What is Traditional Wing Chun? In fact what is a Traditional Martial Art?

The word “traditional” in martial arts is a funny one.  Its use and its meanings are often two very different things and the connotations of “A traditional martial art” or “Traditional Wing Chun” or even “A traditional system” can be very different to what they often amount to.  Let’s ask firstly the meaning of the word as many martial artists seem to be unclear.

The Cambridge English Dictionary (had a longer definition than the oxford) and says this:
Traditional    (adjective)
following or belonging to the customs or ways of behaving that have continued in a group of people or society for a long time without changing:
The villagers retain a strong attachment to their traditional values/customs/beliefs.
The school uses a combination of modern and traditional methods for teaching reading.
The dancers were wearing traditional Hungarian dress/costume.
She's very traditional (in her ideas and opinions).

The Modern use of the “T” word…..It’s all about marketing

There are many martial arts traditions which are apparent in the practice of Oriental Martial Arts such as the wearing of the Gi in Karate or the traditional Wai Kru and Ram Muay Dance before a Muay Thai bout. However this really has nothing to do with the way the word is used.

I could spend a load of time writing about the history of martial arts, Bushido, the influence of Chinese martial arts etc but this article is very firmly set in the modern age and is about how martial arts are marketed and certain practices sold as “traditional martial arts” or specific to my particular discipline “traditional Wing Chun” to disguise their lack of foundation or relevance.

Lies, Damn lies but then there’s always marketing…..

The word “traditional” in martial arts conjures up images of the old Chinese master slowly practicing his Tai Chi or the man in his Gi/kimono executing a Kata or Form; it plays on the idea of strong, mystical and possibly more to the point authentic martial arts practice. 

Sadly this often couldn’t be further from the truth.  In my article “Striking into MMA” I discuss how old masters built their reputations on challenges and would look to innovate, modify and evolve. Yip Man the father of modern Wing Chun indeed did this:

“According to some traditions (possibly better termed accounts), one day one of his classmates challenged him to try his martial arts skill with an older man. The man beat him with a few strikes. It turned out that the old man was his sibak Leung Bik (梁璧), son of his sigung Leung Jan (梁贊). After that encounter, Yip Man continued to learn from Leung Bik. At age 24, Yip Man returned to Foshan, and his Wing Chun skills had improved tremendously while he had been away.” Yip Man, Wikipedia.

This example represents quite a divorce from the definition of the word tradition. Indeed Yip Man was the man to place many of the old teachings into the forms we now see today, I must wonder what the old man would have thought about watching his system slide into arguments about what is authentic, or it being the way “Yip Man did it” as opposed to working out what actually works and gaining a high level of genuine skill.

There are a whole raft of modern self appointed Masters, Sifu, Sensei who have no real link to the roots of their system other than to blindly follow a practice they have neither questioned or successfully applied at any level other than maybe a street fight against a drunk with no skill. 

This is far from a traditional martial artist, if anything this is a modern phenomenon not at all to do with Traditional martial arts or traditional Wing Chun. As almost counterpoint to this within the combat sports fraternity the word “traditional” has become an almost equally negative connotation as it is a positive with the so called “Trad martial arts brigade” however many of the practices in some of these systems are truer to the roots of really authentic martial arts training than with their form/Kata dancing, counterparts. 

Whilst training in the USA with a man I genuinely consider to be a true Kung Fu Master, Sifu Robert Chu,  I was introduced to a practice of what Si Gung termed traditional Wing Chun Sparring which starts in the position made famous by Bruce Lee and Robert Wall in “Enter the Dragon”. 

This form was bare knuckle and certainly bore little resemblance to the half hearted dance I have seen in many a so called “traditional” classes sparring or some Karate Kumite I have witnessed. 

There was blood spilt, much bruising and even the odd sore knuckle, MMA sparring is an easier ride than this and I would imagine that in days gone by this was practiced once in a while by advanced students which might explain why so many Wing Chun teachers believe there is no sparring in Wing Chun. 

However a more cynical view would be that hard sparring does little for the bank balance of teachers wishing to make a living from their students, a consideration somewhat less prominent at a time when martial art practice was a life saver not so much a hobby.  I can almost hear the “Trad” martial arts fraternities’ outcry but I’m only stating what I have seen, if the cap fits….  

