What makes Wing Chun such an effective martial art for self-defense & personal protection or for combat sports like MMA is its’ ability to be called upon in a simple, direct and efficient way.  This is also why folks who cannot rely on physical strength or size find Wing Chun to fit their needs best…sadly though, if they do not train the art properly and with the right end goal in mind, it is of no use to them and can actually end up doing more harm than good since it may give the practitioner a false sense of security. This false sense of security only comes about one way: by not training the art realistically to develop functionality in technique and application.

I was watching one one of my favorite movies the other night, "Boiler Room." As I watched this for the 982nd time I couldn’t help but be reminded of the similarities between this movie and our end goal of Wing Chun fighting skill both in chi sau and self defense.  In both cases, hesitation is to Wing Chun what poison is to a well of water. If you haven’t seen this flick, watch it.  It is an excellent film and offers several profound lessons on the nature of human behavior, all of which are applicable to Wing Chun.  In our training we have a tendency to hesitate when entering in chi sau, engaging in gor sau (chi sau sparring) or training for a lei tai or sanshou tournament.  What makes all of these so important -and potentially hindering-is that they all affect our end goal: the ability to apply our Wing Chun on the street, for self-defense, in an aggressive, assertive and unyielding way.

How many times have you done the first form, Siu Nim Tao or “small idea” set, in training-either solo or in class?  I’ve done this set hundreds if not thousands of times.  It wasn’t until I made use of this idea of "deliberate practice" that I realized how much of my time spent, while not useless by any stretch, was not optimized for maximum growth and development because, while I repeated the skill sets of the first form to ingrain them into my  muscle memory I did not perform them with the INTENTION of IMPROVEMENT.  Once I began to be fully present in what I was doing AND make the intention to improve each time I performed this set, it was like my training got a B12 shot.  It’s really that powerful.

 For us as Wing Chun practitioners, this means that if our training is too conceptual in nature but has no element of realism, we are merely engaging in a discussion of “what if’s.” This bears no fruit for us. On the other hand, if all we engage in is hard training with lots of contact but pay no thought to the Wing Chun forms and dummy training and neglect our basic skills training in favor of sparring and the “flashier” aspect of Wing Chun, we are not doing Wing Chun.  Now this may yield faster returns on your investment of training at first since as the saying goes “nodding your head won’t row the boat.” Wing Chun is a martial skill whose benefit lies in its’ training and usage-but it must be properly trained in order to be effectively used.

A big part of what makes Wing Chun so effective is the application of what I call the “Tent Pole Concept.” Just as tents have one or two poles which hold up everything else and provide structure to the tent itself, in our case the application of the two “tent poles” of FORWARD PRESSURE combined with TRIANGULAR STRUCTURE form an ironclad sense of body unity and allow you to impose your will on your opponent. Your structure is honed in your forms training, your sense of body unity is sharpened each time you perform an entry in chi sau or a stepping drill, and both ideas are reinforced whenever you use the wall bag or focus mitt to practice your chain punch or palm strike.

My main beef with most martial arts schools out there lies with their advertising; more specifically the fact that so many prominently advertise “self defense” yet their training is often the furthest thing from it.  Sometimes it’s downright laughable. Putting it bluntly, women seeking martial arts for self defense should not be taught how to throw a reverse punch, perform a flying side kick or how to  put a would-be rapist in an arm lock or heel hook.  No right handed defenses against a left wrist grab and for damn sure no high X block knife disarms. They should be taught how to go for the eyes, throat and balls.  They should be taught how to cause pain.  They should be taught how to be practical, fierce and mean! Generally speaking, women tend to be smaller and less physically strong than men.  If I were an attacker and a woman punched me in the face while I was attempting to mug, assault or rape her, chances are she’d just end up pissing me off.  If she were to instead gouge my eyes, claw my face, scrape my shin with her shoe or smack and grab my balls, all of my size and strength goes right out the window.

In the heat of things, one thing is certain: NOTHING goes as easy as planned. You have to be able to edit and adapt on the fly or else you’re getting the short end of the stick. This is why Chi Sau training when done PROPERLY is so valuable!  Note the compound bows and pics of Bruce on the walls…sweet. One of my favorite acronyms when teaching Wing Chun and for my personal training regimen goes like this: Adaptation is the Shortcut to Success  (A.S.S.) When ...

Here is a scenario far too many of us are affected by yet don’t or can’t change: have you ever felt fear, intimidation or hesitation about an upcoming tournament or class session?  Have you ever had to deal with the demons of self-doubt or merciless self-criticism?  Oh yeah, I’ve been there more times than I can remember or even care to.  In fact, if you’re like me the main issue has never been discipline in finding time to train or toughing out hard sessions; rather it has been training my mind to repel and ignore thoughts of hesitation, fear and inadequacy. Allowing those to take root in your mind are truly akin to dumping poison down a well. Fortunately, this method of mental training systematically reprograms the mind, allowing you to truly “see yourself at your best.”

Much like any system of organized religion, leave it to people to take a once simple, direct and efficient process and completely f*ck it all up in the name of money, power and control.  Wing Chun is a system of guerrilla warfare and close quarter combat designed to overthrow an oppressive regime that was created to be learned quickly and used almost immediately.  It was created to make fighters quick, not sages who would meditate on the beauty of a dewdrop on a leaf.

Chi Sau is one of those things that is all too often completely mistaken for either actual fighting itself or some weird, non-contact “patty cake” drill that makes about as much sense as pulling punches an inch from the guy’s chest like the old karate tournaments used to be. I know every Wing Chun guy and his cousin has weighed in on this issue but here goes: chi sau is a drill; it is not fighting. When I see two people chi sau one of 2 things usuall happen: it quickly degenerates into some herky-jerky posing like something you’d see in a 1970’s Run Run Shaw movie or each person tries to stick to each other’s wrists no matter what, which leads to such deviation from centerline dominance and forward pressure that these folks look like they’re driving a school bus. Again, chi sau is a drill that is done to hone a very specific set of skills – namely structure, body unity and the idea of shooting the hands forward when there is no obstruction; it is not a fight, however, for it to be useful at all it must retain all of the combative attributes of fighting.  You must de-focus your mind away from merely getting a “hit” in.