Wing chun long, medium, or short range sparring?

[kung fu fighter]

I started this thread from the "On why I think Hendrik is on to something." thread in order to get away from bashing one another and get back to some real productive discussion on training aspects of the wck system. If I was Gene Ching, I would have two separate wing chun sub forums. One on wck politics and wck agendas and the other one on productive wck training aspects discussion.

I don't feel that sparring is the "be all and end all" that some make it out to be. I DO believe that sparring is an important part of a training program and everyone should take part at times. But, like Chi Sau, I also think sparring can be over-done and over-emphasized. Some important aspects of Wing Chun just aren't going to come out in a sparring scenario. So if someone is over-emphasizing sparring and not really training their Wing Chun as it was designed to be trained, then they are going to be missing a lot of elements.

I agree! Both sparring and chi sao develop different attributes which contributes to overall self defense training. The main goals of Wing chun sparring should should focus on developing awareness of controlling distance and timing. While the main goals of chi sao should focus on controlling and disrupting the opponent's center of balance.

What works in sparring is kickboxing. Its has been my experience that the more emphasis and time spent on sparring the more and more the people doing it start to look like kickboxing. This is because basic kickboxing is what works! So people begin to naturally adapt what they are doing to be more and more like kickboxing...whether they are doing it consciously or not. Their structure and technique starts to change if they are not really working to train their Wing Chun and retain it. Heck, just look at just about any classic martial art that puts on the gloves and steps into the ring. Where are all the cool techniques from their forms? Why is it you can't tell the Hung Ga guy from the TKD guy? Its because they all resort to some adaptation of kickboxing. Because THAT is what works in THAT scenario!

In regards to long and medium range sparring, I believe after years of investigation in various kung fu systems, western fencing and boxing Bruce Lee came to this conclusion as well. So we don't have to re invent the wheel, he has already done the ground work for us. Wing chun sparring doesn't have to look like kickboxing if you know how to use your footwork with angling with proper awareness of timing and distancing.