Ahhhh but that’s not REAL WING CHUN…….

Time and time again I have heard “traditional Wing Chun” teachers and students argue that boxing gloves kill the system or that sparring utilizing the full range of techniques available in the system is too dangerous, one word on this “Rubbish”.  Wing Chun punches and kicks, ties up and clinches, is this not also true in say….Muay Thai?  How could the use of boxing gloves and some ability to develop real timing and distancing skills actually damage your skill level? It’s a stupid argument. The old chestnut about MMA not being a true test because there are rules is an even dumber argument. No it doesn’t take into account multiple opponents, weapons or environmental issues…No true but if you can’t handle one guy of a similar weight to you with some skill what chance do you think you might have against three with baseball bats?

In Thailand a little known fact is that Muay Thai Fighters do very little “hard” sparring certainly not throwing the full range of techniques they have available preferring to leave that for the ring, instead they utilize light, “tip – tap” sparring and movement drills to practice their timing, distancing etc. 

In Muay Thai Clinch sparring drills don’t need to end in hospitalization and neither do they have to in Wing Chun. In fact when watching this form of sparring many “Traditional” Wing Chun practitioners might be surprised at how similar many of the techniques start to look, Tan, Lan Sau, Elbows, Biu Sau are all in there.

Many people who come and join Cyclone don’t even realize our core system is Wing Chun. Why? Because our emphasis is on sparring skills, Boxing drills, pad work, clinch, clinch sparring and using body structure in our application. Yes there are forms, yes there is Chi Sau but they are only part of a wider picture, this in my mind is far more authentic, far more traditional than much of the stuff involving allot of bowing and wearing those cute trousers and tee shirts with little Chinese letters on them which could say chicken fried rice for all the student knows.

Grades, belts and other ways to further distort reality.

In my opinion there is almost no other practice in martial arts today that has done more damage to its reputation than the use of grading systems.  But that’s traditional right? Wrong. 

“The systematic use of belt color to denote rank was first used by Kano Jigoro, the founder of judo, who first devised the colored belt system using obi, and awarded the first black belts to denote a Dan rank in the 1880s. Initially the wide obi was used; as practitioners trained in kimono, only white and black obi were used. It was not until the early 1900s, after the introduction of the judogi, that an expanded colored belt system of awarding rank was created. Other martial arts later adopted the custom or variation on it (e.g. using colored sashes) to denote rank including in arts that traditionally did not have a formalized rank structure. “ Source Wikipedia.

So this is a practice just over a hundred years old, much less in many martial arts systems, 1920’s for Karate (1950’s for Okinawan Karate) since their very inception they have been wrapped up in political maneuvering. 

Q: What Belt did Tyson have?
A: World Title Belt and it wasn’t black

So if grades are not traditional why have them?
To contradict my earlier statement I actually can see positive reasons for a ranking system but these are often heavily outnumbered by the many negatives. One positive angle of a grading or rank is every student’s development can be aided by pressing them towards attainable goals, a grading syllabus which sensibly steps towards reaching a high level of skill can be a useful tool in aiding this progression however the major downfall and what has become the standard practice in so called “traditional martial arts” is where it is the grade not the ability that becomes the achievement. 

The result is a hoop jumping exercise that ultimately results in black belt teachers who have very low actual skill levels and even less depth in their overall understanding of their system. The black belt itself originally only signified a basic level of competence and did not signify a teaching rank however in the interests of franchising many systems churn out 1^st Dan or Equivalent graded teachers in order to grow as a business lowering what are often already low standards of practice.  This is not always true but sadly it is more than common.

I actually quite like the BJJ & some Judo style grading systems where students must fight for their grades especially the higher ones where they have to at least hold their own against people of the grade they are looking to achieve. Even better if this is done in a fairly rigid competition format where there is a definite criteria for wins, losses and draws. Maybe not so practical at lower grades but certainly for milestone grades and this certainly would press towards a more uniform skill level for a certain grade.  However this all will depend on where you set the bar in the first place. 

The worst of this is when the grading system is further bastardized to include honor terms such as Master or Grandmaster. These terms are often self appointed and are there to attract gullible or more to the point unquestioning students who will pay high fees for the chance to train with “the master”. 

