Who Goes First?

One of my students had asked me about the range efficiency of Wing Chun in class last Saturday.

She is a very proficient boxer who has amazing hand speed and footwork. Her question launched us into a conversation about the illusion of Wing Chun being a close quarter combat art only and not having ground skills or skills against a distance fighter, such as a boxer.

She had inquired how Wing Chun deals with someone who uses footwork to enter, attack and leave to reposition themselves for their next attack...i.e. boxing footwork.

I asked her to take her boxing stance and I took my Wing Chun guard. I told her we would "spar" at 50% ability to determine not who is better, rather if her boxing footwork served her well in the "in and out" attacking fashion against someone who is in a fixed position like Wing Chun.

The long of the short of the story is that she found out how effective Wing Chun's smothering, bridging the gap and crowding power do to negate all her attacks and destroy her defenses.

But what lead off the exchange was her brilliant question...

She stood there and began bouncing on her toes, eyes and guard razor focused and ready to start attacking me. Up and down she bounced. We were about 3 feet from each other. She bounced and I merely stood in place.

After about 15 seconds of doing nothing but bouncing and waiting, she asked, "Well, who goes first?"

BOOM! That in itself was the whole point of the lesson! If contact (from a Wing Chun perspective) cannot be made, and there is sufficient room to avoid contact, a Wing Chun person will not bridge the gap first.

Once contact is made, however so slight (as she felt having all of her jabs stuffed back into her) Wing Chun's Chi Sau training comes to life allowing the practitioner to "feel" and employ all training.

If you move first, you risk getting counter attacked at the point where your first movement is finishing.

In a perfect world we could finish every fight with the "one punch, one kill" mentality. But where Wing Chun excels at is recovery...what happens IF your initial strike does not do the job.

Everything we train for in Wing Chun after we learn the Centerline Punch is to learn recovery. Pak Sau, Tan Sau, Gan Sau and most of all Bong Sau are all re-directional movements for incoming energy and NOT blocks.

In Wing Chun we either move around the energy or redirect it so we can continue to our next strike. This is why Wing Chun does not move backwards and shifts as much as it does. This is why we train on the Wooden Dummy...NOT to harden our arms, rather to understand postion better as well as learning to continually chase the center and not the arms. Furthermore, the slower and softer you train on the Wooden Dummy, the better your skill becomes.

I explained to my student that although the boxing footwork is effective, the potential danger for it in a street fight is perpetually present.

I have never seen a bar fight that started with boxing footwork.

Any time I had to place someone under arrest I approached them flat footed for balance and not on the balls of my feet. If they struggled with me, I did not disengage with them and start dancing like a boxer.

When you are in close proximity and / or contact with someone it may not be the best option to disengage with them and start dancing if you feel them pressing forward into you. You are sacrificing balance.

You have to take in account that 99% of all fights end up on the ground. Wing Chun is anti grappling as it learns to use structure to stay on our feet with re-directing movement and using our shift instead of risking balance by elusive footwork.

The hand speed training of Wing Chun almost always over shadows the importance of its footwork. Without understanding the Wing Chun footwork, its the same as trying to throw bullets at a bad guy instead of shooting them out of your gun.

Dominick Izzo
Izzo Training Systems
Wing Chun Self Defense Chicago and the NW Suburbs
www.izz-training.com