WC Kickboxing

[SavvySavage]

I believe this is the next step in wc training after you have become a bit proficient in the basics. The basics are: dan chi sao, lap sao, luk soa, basic stepping, drills using wc moves againt various attacks.

After you have spent a few months doing the above it is time to apply it from a distance against non-wing chunners This is not a "wc people need to spar and spar against other people" thread. This thread is about diversifying wc. WC is a specialized system that was meant to be added to regular fighting(kickboxing) or that regular fighting was meant to be added into wing chun training.

One of the major things I learned from sparring was that you can't survive just using the wc blocks/parrys/ strikes. It's impossible! The mentality, and I believe it was well intentioned, was to train a few movements to master them. Train fook, lop, bong, etc and be able to blast people away because that's all you do. The problem is that those only work at a certain distance. At other distances the covering seen in boxing/kick boxing work better. And still at other ranges(grappling) none of them apply as they are done in the form or when trained against strikes. Sure you can say that when you throw someone your hand was in fook so you used fook but in reality it wasn't fook.

Tneihoff would disagree and say that wing chun is attached fighting. I don't disagree or agree completely. Enter, strike, grapple is the basic strategy of many Chinese martial arts. WC seems like it has good simple tools to parry and enter. Common wc training needs to include more power training and not just the typical wc jab which could be powerful but often isn't.

I was sparring the other day and the purpose of this was to work in wc trapping(entering). The other guy would punch me with medium power and I had to try and stop his hands from moving to strike him. What happened was a lot of hilarity. It worked ok sometimes but other times against the craftier strikers I got clocked. Even though the drill was to work on the trapping aspect I learned that it is impossible to trap ALL strikes coming in. Covering with my arms while using angling footwork would have worked well WITH the trapping. I think the trapping mentality comes from the wc way of thinking where when you get it the opponent is finished. But during sparring the opponent gets trapped up and hit...but them moves and it starts all over again.

What I noticed about my training brothers, as well as others on youtube, is that they stand robotically with their hands out to meet. There was no head movement and flat footwork. When the sparring started then the trapping hands would fly into action sometimes missing completely allowing them to get hit. Constant forward pressure worked sometimes and other times it lead to getting hit rather hard as you are walking into a punch coming at you.

This is just a log of sorts for my sparring adventures. Are wc opposed to adding boxing covers and slight head movement into wc? Years of chi sao didn't prepare me to eat my friends right hook. I think he killed a part of my brain.

[couch]

I believe this is the next step in wc training after you have become a bit proficient in the basics. The basics are: dan chi sao, lap sao, luk soa, basic stepping, drills using wc moves againt various attacks.

After you have spent a few months doing the above it is time to apply it from a distance against non-wing chunners This is not a "wc people need to spar and spar against other people" thread. This thread is about diversifying wc. WC is a specialized system that was meant to be added to regular fighting(kickboxing) or that regular fighting was meant to be added into wing chun training.

One of the major things I learned from sparring was that you can't survive just using the wc blocks/parrys/ strikes. It's impossible! The mentality, and I believe it was well intentioned, was to train a few movements to master them. Train fook, lop, bong, etc and be able to blast people away because that's all you do. The problem is that those only work at a certain distance. At other distances the covering seen in boxing/kick boxing work better. And still at other ranges(grappling) none of them apply as they are done in the form or when trained against strikes. Sure you can say that when you throw someone your hand was in fook so you used fook but in reality it wasn't fook.

Tneihoff would disagree and say that wing chun is attached fighting. I don't disagree or agree completely. Enter, strike, grapple is the basic strategy of many Chinese martial arts. WC seems like it has good simple tools to parry and enter. Common wc training needs to include more power training and not just the typical wc jab which could be powerful but often isn't.

I was sparring the other day and the purpose of this was to work in wc trapping(entering). The other guy would punch me with medium power and I had to try and stop his hands from moving to strike him. What happened was a lot of hilarity. It worked ok sometimes but other times against the craftier strikers I got clocked. Even though the drill was to work on the trapping aspect I learned that it is impossible to trap ALL strikes coming in. Covering with my arms while using angling footwork would have worked well WITH the trapping. I think the trapping mentality comes from the wc way of thinking where when you get it the opponent is finished. But during sparring the opponent gets trapped up and hit...but them moves and it starts all over again.

