Then why continue with Wing Chun? Personally, I would give it up for something better.
If you have better Wing Chun than what you described, I think that's what this thread is about; your best Wing Chun and what works best against it.
---I've studied Ip Man Wing Chun, TWC, and Pin Sun Wing Chun. Not long ago I got my ass kicked in sparring by a good boxer. He literally knocked me on my ass! In the past I hadn't had much opportunity to spar with someone like that. Like a lot of Wing Chun guys, most of my sparring was against fellow Chunners. I was doing a lot of what I described above in this thread. So I did a serious appraisal of the approach I had learned. I spent a lot of time going through Wing Chun sparring clips on-line and "Wing Chun vs. X" clips. The guys that were doing the best in sparring while still doing obvious Wing Chun were TWC guys. And that is because they included strategies other than charging up the center with chain punches, or standing right in front of a good boxer and expecting to come out on top. I started to revisit the "blindside strategy" and use of angles from TWC as well as some of the "pre-contact phase" strategies. I essentially went back to my TWC training, although what I do still has something of a Pin Sun "flavor" to it. And my sparring abilities improved a lot as a result.
No. I didn't say I couldn't defend, but that defense like that is not necessarily in line with VT strategy.
---Ok. I can see that. But then that might be a flaw....limiting your VT to just that one strategy.
I didn't say that. I'm talking about letting up because it is a "friendly spar".
This allows them to do things that otherwise would be shut down with "unfriendly" force.
---If you are controlling their center, off-balancing them to destroy their base, or trapping/tying them up then this shouldn't be an issue. If your strategy is to rely on over-whelming punches to knock them out, then yeah....it might be an issue.
I don't count on that. This just highlights the problem with a friendly spar and the negative effects it can have on VT.
In such an exchange, I'm not going to blast on them until they're out.
---But you can blast on them until the are off-balanced or falling can't you?
VT is not a defensive martial art. I didn't say I can't defend myself, though.
VT not working optimally as it should due to holding back does not mean I get beat up.
It just means I'm not using VT as it is intended and am sometimes forced to become too defensive because I'm being too friendly.
---I can see that. I guess that's why I feel that TWC works better in a sparring situation. It seems to have more strategies for the fight. That's not to say that it is more effective than WSLVT, just maybe more suited for an artifical sparring situation.