself “What can I work on?”
“Compromising” and, as you say, “improvising” to accommodate injuries as they heal, has at times provided me great opportunities to focus on certain elements of my training that might otherwise not get so much attention. Healing my injuries and dealing with my limitations has also taught me a lot of useful things relevant to Wing Chun, not to mention life.
If I were to sit around licking my wounds to the sounds of sit-coms or reality-TV, I might not learn as much. It helps to be a glass-half-full kinda person, and “investing in loss.”
Keeping it in context, my ceaseless injuries and issues are nothing. This past weekend I spent some time with a Wing Chun practitioner who happens to be a paraplegic. I’m reasonably certain she could kick my butt if she set her mind to it, and my two legs still work somewhat.
P.S. I do believe that “training” with injuries has at least some correlation to “fighting” with injuries. In both cases you make use of (and/or hone) whatever it is you have available.
In the case of “fighting” (i.e., “real” fighting, not “play” or “sport” fighting) there may actually be more capacity to work with, thanks to the pain management benefits of things like adrenaline, endorphines, acute mental focus, etc.. I remember walking on a broken ankle … and without as much as limp too … but only for awhile!! Things like that certainly don’t aid healing, but they can help one endure emergencies.
There is a WC saying, “one hand controls two”. This means that your one hand controls the opponent’s two hands. This leaves your other hand free to attack. In your case, you have limited use of one hand, so this could be a good opportunity to practice this principle. Try controlling your opponent with one hand; if you can.
kj - I’ve also had my share of injuries in the past year or so. I even took a little break last year from training (drove me crazy) due to a rotator cuff injury (second time). It really sucks to not be able to train as hard as you’re used to because of injuries. I guess it’s just a part of getting old.
I’ve been wrapping my wrist with this 10 foot roll of thai boxers wrist wrap that another student got for me and it definitely helps. I certainly must agree that this is giving me an opportunity to brush up on alot of basics things that don’t require too much contact. Injuries suck!
What I’d like to do now in regards to training would be to limit the use of the injured arm and see how I can fend for myself one handed. Like I’ve said before, I’ve seen one of my SiHing’s do it and it is a totally different ballgame. He smoked everyone in our fighting drill. And yet another scenario could be fighting without the use of your hands at all.
wingman - it sound pretty simple in theory does’nt it?
Originally posted by mun hung What I’d like to do now in regards to training would be to limit the use of the injured arm and see how I can fend for myself one handed. Like I’ve said before, I’ve seen one of my SiHing’s do it and it is a totally different ballgame. He smoked everyone in our fighting drill. And yet another scenario could be fighting without the use of your hands at all.
At the risk of sounding motherly, the one-handed and no-handed experiments might be better suited to a time when you are healed. The stars may have been in alignment for your friend not to injure himself worse than he was, despite being victor of the day. It would be a terrible shame to trade one injury for a worse one, or even a permanent one, when circumstances are not dire. But then I tend to weigh things like this.
In the case of “fighting” (i.e., “real” fighting, not “play” or “sport” fighting) . . . .kj
I hear folks trying to make this distinction from time to time, and it is always made, not surprisingly, by folks that don’t fight (see below). Folks that do fight and train to fight, regardless of style or lineage, simply don’t think that way: they know better. If you have any doubt, don’t take my word for it but go ask a “fighter” like a Gracie. For some reason I can’t fathom, some people seem to think that their lack of skill in “play” or “sport” fighting (like NHBs) can somehow translate into skill when they are actually assaulted (“real fighting”). Typically they argue that while they won’t be able to use most of their skills they can muster some “deadly” (translation: never tested or practiced against real resistance) technique, like a biiu jee to the eyes, that will save them. But fighting is fighting. If you can’t stop someone with a punch in a NHB, you’re not going to stop someone on the “street” with it; if your tan sao doesn’t work in a NHB, it won’t work on the “street”. Experience has consistently shown us that he only way to gain fighting skills is by fighting (we learn to box by boxing, not by hitting focus mitts), folks that avoid “play” or “sport” fighting simply will never develop fighting skills, including for when it is “real”. TN
BTW, as an aside – I had thought that Bruce Lee came up with the “learning to swim on dry land” analogy, but have discovered (via Duncan Leung) that it was Yip Man who originally used it and Bruce adopted it. TN
actually,terrybaby,youre wrong.i larned judo.judo as most
people know is the sport off- shoot of jiu jitsu.ive used judo
in two fights,and it worked decently for me.where i trained
it was sport/competition based.but by simply applying
those “moves”,and being used to the roughnes,it helped.
also my local gracie barra told me they “train with restraint”.
so my experience was not how i learned [ie to fight like terrybaby
said] but what i learned.im guessing matlock here will suitably
“respond”.
I blew out an ankle a few years back which kept me on crutches for a month, and hobbled for a few months thereafter. It also led to additional injuries as I tried, foolishly, to compensate, including calf pulls, and ultimately an atypical tearing of the planta-facia ligament in my foot which forever changed the way I stand and forced me to relearn much of my horse work. (I was on the tail end of that during the Rochester Friendship Seminar).
However, I didn’t learn from that, and have continued to train with blown elbows, and currently with the other ankle severely damaged from an underestimated heel-hook. I like training too much to stop, but I’m an idiot. Training isn’t fighting. It’s not life or death. It’s grueling, on going, and an incredible drain on even a healthy body.
Hypocritically, then, I say your body is the most precious thing you own. Machismo and bravado can quickly reduce the time you have with it. Serious injury is no joke. No matter how much you enjoy training, just imagine never being able to train again because you were too stupid to rest and tend to your injuries, to heal and come back healthy.
