Wing Chun - development of a martial art
Hi Fellow Martial Artists,
This is my first post ...
Ive been spending alot of time of late thinking about WC and for what its worth, here are some of my thoughts about this great martial art.
WC is somewhat different to the other Southern Chinese martial arts. The focus on these styles are on what I call "off hand" fighting - eg Hung Ga, CLF, Bak Mei etc.
By focussing on off hand fighting, arm sensitivity becomes unimportant - these styles therefore can be viewed as being 'external'.
WC is quite different - it has concepts that can be found in Internal Styles such as Tai Chi - deflection, redirection etc, and alot of time is spent training arm sensitivity. However, WC has also alot of external martial art elements - chain punching for example.
That being the case, WC can be viewed as a hybrid style - ie an Internal and External Martial art. WC is essentially a product of an attempt by the Southern Chinese Martial Arts movement to create an internal martial art. Unfortunately if once compares WC to Tai Chi - it doesnt quite get there yet....
Not being internal / external is a dangerous place to be. You don't quite have the hard "heavy handed" power like the external styles nor do you quite have the internal chi power of the internal martial arts.
Today many WC practitioners naturally tend to focus on the external elements of the art to generate power. This is a product of:
a. Western mindset of power.
b. Not understanding how to use chi to generate power.
So to a large extent WC's soft/internal elements have not continued to develop/ plays a secondary role to its external elements. It is because of this, I think WC has reverted to becoming more of an external martial art rather than continuing its development as an internal style.
I personally believe if WC is to mature and develop as an even greater martial art style, it should focus on its soft/internal elements not its external.