This is my first post here but I have been reading this forum for some time. I have been studying Wing Chun for 3 years now. I have a question that I hope the more experienced people will be able to answer. I have spent a fair amount of time watching videos on youtube and everytime I see two Wing chun people sparring it tends to look like two people just swinging at each other. Where are all the techniques? I see tons of chain punching but no fook sao, or tan, or kwan… Are these people just untrained and are unable to use their Wing Chun the way it was designed or do most technigues fall apart under pressure? So I guess I’m asking why most Wing chun when pressure tested looks like just constant chain punching. Maybe I’m not seeing the right videos though.
I’m looking foward to everyone’s thoughts on this. Can anyone post videos where someone is using good Wing Chun under a high pressure situation?
The U tube is not an accurate sample of reality. Suggest making the effort and visiting a top flight school when there is “sparring” going on. So called chain punching when done right is a developmental tool -NOT to be overdone in sparring.
Lots of bad wing chun on u tube. I am sure you will get noise and more opinions.
lets face it the majority of wc practioners cant apply there style
but with that said neither can the majority of other martial artists as well most people do train in a unrealistic manner, most people do not train hard enough and most peoples martial training will fly out the window in an actual fight
being that we live in a modern society where martial arts arent used for survival as they were in the old days its not suprising there is alack of quality practioners
does wing chun work? yes i would find it hard believe that the shaolin temple wanted to create a style that worked well against others and could be learned in a quicker amount of time but in the end ended up making a martial art that doesnt actually work:D:D
There is a fascination today with video. The stuff you see on utube is mostly young people that are only half trained in their chosen style, and they have not actually trained or practiced long and hard enough to show the skills you seek. These same people have the notion that fighting is learning, but it really isn’t. I suppose that you do learn a few things when fighting, like not getting too close, or when you should have ran, but in most cases learning stops when you leave your training space. You only get to apply what you have learned when you fight, and very little of anything else as far as technique. If you talk to most seriously skilled people they will tell you that they have spent a great portion of their lives training and working with a partner doing repititious moves over and over until they can do then in their sleep and under any condition, such as fight stress. You need to work with a partner as much and as often as you can so that you learn timing and such. That is where you learn, not sparring in a ring or street fighting.
When you do see serious fighting skills being demonstrated there is always the guys that question it because the guy is not fighting a resisting opponent. This is silly because when a person is resisting he stops usually as soon as he catches a fist in the face or neck. These same people seem to think that fighting is learning. It isn’t. It is applying what has been previously learned. It was suggested that you visit a good kwoon and watch some of these people sparing or applying technique. You can ask the skill level and probably get to see some really good technique being used. You can find some good stuff on utube, but on average you only find stuff that is in name only.
ive seen many of these too. some people say “this is how WC will look”. two people throwing punches at each other and brawling is not skilled fighitng no matter what
i think this style of fighting comes from two reasons
people misunderstand the strategy of overwhelming your opponent and constant attack. it really doesnt mean unloading on an opponent nonstop with no skill, but people take it as such
they might have some success iwth this. against another unskilled opponent, the brawler who is in better phsyical condition will win
[QUOTE=kungfublow;959613]Hello All!
This is my first post here but I have been reading this forum for some time. I have been studying Wing Chun for 3 years now. I have a question that I hope the more experienced people will be able to answer. I have spent a fair amount of time watching videos on youtube and everytime I see two Wing chun people sparring it tends to look like two people just swinging at each other. Where are all the techniques? I see tons of chain punching but no fook sao, or tan, or kwan… Are these people just untrained and are unable to use their Wing Chun the way it was designed or do most technigues fall apart under pressure? So I guess I’m asking why most Wing chun when pressure tested looks like just constant chain punching. Maybe I’m not seeing the right videos though.
I’m looking foward to everyone’s thoughts on this. Can anyone post videos where someone is using good Wing Chun under a high pressure situation?
You will not always see wing chun tools such as tan, bong, fook etc as it depends on my aspects such as range, skill, type of equipment etc.
You should see go punching and to a large extent the punch is wing chun.
Most people in most martial arts styles can’t apply their art fully. But then you have to identify what applying the art means…gloved sparring or light contact or chi sau are not always good indicators.
I was worried that all my training and hard work was just going to lead to me throwing random punches over and over again in a fight. I don’t see the point of all this hard work if that’s where this is leading. I can learn to fight like that on my own just by fighting. It’s good to know that with dedication and lots of drill training you can make this work under pressure. That’s my end goal. I’ll keep up the hard work and enjoy the ride that is Wing chun. Hopefully I can get to the point where I can use all this in a real fight situation.
I totally agree that you can’t learn to use your wing chun while pressure testing it. In my experience with this there isn’t time during a fight exchange to worry about what technique I am going to use and when I am gonig to use it. I would think this needs to be like a reflex. You feel something then react to it. I think that this can only be achieved by drilling until your body just reacts in any given situation on it’s own without thinking about it. Then there would be a different set of things to work on during fighting. Things like timing and distance. I don’t think during sparring a person should be worried about how to apply technique. They should just be able to do it without thinking about it .
