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| Stupid things Wing Chun People Say |
Wing Chun has been my primary martial art for more than three decades.
I love the art. That is precisely why some of the things said about it drive me crazy.
Over the years, I have heard explanations that range from questionable biomechanics to mystical theories, impossible fighting claims and elaborate excuses for why techniques should never actually be tested.
Some of these ideas come from misunderstanding.
Some come from tradition.
Some probably come from teachers repeating what their teachers told them.
And some are extremely convenient ways of hiding ineffective training.
So here are five of my favorites.
1. “My Art Is Too Deadly to Spar”
This may be the king of all traditional martial-arts excuses.
The argument usually goes something like this:
Wing Chun contains techniques designed to damage the eyes, throat, joints and other vulnerable targets. Because these techniques are too dangerous to use against a training partner, realistic sparring is impossible.
There is one obvious problem.
If you never practice applying your skills against someone who is genuinely trying to stop you, how do you know you can apply them against someone who is genuinely trying to hurt you?
Knowing a technique and being able to perform it under pressure are completely different abilities.
A compliant partner allows you to control distance, timing and rhythm. A resisting opponent does not.
He moves unexpectedly.
He attacks while you are attacking.
He changes distance.
He protects himself.
He hits back.
He makes you afraid of being hit.
Suddenly the beautiful technique that worked perfectly during demonstration becomes much more difficult.
This isn't merely martial-arts opinion. Modern skill-acquisition research emphasizes the importance of representative practice: training should preserve important information, decisions and actions from the environment in which the skill will eventually be used. Research in combat sport similarly shows that even ordinary training fights do not necessarily reproduce all the psychological and behavioral demands of actual competition.
Of course sparring isn't identical to a street attack either.
But progressive resistance gives us something cooperative drills cannot:
an opponent who doesn't want our technique to succeed.
And that is extremely valuable information.
2. “Wing Chun Isn't a Sport, So We Can't Test It in Competition”
This is the sophisticated cousin of “too deadly to spar.”
The argument is that Wing Chun cannot be used effectively in combat sports because rules prohibit its most dangerous techniques.
Eye attacks.
Groin attacks.
Throat attacks.
Finger strikes.
Perhaps biting.
And, sooner or later, someone mentions gloves.
There is a legitimate point hidden inside the argument.
Sport fighting and self-defense are not identical.
Rules change behavior. Gloves change some possibilities. A referee changes the consequences. A padded floor is different from concrete. A scheduled match is psychologically different from an unexpected assault.
We shouldn't pretend otherwise.
But none of this makes combat sports irrelevant to fighting ability.
Timing still matters.
Distance still matters.
Balance still matters.
Power still matters.
Reaction still matters.
The ability to remain functional while someone is aggressively attacking you still matters.
And hitting a moving, resisting opponent in the eye is not magically easier than hitting him in the face.
If you cannot reliably control distance and hit an opponent under relatively safe conditions, adding a more dangerous target does not solve the underlying problem.
“I would have poked him in the eyes” is not a substitute for fighting skill.
3. “You Don't Need Muscles to Generate Power”
This one particularly bothers me because it takes useful traditional ideas and turns them into nonsense.
Wing Chun correctly teaches us that muscular strength alone is not the same thing as effective striking power.
Good structure matters.
Coordination matters.
Timing matters.
Ground reaction forces matter.
Acceleration matters.
Body mass and how effectively it is coordinated matter.
Relaxation at appropriate moments can matter enormously.
But none of this means muscles aren't producing the movement.
Humans move because muscles generate force across joints through the musculoskeletal system.
Tendons transmit forces generated by muscles and can store and return elastic energy. They are extremely important to movement.
But saying that punching power comes from tendons instead of muscles misunderstands basic physiology.
The interesting question isn't:
muscles or tendons?
It is:
How does the entire neuromusculoskeletal system coordinate force efficiently?
That question can lead somewhere useful.
Mystical anatomy cannot.
4. “Your Technique Is Wrong”
Usually because your hand is three centimeters away from where mine is.
Wing Chun practitioners can become extraordinarily obsessed with small technical differences.
Your bong sao is too high.
Your elbow is too far out.
Your stance is three centimeters too wide.
Your tan sao is at the wrong angle.
Your fist should rotate slightly differently.
Sometimes these details matter.
A small structural change can alter leverage, alignment or available movement considerably.
But context matters more.
There is no universally perfect position independent of the problem being solved.
An opponent isn't going to freeze himself at precisely the distance required for the photograph in your training manual.
Real interaction is dynamic.
Positions change because distance, direction, force, timing and opponent behavior change.
This is another place where modern motor-learning research is interesting. Contemporary approaches increasingly emphasize adaptable movement solutions rather than attempting to reproduce one supposedly perfect technical template under every condition.
Principles matter.
Details matter when they support those principles.
But:
different does not automatically mean wrong.
If two variations both solve the same problem efficiently under resistance, perhaps both are valid.
The opponent gets a vote.
5. “There Are Secret Higher-Level Techniques”
There certainly were secrets in traditional Chinese martial arts.
Teachers didn't necessarily teach everyone everything.
Some knowledge was restricted to family members, trusted disciples or advanced students.
So historically, the idea of secret transmission isn't ridiculous.
But the modern commercial version can become ridiculous very quickly.
After several years of training, you discover the advanced form.
Then the secret application.
Then the internal method.
Then the advanced internal method.
Then the real interpretation that your teacher couldn't reveal previously.
Conveniently, every revelation requires another seminar, private lesson or level of membership.
Here is my problem with that.
Fighting is fundamentally built upon relatively simple abilities developed to a very high level.
Move.
Maintain balance.
Control distance.
Protect yourself.
Hit.
Avoid being hit.
Control another person's structure.
Recognize opportunities.
React under pressure.
Make decisions quickly.
None of these things is secret.
They are simply difficult to develop.
There may be sophisticated methods for improving them. There may be unusual training exercises. There may even be information preserved only within particular lineages.
But there is no secret technique that compensates for an inability to perform the fundamentals against resistance.
The greatest secret in martial arts remains disappointingly boring:
good training and a lot of work.
The Problem Isn't Wing Chun
This article may sound like an attack on Wing Chun.
It isn't.
Wing Chun is my primary martial art. If I thought the system had nothing to offer, I wouldn't have spent decades practicing and researching it.
The problem is what happens when explanations replace testing.
Traditional martial arts are particularly vulnerable because so much information is transmitted through teacher-student relationships.
A teacher says something.
His student repeats it.
Eventually that student becomes a teacher.
Twenty years later, hundreds of people repeat the same statement.
Its age gives it authority.
But nobody remembers to ask:
How do we know?
That question should not threaten a martial art.
It should improve it.
If a technique works, testing helps us understand why it works.
If it fails, testing helps us discover when it fails.
If something works only under particular circumstances, we learn what those circumstances are.
And if something doesn't work at all, perhaps we should stop wasting training time on it.
Tradition deserves respect.
It does not deserve immunity from reality.
So if your teacher tells you that you cannot spar because Wing Chun is too deadly, that competition cannot test anything because Wing Chun has eye strikes, that muscles are unnecessary because power comes from mysterious internal sources, that everyone else's bong sao is wrong, and that the really effective techniques will be revealed after your next expensive seminar...
You don't necessarily need a secret technique.
You may just need another school.