The Reality of Wing Chun Training

A fight is much too diverse and dangerous to adequately train apples to apples. WIng Chun addresses this by developing a strong structural foundation (forms) and conditioned/contact reflexes via drills. These reflexes of logical mechanical structure must be governed by the tactical principles learned from Wing Chun.

In other words, mind and body.

A boxer or MMA fighter can test their training “apples to apples” because of the nature of their discipline. The Wing Chun defender, on the other hand, can’t do that because of the nature of self-defense.

This isn’t to say that violent encounters are unknowable - that’s logically absurd. We simply mean that a self-defense situation will have uncontrollable variables insofar as training is concerned. For example, you may be attacked while at work where you have office furniture around and you’re in dress shoes. Another scenario is someone breaking in your front door and you’re in your socks. Or you’re getting out of your car. Or you’re in an elevator. It’s hard to imagine that you’ll be in a place of optimal footing and space when an attack happens because the very nature of an attack is that it’s beyond the control of the defender. It’s the choice of the attacker, not the defender that makes it a self-defense scenario.

All those are just variations of environmental factors of self-defense. Add to this the fact that your attacker could be much taller and heavier, or short and fast. There may be more than one. The physical variations of opponents is a critical factor in self-defense success. It’s a foolish miscalculation to think that a right hook is exactly the same regardless of opponent. A man’s height, weight, strength, and speed relative to our own is of vital importance.

There are also tactical considerations as well.

Altercations can and should be avoided. There’s no doubt about that. A fight of choice is a contradiction in terms for the self-defender where it’s only moral if absolutely necessary for the preservation of your (and/or loved one’s) health. If the fight is avoidable, it’s not self-defense. But a guy charging you in the parking lot over a parking space dispute is vastly different than a home invasion. In the parking lot, evasion and/or escape are absolutely on the table. If the enemy never lands a blow and you’re able to “gas him” so that he’s exhausted, you win…even if you never hit him. Or if you were able to get a barrier like a car, or you ran away.

The goal in self-defense is what you already have, so “winning” can sometimes simply be not losing. This isn’t a popular truth in many martial art and combat sport circles due to ego, but it’s true nevertheless. The colonies didn’t need to beat England in the War for Independence, they merely needed not to lose. Think about it: the British won every major city in America during the war but lost because they couldn’t get George Washington and his Continental Army completely out of the fight. They took Boston, New York, Philadelphia (the capital at the time), Baltimore, Charleston, and Savannah. (Baltimore really stung because the attack was led by the traitor, Benedict Arnold).

The burden of total victory is upon the invading army or - in our case - the attacker. The defender needs not to lose by having enough counter-offensive capacity to keep the struggle going. Ego has nothing to do with self-defense and must be disciplined or else it can get us killed. Or worse…and yes, there are fates worse than death. The older a man becomes the more he realizes how destructive his ego is. It must not be confused with healthy competition that spurs growth. That’s goal setting; ego is the monster in our hearts that will burn all its path in order to have a sense of victory. Ego leads to stubborn refusal to admit error. It leads to confrontations that could have otherwise been avoided.

There are very few hills worth dying on.

To our point, the only hill worth dying on is the one forced upon us. Self-defense is unavoidable or else it’s an ego fight - or something darker. A man that sits around worrying whether or not he’s a better fighter than someone else (and he’s not a professional prizefighter) is wasting his life. Violence is so ugly and destructive that the trained self-defender learns to avoid it whenever and wherever he/she can.

Of course, we live in a fallen world in which men and women insist that they’re the final standard of right and wrong. The refusal to acknowledge a transcendent moral law over all men, and submit to it, is what makes this subject necessary. If everyone loved their neighbor as themselves there’d be no need for Wing Chun. This is the context in which we must see self-defense. The “style” of fighting that Wing Chun is preparing us for is exactly this: the unavoidable combat that’s thrust upon us in areas where footing is less than optimal and there’s no padded ropes or walls. No rules. No ref. No time limits or weight classes. Just you against the enemy.

This is the thing to remember. There won’t be a bell signaling the start of the round. There won’t be a warmup.

Think of a home invasion. That presents a host of particulars not present in an attack out in public. And it’s certainly different than sparring in a 20-foot ring.

Escape would be a moral problem if that meant you left your family behind (except if it was only your mother-in-law…just saying). Plus, the cluttered environment of most homes/apartments makes a game-plan of evasion somewhat unrealistic if not impossible. Same thing in an elevator or something like that.

One thing we know, though, is that a self-defense scenario will involve a very aggressive opponent. It must or else it’s not unavoidable. A hit-and-move artist can be avoided for the most part. Floyd Mayweather isn’t going to break down your front door and then Philly-shell you to death anytime soon. This is to say that you can be fairly certain your opponent will be either winging wild right hand power shots (most people are right-handed) and/or rushing you. He might very well throw left hooks, but you get the point. It’s this type of aggression we should be preparing for in training.

Another way to see it: there’s a vast difference between getting ready to fight Ali or Tyson. Both men were boxers but used vastly different styles. That’s the point. The self-defender must be ready, via training, to deal with the hyper-aggressive attacker who’s firing bombs - usually over the top, in a swimming fashion. What experience do you have in dealing with those types of blows? Who cares how good your bong-sao is if the first time you ever see a true haymaker is when it’s the real thing! What type of experience do you have in dealing with intensity?

A long time ago I had a student who started in kids’ classes. He was very diligent and earnest and became quite adept. He also was very tall and by his mid-teen years was over six feet in height. It’s natural for someone to use their best attributes so as not to “lose” during sparring drills. We recommended that he work sparring drills with the adults and boxers (we have a boxing program at the school). When he was faced with people his own size and/or bigger his defensive deficiencies became apparent. This rattled him as he’d gotten a false sense of security about his functional capacity.

Another student was very fast. When he was in scenarios with skilled partners that had enough speed to cancel him out or were tall enough to thwart his quickness, he likewise ran into an identity crisis. I relate these examples to you - and I have countless others - because a balanced program that’s safe and progressive will challenge all of us. Plus, and importantly, it points out the crucial reality of specificity. What are we doing when we’re training? What’s the goal? If we think we’re something we’re not, we must remember that reality always wins.

So, like with the very tall and the very fast student, we work hard to remind all our students that this same principle will apply to us if we think a self-defense scenario will be a sparring match. Or a chi-sao match. The wild aggression of a fight can be overwhelming emotionally, so we must be prepared for it. We can’t directly fight in training as, again, that’s immoral, unsafe, illegal, and illogical for all the aforementioned reasons. It’s impossible to put people in an apples-to-apples self-defense scenario.

What we can do is have conversations like this (blogs, for that matter) and calibrate our training to prepare for the nature of self-defense, not matches or sparring. Forms, drills, personal training, sparring, chi-sao…they’re all part of the puzzle that make us better. The key is to not get so hyper-focused on a derivative part that we miss the big picture.

In other words, don’t concentrate on the finger…we’ll miss what it’s pointing at. Wing Chun training, done right, is logical, safe, and eminently capable of preparing you for the real world.