This is predominantly found in Chinese martial arts where the associations are far less well established than in their Japanese counterparts. Again I must say there are genuine masters out there but they have a tendency to be humble and honest. In my home town of Newcastle there is a Judoka I trained with briefly who owned the red and white belt of a master who I must say deserves it. He is a genuine master of Judo and personifies that rank however he would simply introduce himself as Steve. Sadly men of his integrity and caliber are few and far between.  There also also so called “masters” of “traditional” Wing Chun marketing themselves as such alongside their teacher the “grandmaster”  of genuine, totally traditional, really real, unbroken lineage etc Wing Chun…. Well what’s that sound like to you?  Sounds like one of those commercials on daytime TV shopping channels to me. 

I have nothing against people marketing their schools. I market my school. However what concerns me is the watering down of a system I happen to believe in and work very hard to promote as a genuine fighting system. If you are a genuinely good practitioner and a good coach then why do you need to dress things up or present something that is a distortion of the facts, hide your students from outside influences in case they start asking awkward questions or point to a family tree to give a stamp of authority? 

It all points to a lack of genuine belief that your skill can stand up to scrutiny. And for students reading this I challenge you to go to two other schools doing the same system and ask questions, I would guarantee a high percentage would move to another school within one month of doing so. 

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Alex Wright - Evolved Kung Fu Fighter

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Putting the RAD back into TRAD

Alex Wright: I wrote an article for Martial Arts News and didn’t realise I would have to write an (albeit short) autobiography too but as a foray into how and why I’m here then I suppose it does make sense to give you the lowdown on the who I am and why my views on the world of martial arts is what it is.

I got into martial arts with the express intention of learning to fight.  Like many others I got bullied at school but my story had a twist as I turned the tables on my aggressors in my final year and became something of a handful myself, it was the year after the story really started.  

Without going into too much detail I was attacked by two big guys in an enclosed space with no one else around. I fought my way out but ended up in hospital in a bit of a mess with the thought that remained in my head being how close I had been to actually walking away from the situation in tact and the fact that fighting back hard probably saved my life. 

So there it was, after recovering from my injuries I knew a little knowledge would have gone a long way and right back here at age 18 I already had no interest in belts, grades or the social aspect of a martial arts club, it was all about a skill set I wanted. 

My first martial art was Taekwondo which I started because it was there on my college campus. I did not more than a few sessions before a lay off and then found a club ran by a guy in Durham, ex-military and a straight up kind of guy. 

We did more boxing than most TKD practitioners probably due to Dave’s military background but it was around my green or blue belt I started boxing at a bona fide boxing gym and also discovered Bruce Lee. 

I’d done some TKD competitions but couldn’t really get my head around semi contact (I didn’t understand why I kept getting DQ’d) so boxing made more sense to me.  

I’d started doing some stuff I learned from one of Bruce Lee’s books and the comments from the instructors were “yeah that’s really effective but it’s not TKD”. This made even less sense to me as if it worked then as far as I was concerned efficiency is king not whether or not it’s in the grading syllabus. It’s impossible to underline enough how this brief situation encompasses my whole philosophy on martial arts training.

I tried Wing Chun system mainly because of the style's association with Bruce Lee. I was still in and out of the boxing gym at the time but I was interested in what the magical formula of Bruce Lee’s original style. This was also a real trap and developed to what was to become a love/hate relationship with the style.

Wing Chun as a system sells itself really well.... I’m in marketing as a day job and if I was to award points for martial arts marketing Wing Chun is like one of those long American adverts that gets you to buy into a dream not a reality. 

“The system designed to beat other systems” , “ The Scientific approach to fighting”, “The devastating efficient fighting style”. 

If you compare it to say Boxing and said: “The system that’s proved itself time and time again in the ring as long as you spend 4 hours a day in a sweaty gym, working really hard and being beaten up every day” Then we might be getting somewhere.

It took me about a year to work out where I was training wasn’t really a place to learn to fight, great if you wanted a nice hobby and some guys to have a beer with, but not what I was looking for. 

I’d been lucky to meet a guy there who was more fighting orientated so we pretty much trained together and sparred away from the main class much of the time but we realised the answer wasn’t in some dusty hall whilst chasing a meaningless grading. 

