Introduction
Wing Chun Kung Fu is a well-known southern Chinese martial arts style, although it’s not popular for the reasons its practitioners would like. Simply put: it’s known as being ineffective, impractical, unrealistic, useless, etc.
Pull up any Wing Chun video on YouTube. You will find endless comments from “keyboard warriors” aiming criticism at the techniques and principles on display. In doing this, they believe they have pointed out flaws that exist in Wing Chun, and only Wing Chun.
However, as someone who has been practicing the art since 1995, and who has been a fanatic of martial arts in general, I’m here to bust that bubble. I’m here to be bold, brash, arrogant, and whatever other adjective they might throw at me.
How so?
By making a bold statement:
Your criticisms are not unique to Wing Chun.
(Get it? I said I was going to make a bold statement, and then I put it in bold type! Clever, huh? Well, stick around; there’s more where that came from!)
The statements that I address in this article could be applied to any martial art. Don’t believe me? Try swapping out “Wing Chun” and saying any other martial arts name in its place. I guarantee that 99% of the time, the sentence will still hold true.
There are exceptions, of course. For example, take the statement “Wing Chun doesn’t work on the ground.” Obviously, if you replaced “Wing Chun” with “Jiu-Jitsu,” you know that wouldn’t be accurate. However, I’m talking about the times when the name replacement does make sense.
What this means is that Wing Chun doesn’t have more flaws than any of the countless other styles that people praise. It means even the most revered style has limitations, whether the armchair assassins want to admit it or not.
There are countless criticisms you could find on YouTube. However, for this article I chose to go with only five; they are ones that I see most often. Let’s have fun destroying them together, shall we?
1) “Wing Chun works in only one range.”
Last I knew, Western Boxing doesn’t work if a Tae Kwon Do practitioner kept the Boxer at kicking range, or if a Jiu-Jitsu player took them to the ground.
Nor can Jiu-Jitsu work if the grappler and a Striking Art Practitioner (abbreviated “SAP” going forward; isn’t that amusing?) are separated by several feet, unless of course the Jiu-Jitsu player has ridiculously long arms.
However, even though these two styles (Western Boxing and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) work only in one range, people fall all over themselves to praise them. Why? Well, that’s simple: it’s because people have used these two styles successfully in professional fights.
Of course, that answer doesn’t make the question go away because now we must ask why they’ve been successful.
One reason immediately comes to mind, and it can be summed up in one word: practice.
Think about it this way: unlike Wing Chun (or most martial arts styles, for that matter), Western Boxing and Jiu-Jitsu don’t have forms (or kata). Boxers go to their gym, and they practice their punches on heavy bags, speed bags, slip bags, focus mitts, and so on. When they first learn a throw, Jiu-Jitsu players practice on cooperative partners.
Then what happens?
They spar.
And what happens when they spar?
They start several feet away from each other. So how does either practitioner manage to use their skills in a sparring match?
They have to close the distance, using footwork to get into the range they need. This holds true in any match, whether it is a five-foot-tall Boxer versus a seven-foot-tall sparring partner, or if it is a Jiu-Jitsu player against a Boxer.
This is what people (especially the YouTube critics) don’t seem to understand: no matter what style a martial artist practices, they always need to use footwork and positioning to force the other person to play their game, yet people continue to throw the “only one range” comment at Wing Chun as if that is the only style to which it applies.
Well, I believe I stated my case clearly enough to show this just isn’t true.
Next!
2) “Wing Chun doesn’t work on the ground.”
Neither does Western Boxing.
Neither does Muay Thai.
I think you know where I am going with this: no one ever throws this criticism at those styles.
What makes the remark doubly untrue is the fact that Wing Chun can work on the ground. Randy Williams showed this back in the 1990s. I also made a video on how you can still get power into your attacks, even when you are on the ground.
The video wasn’t supposed to go public for quite some time, but I guess I can break my own rules just this once to make my point:
3) “Wing Chun wasn’t designed for competition.”
Most martial arts weren’t made for competition. It’s not like someone said, “I’m going to invent a martial art so we can then invent a way to compete in it.” UFC, M1, and the like didn’t exist when Jiu-Jitsu was created. Hell, there weren’t even any Jiu-Jitsu tournaments back then.
People who use this line are usually referring to the belief that Wing Chun was designed strictly “for the streets,” which means it uses tactics that would not be allowed in a typical competition setting.
However, it doesn’t take much inspection to realize how faulty this criticism is. All a person has to do is train according to the rules of the competition by not training the excluded techniques.
Problem solved, right?
Wrong.
Because if you deny the armchair warriors access to the “not designed for competition” line, they use a different tactic next, and it goes something like this:
“Yeah, well…if you exclude those techniques, then you’re not really doing Wing Chun!”
Yes, it’s the old “not Wing Chun if you leave out XYZ” shtick. A fan favorite, a real crowd pleaser. I’m not going to touch any further upon that line here because it could be the basis of another article (or series of them) on its own.
Let’s move on then, shall we?
4) “Wing Chun isn’t practical against trained athletes.”
This sentence is incomplete. Let me show you how it should read:
“Wing Chun isn’t practical against trained athletes unless you are also a trained athlete.”
I used the italics there to add emphasis to the omitted portion. Now that we have reinstated it, let’s look at this remark again with fresh eyes.
Seems to me like we could now swap out “Wing Chun” with something else. Let’s give it a try:
“Western Boxing isn’t practical against trained athletes unless you are also a trained athlete.”
Substitute Jiu-Jitsu, or Tae Kwon Do, or Muay Thai. The sentence makes sense no matter what style you plug into it.
