The Aikidoka did a decent job entering to get out of the power zone for those TKD kicks - he needs some close-in tools once he gets there, though. I'd be interested in seeing if his guard improves if he faces someone who throws more punches.
Is Wing Chun being used the wrong way in fighting?
- Thread starter geezer
- Start date
The WC community is already totally isolated, not only from others, but from each other. Most rarely spar among themselves and seldom if ever with other styles. In fact, years back, when our association split, members of the other faction were forbidden from engaging with us (as well as with other WC lineages). My old si-hing and training partner of many many years wouldn't even talk to me!
With attitudes like that, merging with others is not a possibility at this point. I'd just like to get together with a few local groups and build up some trust. Hard to do in a style where everybody believes that they have the only true lineage, and can't work with anybody else because to lose means totally losing face.
My attitude is to do chi sau and let maybe let people punch me a few times first just to show them that I'm not there to be a jerk. Then when we get serious, it's not about who wins, but about what we can learn from each other. In competitive arts everybody gets hit, or loses from time to time. That's what makes it competition, right? Only when things are bogus to begin with,is "losing" such a problem for people.
Yes! it is.
If you (general YOU) have
- won 3 years national champ in your field, you may not want to compete for your 4th year. You may just want to retire with your 3 years national champ title.
- not won any national title, to lose one more time doesn't mean anything.
My teacher retired when he had just one "tie" in his tournament career. That was how seriously some people may think about "competition".
Your opponent needs to earn that himself. You should not give him for free.
Last edited:
I think it's a very different thing when you are talking about a professional, that is, a champion like you are talking about, and people who are still at the learning stage. You wouldn't tell a student to avoid competition for fear that he might lose sometimes. How else would he get experience?
Besides, you are talking about an art that has a history of legitimate competition. Nothing like that currently exists in Wing Chun.
The unwritten rule in wrestling is after you have taken down your opponent twice in a role, you will let your opponent to take you down once and end that match so he will not lose too much face.
obi_juan_salami
Green Belt
Flying Crane
Sr. Grandmaster
Ah, well. I don't read drop bears posts. I have no interest in what he might have to say. About anything. Ever. So...ok then.
I guess if you believe that everything in the world is captured on film and posted on YouTube for you to gawk at, well...again...ok then.
anerlich
Brown Belt
You do indeed seem to be failing there. I enjoy the occasional argument. Sue me.
I was viewing the "problem" as WC not getting respect from sportfighters because, with some exceptions, it did not fare well in those arenas.
I hadn't considered the possibility that people from outside WC might want to get in on the act with this new format and compare styles. The ability to compare and compete outside WC-only competitors is essential in my view to solve what I understood the problem to be. If the new format allows that, I guess it might fly.
As I say above, I was approaching this from a different angle, that of proving WC to sportfighters outside WC.
Most combat sports have boundaries. A platform seems a bit extreme and injury-prone when the same thing could be achieved with a visible boundary on a flat combat area - which should be padded if there are to be throws.
anerlich
Brown Belt
Too many seem to think that no one fights or trains MMA outside of the UFC and other elite shows, and that everyone that trains MMA or has an MMA fight is a full time professional fighter.
I train at an MMA gym in Sydney. I know a One FC title holder and another guy with multiple national level belts. Both work full time at jobs outside martial arts.
Harsh.
I think it was Jocko Willink and Joe Rogan who were talking about the "killer nerds" (something like that) who train jiu jitsu. Nothing wrong with being intelligent. Is there?
Martial D
Senior Master
Ah, well. I don't read drop bears posts. I have no interest in what he might have to say. About anything. Ever. So...ok then.
I guess if you believe that everything in the world is captured on film and posted on YouTube for you to gawk at, well...again...ok then.
Yet, it pretty much is. Since you have DB on ignore(he is one of my fav posters here, go figure), he posted a video of 'russels teapot'. Are you familiar with that particular thought experiment?
It's certainly relevant here.
anerlich
Brown Belt
How does this relate to the discussion? Since some of us are accusing each other of missing points:
anerlich
Brown Belt
In my experience tournaments tend to flatten the ego, not boost it. And often your competitors become good friends, or at least, people you respect.
dudewingchun
Blue Belt
I agree and you don't see MMA guys calling themselves grandmasters ( when they aren't, and haven't even fought once) wearing traditional Chinese Sifu clothes acting like they are better than normal people. The sport fighting=big ego argument is bs. I reckon a lot TMA/Kung Fu guys have even more ego problems than typical MMA guys which is why a lot of Kung Fu guys don't want to compete...to save face in case they lose!