I started training Wing Chun again and also re joined a boxing gym doing the two in tandem for quite some time.

So fast forward a long time...2001

I hadn’t trained much during the past five years instead choosing to concentrate on my first love music. My rehearsal studio happened to be right next to a full time martial arts academy and the sound of the guys training became too much for me so next door I went. 

The gym was a mixed martial arts academy but after not long at all I realised the standard was again not great. I found my Wing Chun reflexes kicking in and it persuaded me to go back to train with Trevor however this new breed did get me interested in the whole MMA thing.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has become very much my second martial art but during that time it became my first. I lived for BJJ.  Dave “Speedy” Elliot is a very, very, good instructor.  He was a four stripe blue belt when I started with him and recently got his black belt. 

He was ripping up the MMA circuit in the UK before most of us knew it existed and he leads by example, a “REAL” martial arts instructor and fighter. Dave E is also a guy who’ll give his students respect for their skills too and I learned a great deal about running a club from Mr Elliot.  

I started training with Dave’s teacher Marc Walder in London too and was lucky enough to learn from some of the Gracie Barra black belts at the time such as Roger Gracie, Carlos 'Escorrega' Lemos and the head of the UK association Maurico Gomez.

When I received my blue belt from Maurico Gomez at Marc Walders’ London academy a week after my first MMA fight to me it was like getting a black belt in any other system, it meant more to me than gaining my teaching stripes in Wing Chun, or any of the grades I gained in TKD and that was because I knew that this was real and I’d had to fight for it.

It took quite sometime to return to it but the Wing Chun Question still hadn’t been answered. By this time I’ll say it…I had reached my first goal set years before. I could fight. I wasn’t a world champion or the best around but I was a competent fighter. On my feet or on the ground I could fight but I now wanted more than that. I wanted to be a fighter and a good one, the skill was more important than the tag for me. 

Already the mental and physical challenges I’d met to get past my first MMA fight had been tough, the ghost of that beating I took in my late teens had been a bigger challenge than the guy I faced in the ring but it was time to put my skills together.

I’d been training some Muay Thai and boxing with the guys. Mainly with Pete T who had returned from a second stint in Thailand, I couldn’t let go of my Wing Chun despite the lads chiding me about beating my first opponent with that well known “Wing Chun clinch and knee” technique I’d learned in Muay Thai. 

I decided to put it to bed and arranged the first Wing Chun conference. I invited Wing Chun teachers and students from all over the country and met Alan Orr who was to become my teacher.

I’d spoken to Alan on the phone and had figured he had a similar outlook to myself, I’d already decided that if I didn’t see anything new with teachers from all over the place attending it was time just to forget the kung fu style and carry on boxing.

I pretty much always credit the meeting of the original Newcastle group with my evolution in martial arts but meeting Alan Orr and joining the Chu Sau Lei system was just as important in my overall development, the fact is I doubt I would have met Alan had I not taken the MMA/BJJ route but once I joined Alan’s group as an instructor it took my training to a different level.  

I doubt I would have ever been truly happy doing Muay Thai and may well have just spent more and more time concentrating on my BJJ whilst once in a while paying some lip service to my stand up skills but my heart was with the Chinese system that had stuck in my mind for so long.  

Chu Sau Lei wing Chun had depth but also reality, it didn’t ignore boxing skill and pressure tested everything utilizing all ranges and filling the gaps in my knowledge I’d always knew were there. I’d used my clinch and wrestling skills for sometime in a Wing Chun context but this was a complete picture. 

The development of Cyclone Wing Chun or often now Cyclone MMA which is meant in the truest form of the word Mixed Martial Arts has been a great experience so far and we’re happy how we are developing as a group both locally and nationally (the Combat Athletic Arts Association) with our guys fighting in MMA, Grappling and stand up fights and better yet winning. 

At the last event where our fighters competed we had 7 fighters fight MMA rules and 7 Fighters win. Our mission now is to show our system as a complete martial art capable of competing with any other in any rules situation, not  to listen to the excuses made for failed training methods in tired traditional martial art practices. 

All systems must learn from the experience of both themselves and others and grow otherwise they stand still and eventually die out.

So I guess this is how I got here, still training, still fighting and still evolving.

Visit: www.cyclonewingchun.co.uk