What I noticed about my training brothers, as well as others on youtube, is that they stand robotically with their hands out to meet. There was no head movement and flat footwork. When the sparring started then the trapping hands would fly into action sometimes missing completely allowing them to get hit. Constant forward pressure worked sometimes and other times it lead to getting hit rather hard as you are walking into a punch coming at you.

This is just a log of sorts for my sparring adventures. Are wc opposed to adding boxing covers and slight head movement into wc? Years of chi sao didn't prepare me to eat my friends right hook. I think he killed a part of my brain.

So much good stuff in this post.

[sanjuro_ronin]

I only add this:
If you seek to be an "attached fighter" then the vast majority of your fighting will be clinch work ( grappling), throws and ground work ( because that is where you will end up).

[hunt1]

Wing chun isn't about trapping . You don't fight with trapping hands. Trapping is purely a happy function of contact and energy received. The heart of wing chun fighting is covering,movement and angles. Wing chun body should be springy not robotic. Foot work is alive and floating not flat and plodding.

What you want to add already is part of wing chun. Ground fighting is a different story

[trubblman]

One of the major things I learned from sparring was that you can't survive just using the wc blocks/parrys/ strikes. It's impossible!

If you say you can't do something it's always going to be true. Instead of saying that you [one] cannot survive just using WC, maybe you should consider an alternative, namely, that you might not be as good as you think you are. My instructor was a correctional officer in Baltimore for a decade and a half. In that environment he learned to make WC work, in other words, he used the tools, adapted them and changed things that he thought did not work well for him. He says he has no problem dealing situations that you describe.

[sanjuro_ronin]

It has been my experience that trapping lends itself better to grabs and attempted grabs than to strikes.
The typical mentality of someone trying to grab you is to grab you and feel that contact, when they do they feel they "have you", by trapping you have them but they still perceive that, because of the contact, they have you.
Strikers are different, try to trap them and they will hit and move and hit and move and do pretty much anything NOT to keep contact.
Add to that the typical strike is far faster and comes in combination as opposed to the typical grab that comes as a "onesy" and is slower because the person is attempting to grab and control you instead of trying to knock your head off.

[SavvySavage]

If you say you can't do something it's always going to be true. Instead of saying that you [one] cannot survive just using WC, maybe you should consider an alternative, namely, that you might not be as good as you think you are. My instructor was a correctional officer in Baltimore for a decade and a half. In that environment he learned to make WC work, in other words, he used the tools, adapted them and changed things that he thought did not work well for him. He says he has no problem dealing situations that you describe.

I never said I was any good. I was only saying what I can and cannot do. If the Baltimore environment was as bad ad you say I bet he didnt use pure wing chun. Does he have any video of him using his trapping skills sparring against students or his training brothers? I don't like the video challenge but you are saying he can make WC work 100%. Better to show instead of tell.

[ShortBridge]

I've actually known a few corrections officers who were wing chun practitioners. None of them seemed to feel as you do about it not being adequate. I trust their experience.

There's a lot of other stuff that could be responded to in there, but I don't know where to start.

Train, train, train, the answers are in there. If these are not the answers for you, look elsewhere. I don't think you can draw sweeping conclusions on behalf of the rest of us, though. In my experience, kickboxing and wing chun are very different things.

[anerlich]

If you say you can't do something it's always going to be true. Instead of saying that you [one] cannot survive just using WC, maybe you should consider an alternative, namely, that you might not be as good as you think you are.

Sounds like someone's buttons got pushed by accident.

The boxing cover/shell is certainly a good "everything else has failed" defense against a striker. It also allows you to get that bit closer if you want to get into grappling range without getting hit.

I agree with the OP that WC defense works very well at some ranges, not well at others, and the "blocks" in the empty hand forms are worse than useless against edged weapons.

My instructor had a lot of kickboxing matches well before MT became popular in the west. and had to work with rules that disallowed kicks below the waist and a mandatory kick count per round. He added roundhouse kicks, hook kicks etc to WC. It worked very well for him. So did working on head movement, boxing footwork and evasion.

In this day and age it doesn't pay to lock yourself totally into one system. It seems only in TCMA that methods are regarded as one size fits all, unworthy of improvement, or that adaptations shouldn't be experimented with, because some alleged supergenius supposedly conceived them out of the ether centuries ago.