In the early days of judo, judoka beat jiu-jitsu practicioners precisely because they trained against full resistance - whereas the jiu jitsu practicioners stuck with empty ‘technique practice’
i have to agree with terence that training with full force at full speed is an absolute necessity - however most take this to mean ‘sparring’.
The problem is that the nature of this framework is such that strategies evolve that would not be effective outside that framework (eg in the street) - just look at boxing, wrestling etc. IMO the problems with competition fighting are not that the rules limit the techniques that we can use (you’re entirely correct about this terence!), but that strategies that are fundamentally different to wing chun prove to be more effective in that environment. Hence training for competition leads to bad wing chun.
The trick is to have a framework which does train you for combat (see the judoka sweep the floor with their jiu-jitsu cousins!) - yet doesnt lead to strategies evolving that would not work favourably in a real fight.
In wing chun we have one framework which is fairly unique - chi sao. Problem is most people dont seem to understand how it relates to real combat - usually two camps of people - the ignorant who assume their chi sao will win them fights, yet never test it, and the people who can see that their chi sao wont help them in a fight, and go spar some rounds instead.
However, contact is still only one aspect of wing chun - bridging the gap is often more important, especially in a real fight. Hence, time must be spent training against REAL jabs, hooks, crosses, takedowns, kicks etc etc - full speed full force real intent - start slow and gradually speed up - dont allow bad habits or competition strategy to develop. No free sparring, yes real resistance!
Re: training with injuries - there is so much to work on in wing chun that one can do when injured - it’s a ‘soft’ martial art after all - this shouldnt be a problem whatsoever.
If you can’t stop someone with a punch in a NHB, you’re not going to stop someone on the “street” with it; if your tan sao doesn’t work in a NHB, it won’t work on the “street”. --TN
The knowledge level of your apponent my have to be taken into consideration here your average street punk may not know how to sink his enegies enough to get through even a poorly placed tan sao. So a persons current level of training can be considered healthy and improving where it might be possible that a person could be able to defeat a street punk but not a knowledgable NHB trained fighter at a certain point in his or her training and yet they are still effective and training towards the knowledge and skill of an NHB fighter.
I was reading some comments from John “The Train” Hackleman (sp?) who trains, among others, Chuck Liddel, perhaps the most effective striker in MMA. Hackleman had a very successful kickboxing career, but started out in NHB in Hawaii at the age of 16 or so (lied about his age). Hawaii was a real melting pot of MA and the NHB tournaments had Chinese, Japanese, and eclectic MA, as well as street fighters. He said the easiest to destroy were the Chinese MA fighters, then the Japanese. The hardest, according to him, were the street fighters. NEVER underestimate a street fighter.
Once again, I say Wing Chun Kuen is NOT fighting. It is a progressive methodology to improve fighting ability. A bad fighter who doesn’t use it to improve will remain a bad fighter, just as a good fighter who does may become a great one. (Any master chef will tell you just how important the base ingredients are).
(BTW- You can enjoy cooking even without being a chef or having the best ingredients - I do! Just as you can enjoy training WCK without having any desire or interest in fighting. Life’s too short).
Bad Russian car, used by many taxi drivers in Guangzhou. We devolved into discussing them on another thread. [/B]
That’s ‘Lada’ with just one ‘D’ .
Bad Russian car? You Americans are so snotty
Hand dependancy - sifu Philipp Bayer lacks a fist (the left one) and he’s still a superior Wing Chun fighter. Granted, it’s not an injury per se, but it is a handicap nevertheless.
Hey, we had bad local cars too (“Le car”). You can feel snotty about them if you want (And I won’t even bring up the Yugo 8P)
Jean-Jacques Machado has only a partially formed (I think right?) hand and he’s one of the most feared BJJ and Sub Wrestling competitors going. That’s very different from an injury, though, in that injuries can really be made worse if you don’t take care of them (and Bayer sifu and Prof. Machado could also be injured).
Captain, reread what I wrote – I don’t think we’re disagreeing.
Rene, you are absolutely correct when you say “I say Wing Chun Kuen is NOT fighting. It is a progressive methodology to improve fighting ability.”
KJ, you are absolutely wrong when you disagreed with Rene on the above point.
canalong, you are correct when you write “The knowledge level of your apponent my have to be taken into consideration” as skill is indeed relative. But are we training to be able to handle unskilled drunks (if so, how do you test that ability?) or skilled fighters? If you can do it against a skilled fighter, I’d suggest that the unskilled drunk will be a piece of cake (but not the other way round).
crimsonking was correct when he wrote, “there is so much to work on in wing chun that one can do when injured” – I continued to train while recovering from a dislocated my knee (which occured in training). But he is incorrect when he writes, "it’s a ‘soft’ martial art after all. . . " IMHO “soft” is a poor word for WCK’s approach (even our kuit says “hard and soft combine in use”), one that new-agers who don’t want to fight have embraced as a mantra – a better interpretation of the chinese is “flexible” rather than “soft.”
But fighting is fighting. If you can’t stop someone with a punch in a NHB, you’re not going to stop someone on the “street” with it; if your tan sao doesn’t work in a NHB, it won’t work on the “street”. Experience has consistently shown us that he only way to gain fighting skills is by fighting (we learn to box by boxing, not by hitting focus mitts), folks that avoid “play” or “sport” fighting simply will never develop fighting skills, including for when it is “real”. TN
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