Traditional martial arts by definition, stick to a time honored method to convey the full learning experience to a student. Defending (blocking) is taught first. This is the most frustrating aspect for a beginner. This is not the glamorous thing he or she imagined. This kind of practice does not release the frustrations of everyday life. In ancient times, this was the way that instructors weeded out the student that would be a trouble maker and misuse the knowledge. Such personalities normally would not do blocking techniques for several months and so they would leave the training.
However this method of training instilled a keen sense of the most obvious purpose of martial arts training and that is self-defense. Without this training, a student would unerringly find his enemy’s fist with his nose on a more or less repeating basis.
Another training method in traditional arts is the stance training. A student is required to stand motionless or move through a series of stances for several months. This insures that in a real fight, the student will not be knocked down. A bigger, heavier or stronger attacker has an even greater advantage when on the ground so it is wise to learn how to keep standing. Wing Tsun has always been known as a non-traditional, traditional martial art. Wing Tsun breaks with some traditions because it was always taught in a narrow line of successors that were handpicked more carefully with no concern about how many students the instructor could attract up until the time of Ip Man, better known in WingTsun circles as Yip Man. In addition, it was taught as a shortened version of Shaolin kungfu to speed up the learning process. This means that a modern student has to learn defense and offense at the same time!
WingTsun does not have 10-50 different choreographed forms (kuen, kata, hyung) with 50 to several hundred movements in each form to learn. Consequently the focus is more on whether or not a student can defend in the most economical way possible. Even the few techniques that a beginner has to learn in WingTsun can be tedious. However each simple movement works in great number of common situations! This makes the art of WingTsun a very practical concept for a real attack. The tendency is to try to remember what you learned in class other than just the chain punches. However when a “haymaker” is aimed at your head, the wisest thing to do is go straight in and hit your attacker early in the execution of his punch with chain punches. No two situations are the same, however. If your attacker has a weapon, if there are obstructions, if he has friends, or if he has the momentum and not you, Leung Ting WingTsun® has so many more advanced tools and that is why we are here!
© Copyright 2010, Keith Sonnenberg. All Rights Reserved. No Reproduction With Out Permission.