Wonderful Post. Excellent summary. I think right now this is one of the better threads up and running.
I enjoyed the many explanations on why WC doesn’t look like WC when it is applied by young inexeperience fighters on Television. Have you seen the footage of Bruce Lee applying WC on a rooftop. Like a Beimo. I think it would be a good idea if you guys on here could get together and film a video of WC being applied.
I just wanted to jump in with a little discussion on sparring. Sparring is a training tool much like drills or pad work or hitting the bag, it is not fighting. The only way to know how you will look in a fight is to get in one. And remember, how you look in that fight is only how you look against that particular person at that particular time.
Sparring is a good way to test what you have learned, under pressure in a controlled environment. There are many levels of sparring from very light contact to rather heavy contact and from one step you attack and I counter to continuous sparring. All of it is good. The closer you get fight like conditions, heavy contact continuous sparring the better you will be able to judge your strengths and weaknesses in a fight.
Of course some people spar simple because it is a fun way to bang on each other with out getting in trouble for it.
RE: Youtube.
Youtube seems to be fine for well know masters to show off their demos and forms, but for some reason the real fighting doesn’t show up there, strange eh?
RE: Sparring.
Sparring can be as close to the real thing or as far away as YOU CHOOSE to make it.
This thread is a perfect example of why you don’t see the things you think you should see from WC in actual fighting and why the majority of people who train WC cannot use their techniques effectively.
It has nothing to do with Utube or most WC people not learning “proper” WC (despite what some clueless “masters” will tell you).
The fact is real fighting will look nothing like the way WC is “supposed” to look.
[QUOTE=Paul T England;959722]Top three groups to look at in my eyes are WSL guys, Robert Chu/Alan Orr Guys and Duncan Leung guys. [/QUOTE]
I think the only guys you can actually see mixing it up with outside opponents are Alan’s guys. Notice how their fighting rarely resembles what most people think WC is “supposed” to look like. There’s a reason for that and it’s not that they’ve learned “poor” WC, but that effective fighting will express itself only in certain ways.
My opinion styles aren’t supposed to “look” like anything at all. You train them a certain way to learn some style tricks and structure and then you apply them. You refine it till it can save your life not so that it “looks” like wing chun.
I’m throwing out two options here:
Understand that styles aren’t really supposed to look like the way they are trained in forms.
For the people bad mouthing youtube and saying it’s all bad wing chun: You’re obviously skilled enough to bad mouth someone else’s hard work. So instead of bad mouthing put up a video of yourself showing how someone as skilled as you spars with wing chun.
I think that both my options won’t be liked by most especially the supposed skilled people who “know” what wing chun is and how it should be applied.
Sanjuro Ronin brought up a good point. You guys will put up a thousand forms and demo techniques but no sparring. Either you don’t believe yourself to be good enough or you’re afraid of being made fun of the way you are making fun of these others on youtube. Video did a good thing for kung fu. It made people look past all the BS that passes for skill.
I know I’m starting to sound like knifefighter here but I don’t want to be considered in the same ilk as him(no offense, knifefigher). I am not demanding a video from anyone really. I’m saying that if you’re good enough to make fun of vids on youtube than you should be good enough to put up a good video to show everyone on youtube…or stop crap talking.
Styles ARE supposed to look like styles. Boxing looks like the boxing (that’s trained) when under pressure from a skilled resisting opponent; so does wrestling, Muay Thai, kickboxing, BJJ, karate, judo, sambo, TKD, etc.
But when your style only begins to look like what you train once you’re within 30 inches of your opponent - then getting there may entail your style looking like something else, ie.- boxing, kickboxing, etc…(as is often the case when wing chun sparring/fighting takes place)…
If you’re up against a skilled resisting opponent with a solid long range game - and with enough size so that you’re not going to simply overwhelm him due to your superior size.
And with the evolution of mma, even styles like “pure” wrestling, judo, BJJ, etc. will have the same longer range problem when up against a skilled striker.
I agree with Ultimatewingchun. The reason why you learn a particular style of MA is because you liked the look of it and you want to ‘own’ it so you can apply it. Yours may look slightly different to others because of your physique, preference, etc, but it should look fundamentally the same. Tell the JKD guys that they’ll look nothing like Bruce Lee once they apply JKD moves in sparring or in a real bout and you’ve upset a lot of people
[QUOTE=Knifefighter;959777]This thread is a perfect example of why you don’t see the things you think you should see from WC in actual fighting and why the majority of people who train WC cannot use their techniques effectively.
It has nothing to do with Utube or most WC people not learning “proper” WC (despite what some clueless “masters” will tell you).
The fact is real fighting will look nothing like the way WC is “supposed” to look.[/QUOTE]
Why is that? What then is the point of training all the techniques and the forms? Woking on getting your tan in the right place or your bong perfect. If all these things will not be used in the real fight. What then are the things you should see from Wing chun in a real fight?