Your assertion is that because you have never seen Aikido work, it does not work. It is very easy to hide behind Russels teapot as “I don’t have to prove I’m right, because the burden of proof does not lie with the denier”.
The flip side though is that you are asking us to believe that in all the time Aikido has existed and of all the millions of people that have trained in it, not one has ever successfully been able to use Aikido. I cannot believe that is the case.
Nor can I believe that the The Senshusei Course, which was originally created to train Tokyo Riot Police, would have been done so if the art did not work. No Police organisation would ask it’s members to train 7 hours a day five day a week for 11 months (or however long it is) for an art which has no merit.
I've seen enough of that kind of acrimony during splits to last me a lifetime, Geezer. I'm not part of the WC community, but I wish I had a way to help get something like this started.
wckf92
Master of Arts
Actually, there's a ton of stuff not captured on video. Don't let the amount of video that exists fool you. As far as I know, about 5 minutes of my entire training and teaching time has made it to video. The cops I know have only had a tiny fraction of what they do show up on video (body cams capture what's around them, not what they do). The bouncers I've known, there was video of some of what they did (from security cameras), but it only survived until those videos were overwritten.
We see a lot of videos of fights, and some of attacks, but in the US attacks rarely happen where there are cameras. In some countries (and in some areas of some cities in the US), there are more mounted cameras to capture some of that. Since many attacks don't happen around witnesses, those don't make it onto a smartphone. What makes it on phones, for the most part, is where someone was being obnoxious enough that people decided to start videoing before the action started.
Juany118
Senior Master
I didn't see to much wrong with the exception that he clearly has fallen into the trap a lot of TKD people do, rely on kicks WAY to much. As @gpseymour said earlier, I would be interested to see how the Aikidoka would fair against someone who punched more.
One other reason I shared the video. I don't know what school of Aikido the Aikidoka is from BUT Aikido is not just about wide looping throws. It's heart is Daito Aiki-jujutsu, that means takedowns and locks.
This is partly OT, but bear with me - I have a point that pertains to WC, I think. (Or I'm just rambling. Always a possibility.)
One of the issues I see with that Aikidoka's responses is that I don't see the "jujutsu" (as Kondo Katsuyuki would refer to it) from Daito-ryu - something I don't see trained in most of mainline Aikido (I expect it shows up more in Yoshinkan, possibly in Shotokan/Tomiki). I see him trying to apply the "aiki-jujutsu", which happens at a fairly specific timing. When he misses that timing, he just keeps dragging into the same technique. With just a couple of close-in techniques and some practice on the non-aiki side of the techniques, he would have had a much easier time of a couple of points in that.
So, how does this apply to WC? Well, much of Aikido has a very heavy focus on the single principle of aiki. Aiki takes precedence in at least most of the training I've seen in their mainline - precedence over effectiveness. It becomes an absolute, rather than "best, when available". So, they practice using attacks that make it available, and work to find ways to make it available in other attacks. From some of the discussions I've seen on WC, it seems perhaps some of this same process has happened in that art. There seems to be an absolutist approach to some of the principles.
The principles are guidelines on how the art works, but should not restrict from alternatives. I don't know the WC principles well enough to use one as an example, but you guys can probably translate this to your art. When I'm teaching NGA, aiki is still a primary principle. It's still "best, when available". But I also teach force-on-force options (hard blocks that jam the momentum, big strikes) and push-pull responses (more Judo-style). Why? At the very least, they are fixes for when you screw up. Equally importantly, sometimes they are better answers than the "aiki" answer. They still fit within the overall principles of the art, but the "aiki" principle doesn't get to dictate our every response. Effectiveness is the primary principle.
Again, back to WC and the discussion at hand. Competition and/or sparring between lineages can bring some of this to the fore. People see a grappling move from a line that sees WC as grappling. The folks who grapple more occasionally see a striking sequence or tactic that defeats them, and they adjust. And someone who trained in something else (as well as their WC), brings in a different step, stance, posture, or punch. It's not purely WC, but it fits nicely, and someone else decides they like it. Effectiveness starts to help evolve how WC is used, and how the principles are implemented.
Again, all this is just my view from the outside, based on what I've heard discussed in this thread and the couple dozen others I've been involved in.
wingchun100
Senior Master
It would be like climbing a mountain.