The opposite happens and is regarded as normal and sensible in nearly every other field of human endeavor.

[trubblman]

I never said I was any good. I was only saying what I can and cannot do. If the Baltimore environment was as bad ad you say I bet he didnt use pure wing chun. Does he have any video of him using his trapping skills sparring against students or his training brothers? I don't like the video challenge but you are saying he can make WC work 100%. Better to show instead of tell.

I was not saying that you were not any good either. My intention was analyze the logic that WC does not work just because an individual has not yet found the answer to a problem. Rather than look at WC and say it does not work, the better solution IMO would be to experiment, question, practice and find a solution from the WC kit that works for the individual. My teacher found what worked for him. What he does may or may not work for me.

[SavvySavage]

I was not saying that you were not any good either. My intention was analyze the logic that WC does not work just because an individual has not yet found the answer to a problem. Rather than look at WC and say it does not work, the better solution IMO would be to experiment, question, practice and find a solution from the WC kit that works for the individual. My teacher found what worked for him. What he does may or may not work for me.

I have yet to see one sparring video on YouTube to say that pure wing chun works. Actually what is your definition of pure wing chub? Is WC all trapping or is it attached fighting or is it WC kickboxing? I believe WC to be closer to kickboxing because it is a boxing style. Attached fighting is wrestling and wrestlers do it best so train wrestling and not WC if you believe in attached fighting.

IMO studying a sport style could be very useful in improving one's tcma.

I'm not saying your teacher can't do anything. Obviously he can since he was in corrections. How big is he? All I'm asking is to post a video of what your consider pure WC and the video show it working.

[trubblman]

He is about 5' 6" - 5' 7". I didnt say he uses pure wc at all. What I wrote is that he has no problems eating punches, hooks or jabs or closing the gap using WC. I dont post videos. If you are by chance ever in Maryland let me know and I will be happy to introduce you. Or if he releases a video which he may do I ll let you know.

[jesper]

pure WCK only exist in the classroom.

in a fight take what works for you and use it. leave the pure WCK bs to the pattycakers

[bennyvt]

never heard of all the chi sao comps in the early days. Who did he chi sao and when.
Anyway, trapping is a slipt second thing to get a shot in. People tend to think that it means being able to strike at will. I was always taught that if you can get another shot in good but don't count on it. Thats why the videos of people doing one trap and chain punching is normally when someone is heaps better and the other guy gives up. I do traps in sparing when it happens but looking for it would mean that most of the time you shouldnt have trapped just hit or moved etc. Its like trying to hit a ball in the same way at the same spot no matter where he throws it. Good for training but the odds are low that you will get them all.
WSL and Barry used to practice while in fights so they would try to use a certain techniques in as many ways as they could to trail it out. Barry always said that it is not recomended if you want to win or not get hit. But in those days he didn't know when the next one would be and he was in the country for a certain period of time so he had to learn as much as he could.

[trubblman]

I have yet to see one sparring video on YouTube to say that pure wing chun works. Actually what is your definition of pure wing chub? Is WC all trapping or is it attached fighting or is it WC kickboxing? I believe WC to be closer to kickboxing because it is a boxing style. Attached fighting is wrestling and wrestlers do it best so train wrestling and not WC if you believe in attached fighting.
.

I myself don't have any videos but IMO WC can work without addons. If I may make bold as to suggest the video Backyard Chi Sao by Gary Lam. He uses several techniques I like and I think work really well: what he calls ding-ding lap lap, biu-biu lap-lap and open palms from Chum Kiu curving from the center line outward.

The problem as I see being articulated by Savage is how to deal with a fighter with very fast hands, using jabs, hooks and uppercuts in combinations. My thing is once your hands occupy a particular space, try not step back and or with draw your hands. For example lets say I m doing pak sau to wu sau. Even though I m stationary, my thinking is that I dont withdraw the wu sau at all; rather I am stepping forward and my wu sau hand continues to occupy that space. So I am not withdrawing the hand to perform pak sau to wu sau but my body is moving forward.

In addition, one of the teachings that I have heard mentioned by Yip Man's students is not to be afraid of getting hit.

By the way, my instructor and I dont do per se sparring. What we do is nonprearranged drills at 1/2 speed which dont stop until either he or I ( and it's usually me ) is put in a really bad position.

That's my 2 cents. Feel free to disagree with it.