Exploring a Common Question

What is a complete martial art? To me, a complete martial art is one that affords simplicity, economy, easy to learn, and covers the five ranges of combat (punching/palming, elbows/knees, kicking, trapping/pinning/locking, and ground fighting).

Some of these ranges are more common than others, and practitioners of various arts have their own thoughts as to what should be the primary focus. That is why we see so many differing methods to begin with. Wing Chun focuses on fist fighting, so that is the primary concept that everything else is built around.

Does that mean that the other ranges do not exist? No. However, it does mean that our tactics and principles for delivery will be predominantly driven with punches in mind.

Since my last post, many have offered their thoughts about what they consider to be a complete martial art. Some are quite long and exhaustive with thorough explanations, while others are blunt and to the point. Unfortunately, they chose to send me their private emails vs. post those thoughts here for others to read, but maybe sometime in the future they will see how valuable their thoughts are when sharing them with others.

Until then, you are stuck with me.

So, what is a complete martial art, and is there really such a thing? Yes, I believe there is. Will everyone agree what makes up a complete method? Definitely not. If they did, you would only see one way, one method.

Now then, on with the show.

Wing Chun is a concept-based method, meaning that a handful of primary concepts and tactics can be applied to the majority of situations the average person would be exposed to. Because of this, we do not have to learn 10 different ways of getting out of an arm bar; instead, we employ tactics of 1.) not getting there to begin with, and 2.) if we do find ourselves in this situation, taking a different approach than what many arts train in.

For example, let’s use a common shoot attack as an example.

In today’s more popular MMA-based methods, grappling and ground fighting is paramount. Without that, they feel that any method is sub-par. I have even heard some say that without it, you are wasting your time.

So how does a Wing Chun practitioner respond to shoots?

As an attacker drives in, we do not sprawl back. Our training is geared for driving forward and closing the gap, which decreases the distance between us and the opponent. Rather than working a movement-based method in which multiple counters are employed, we generally employ the same type of actions such as driving the knees into their face as they go down, slamming punches into the face, palming the back of the head and pulling their head into our knees, and driving elbows into the back of their neck.

Should the opponent counter this, we would never disengage like a hit-and-run fighter; instead, we keep the attack going and we never back off. If you were lucky to get in the first time, you might not be that lucky the second time. Therefore, ocne the fight starts, we train to continuously keep moving forward and stay in our preferred range vs. attack, defend, attack, defend, etc.

That is one possible response, of course, since there are many angles that can occur with shoots. But essentially, the same concept of approaching it would be the same. We “might” side-step, too, and not take all that force head-on. After all, a lot of momentum and power is being driven into our lower body, which is why we train a great deal of footwork and adduction of the knees to wedge in, just like we wedge in with the elbows when punching.

However, the concept is essentially the same, regardless of what is being used. There are variations, but the response follows a very basic principle.

Where footwork is concerned, a lot of people think that Wing Chun footwork is severely limited or doesn’t really exist at all. Unfortunately, they have no clue what they are talking about because from the Chum-Kiu on, a great deal of emphasis is placed on footwork, mobility, jamming, and kicking (as well as knees and elbows).

However, just like the approach mentioned earlier, the concept of footwork is actually very basic when put to real use. The training is complex and does take a lot of time to work in unison with the upper body, but at its most basic level, it is a simple premise of coordinating adduction with steps at all directions.

The first element of this is a proper stance in order to learn about adduction of the knees, as well as how the body responds to this stance. It is not enough to simply stand there in Yee-chi-kim-yeung-ma and think “I got it. What’s next?” It takes time to learn about how to accept force into this structure, how the body will respond to it, how to overcome rebound, and how to strengthen the legs in such a way that we can drive through the opponent with explosive force. All the while, we work a relaxed, responsive upper body so that the legs can take us to the targets.

The basic, non-moving structure is so important to everything we do that the entire first form, Siu-Nim-Tau, is stationary. Some practitioners have added steps to the Siu-Nim-Tau, which amazes me since they miss the point of what the entire meaning behind the stationary training even creates for us. But I will leave that for another article.

Once sufficient strength of the legs is attained, and once this is working properly with the upper body, the concepts of turning and basic stepping are introduced. In order to deliver the Wing Chun concept, a specific structure must always be maintained; otherwise, it would change our stance ratio for body weight, which in turn opens up holes in our defense. Likewise, an incorrect ratio would not deliver the full power of attacks that it could when the ratio “is” correct. This is why we spend so much time with first working the drills stationary and then working them with turning, stepping, and then jamming kicks.

Advancing and side-stepping are the two primary stepping actions, with advancing being the predominant movement. Taking the fight to the opponent and closing the gap (distance) brings us into our preferred fist-fighting range, while side-stepping keeps us in range but changes the angle so that we do not take the full brunt force of the attacker’s incoming strikes.

In the next expansion to this series, I will discuss the “why’s” behind our concepts of anti-locking, anti-grappling, and anti-takedowns, as well as ground fighting. Yes, Wing Chun as we train it does have ground fighting tactics, even though the formal system does not include it (and many Wing Chun/ Ving Tsun schools do not teach it). However, the Wing Chun concepts can be applied if you ever find yourself on the ground, so we train that, too.