Queens Wing Chun|MMA-Home
Beautiful Art| Effective Self-Defense
Wing Chun is a beautiful traditional martial art and at the same time a realistic system of self- defense. Throughout the world, millions of people train at martial arts schools in order to learn self defense, and probably close to a million people worldwide train at wing chun schools. But, what exactly is self- defense anyway? When most people talk about self- defense they have in mind the situation of a consensual one on one physical confrontation, i.e. the so called “fair fight”. In a “fair fight” the combatants square off giving each other plenty of warning, and most likely there are some type of “rules” that limit how long the fight will go on, and how much damage will be caused. But to me, real self-defense is the non-consensual situation where you are attacked or mugged, usually by multiple attackers, perhaps in the proverbial “dark alley”, and often one or more of these attackers has some type of weapon. In this type of dangerous, indeed deadly situation you can “defend yourself” successfully if you can get out of the situation alive and hopefully without serious or permanent physical injury. So learning self defense doesn’t mean training for the one on one consensual ritual combat. But to me “learning self-defense” shouldn’t mean training 20 or 30 hours a week for 5 or 10 years, in a martial arts school or gymn before you can “defend yourself”. Instead you should be able to learn the skills required to survive in much less time, say 3 to 5 hours a week for one a half to two years, keeping in mind that the most effective self- defense skill is avoiding the dangerous situation.
Wing Chun, a 300 year old Martial Art, is said to have been invented by a woman and is designed to enable a smaller, weaker person to prevail against one or more larger and/ or stronger attackers. The founders of the art and the successors who followed them trained in secret deadly moves that they actually used in life and death combat, not as part of a sport. The practitioner is trained to attack the most vulnerable areas of the body, the eyes, throat, groin, and knees, with devastating speed. One of the mottoes of the style is that a fight should last no more than 3 seconds, otherwise it is considered lost. Wing Chun was probably developed from Shaolin Kung Fu, but the founders replaced movements based upon animals with movements either based upon the human body or geometric forms such as the straight line, triangle, and circle. Although the principles of the style were developed over 300 years ago, principles such as simultaneous attack and defense, economy of motion, borrowing the opponent’s force, and the use of tactile (touch) reflexes for attack and defense are revolutionary, even to this day.
Wing Chun is also incredibly fun to learn and practice, and it can provide tremendous benefits in overall physical fitness, and the training of reflexes and reactions.
The Leung Ting version has added antigrappling and groundfighting in its arsenal, as well as techniques designed to combat karate, tae kwon do, and other more “modern” arts which did not exist at all 300 years ago.
Although the style is designed to be a practical system for self- defense, and it is indeed a complete fighting system in itself, some early fighters, most notably Bruce Lee, added powerful techniques from western boxing and other martial arts, while in more modern times some instructors have added BJJ or other groundfighting arts. Non- Wing Chun techniques that I particularly like include the Thai Roundhouse, especially for leg attacks, the Kyokushinkai or Savate Snap High Roundhouse kick, the boxer’s hook punch, and certain spinning techniques. While spinning techniques such as the spinning back kick, spinning side kick, spinning bottom fist, and spinning elbow strike all break the “nose to nose” wing chun principle their torquing power and element of surprise can be devastatingly effective.
The awesome video below showcases the skills of former (now deceased) wing tsun master Berndt Wagner.
