I was forwarded this very interesting article from a WT colleague of mine. The article can be found here. It essentially breaks down the positives and negatives of fighting in the ring/octagon/sparring vs. self defense. He uses a good example of a popular MMA fighter, defending himself in a street fight only to realize that the attacker pulls a knife out and slashes him up.
Notably, he talks about how, in the street, you just never know what your attacker may pull out from his bag of tricks, ahem, a knife for example. The ring doesn't teach you how to isolate and secure the weapons at play, or be aware of potential attacks, the adrenaline rush of a street fight vs. a ring fight, the list goes on and on.
All his points are valid and I encourage you to read it.
In my wing tsun class (and pretty much all other wing chun classes - at least that's how they market themselves), we emphasize the street fight scenario. It's not about the knock out, it's about getting out of the situation. It's about fighting without fighting. It's about awareness.
But taking the example of story in the article above, even in wing chun classes, there's very little emphasis on dealing with attackers that MAY pull out a knife. Dealing with the sucker punch, dealing with a cut up bottle, with a surprise attacker, and the list goes on and on.
As much as we like to think we do...we don't.
There's just to much to learn in class. We have chi-sao, our forms training, stance training, footwork, and then elements within each ot those - drills, chi-sao sections, endurance training, chain punching...
When you step back, only a mere fraction of your training touches on "what if the attacker had a knife"?
a mere fraction.
that's because i'm still working on my stance. I'm still working on fixing up my bong sao.
there's just too much to learn it seems.
So yes, while wing chun positions itself as street self defense...i ask, is it really?
Until then.