Here’s what I am saying, folks: if you are a Western Boxer or a Jiu-Jitsu player, but you eat McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the only time you train is when you are in class, and you attend class only once a week, and you spend half of it catching up on gossip with your classmates, then you won’t last long against a trained athlete either.
I hate to sound like a broken record or give the impression that I have something against Western Boxing or Jiu-Jitsu, because I don’t. The reason I keep using them is because they are the two styles most frequently mentioned after someone says, “Wing Chun sucks.” For example, they might say something like, “Wing Chun sucks. You’d be a better, more well-rounded fighter if you learned a striking art like Western Boxing and a grappling art like Jiu-Jitsu.”
Let me be clear: the fact that other people use Boxing and Jiu-Jitsu in their arguments is the only reason I keep bringing them up.
5) “Wing Chun people spar only against other Wing Chun people.”
The last time I took my son to his Tae Kwon Do class, I saw people sparring with Tae Kwon Do against Tae Kwon Do.
The same thing has happened in any martial arts school I’ve ever checked out: Karate versus Karate, Muay Thai versus Muay Thai, Jiu-Jitsu versus Jiu-Jitsu, Western Boxing versus Western Boxing.
The point is obvious, but I will state it clearly: Wing Chun isn’t the only system where you will see people sparring with Style A versus Style A.
Having said that, I will admit it is also true that many Wing Chun schools engage in plenty of Chi Sao, but no sparring. However, as with the “not real Wing Chun” comment, I will save that as a topic for its own article.
Conclusion
We have just taken a fun little tour through five of the most common “Wing Chun” criticisms. I put that in quotes because, as you have just seen, they can apply to any style.
You might wonder, “If this is true, then why do people act like they are unique to Wing Chun?”
I can’t explain that any more than I can explain why the pet rock became such a huge fad. If I could, I’d probably be a very rich man!
In the eyes of many, Wing Chun will always be the unique owner of the flaws I covered. No amount of logically sound arguments will change their minds. However, I hope there is at least one person out there who reads this and sees the light of day.
If not, that’s fine too. At least the truth is out there.
His YouTube channel (Geek Wing Chun) gives free training tips and ideas for people who want to get better at Wing Chun but can't make it to class as often as they'd like. Check it out by simply typing "Geek Wing Chun" into the YouTube search field!
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Sir, you are literally *BOLD*!
🙂
Very smart – keep it up!
Francis,
Will do! My articles will appear probably once a month here, but you can find more smart statements (in the form of videos!) on the Geek Wing Chun YouTube channel.
Steve
Boxing and thai work man..wing chun does not.. It is as simple as that..Chunners are always badly abused against most other styles..People started calling wing chun a fantasy martial arts since the 1990s..2022 means around 30 years…If wing chun could be as efficient as kickboxing or muay thay in 30 years they would have produced practitioners to challenge other styles to show it works..Not that the wing chun GMs did not try..They simply could not..It is a historical error that made WC popular..(Bruce Lee and the money making geniuses GMs leung ting william cheung etc.. not that the art itself is anything extraordinary..Many other CTMA are more effective..In the martial arts world people talk with fists..But chunners are more apt using their tongues and pens..Soon some GM will write a whole book about why chunners almost always lose..
I am trying to delete this comment..Please do it for me…Just to clarify I do not think WC is an ineffective self defense method..Far from that..I just wanted to say that in my opinion someone with 3 years WC will almost always be defeated by someone with 3 years thai boxing all things equal…well something along those lines…Well I am one of those disillusioned guys…I did 7.5 years of japanese jujitsu and was trashed by a boxer though I won several competitions in my country.. Well this was a drunk comment.. Please delete this…
If you are ever in town, let’s have a friendly sparring match. Lay me out in no time, and I’ll scream your message from the rooftops. However, while we wait, realize that you yourself are also guilty of fighting with your pen (or keyboard). Have a day.
I am trying to delete this comment..Please do it for me…Just to clarify I do not think WC is an ineffective self defense method..Far from that..I just wanted to say that in my opinion someone with 3 years WC will almost always be defeated by someone with 3 years thai boxing all things equal…well something along those lines…Well I am one of those disillusioned guys…I did 7.5 years of japanese jujitsu and was trashed by a boxer though I won several competitions in my country.. Well this was a drunk comment.. Please delete this…
Hmm a spirited post but sorry it’s flawed in that i don’t think the criticism you seek to counter are the ones aimed at wing chun, and also some of your arguments are flawed – for instance bjj which i think you mean when referring to jujitsu has a theory if range and tactics/strategies and techniques for different ranges, unlike wing chun. Likewise, athleticism is embedded in boxing and thai boxing training. Sparring is also fundamental unlike in wing chun where it is assumed that the techniques are too lethal, and yet i never heard of someone being killed by a person using wing chun to defend themself, which must mean…Lastly, the idea of competition being new is absurd – wing chun itself boasts of its historic challenge matches, while boxing and wrestling have been around for millennia. Not forgetting war of course, the origin of male combat competition. I personally love wing chun, and enjoy your writing, but celebrating what is good about something is very different to self deluding about the negatives, and I’m very much with alvin in this.
Being that I practice Wing Chun, I think I would know if the criticisms I picked are aimed at it. Whether I say “BJJ” or just “jiu-jitsu” is an irrelevant, nitpicky point. You say that WC has no theory of range and etc. That makes me wonder how you would know, because what I study certainly does. You say you have never heard of anyone being killed by someone with WC, the implication being no one ever has been. I’m not going to get into that rabbit hole other than to say…this means you’ve heard every anecdote ever? Doubtful. Also, I don’t care if you stand with Alvin, Simon, or Theodore; my points still have merit. The only thing on which you were correct is that there is no athleticism embedded in the training.