​Less is more - Wing Chun starts here

By Greg LeBlanc
Any martial art I have studied eventually gave the same advice for application, that you have to pick a few techniques and train them until they are pure instinct. Most traditional martial art systems preserved more actions than what is needed for self-protection, they are safeguarding the history of that system and how it developed over hundreds of years. The fact is only a few actions can be really trained into muscle memory that will function under pressure in an adrenalized state. The other point to be made is that to become truly proficient at any action it needs to be practiced thousands of times, eventually the punch you thought you knew becomes something else. Kung Fu means to do something many times until you can do it without thought or hesitation. In this line of thinking the most simple, direct and efficient actions are not only the faster road to this goal, but also tend to be the hardest to deal with by anyone who does not practice this same approach. Wing Chun starts here. It's development was based on the experience of seasoned Chinese martial artist who pooled their collective know-how into what was considered most essential, all things being equal. Wing Chun is simple by design, anything other than this and it loses what makes it a significant counter to other approaches that are less direct or more complex. The training is much more about the attributes, concepts and qualities of balance, position, speed, power, mobility, structure and accuracy than learning so-called techniques. The true technique of Wing Chun is to preempt any aggression with a uniform response that intercepts, bypasses and dominates position and center of mass. Using this method properly offers the fastest response under pressure from a situation that lacks preparation and is unprovoked. Rather than prolonging an altercation which can increase the danger and fatigue of the fight with each second, Wing Chun is focused on how to quickly end the fight. To this end it takes the fight back to the aggressor, it switches the relationship of who is attacking who, it trains to attack the attack; or as my teacher would say “to go inside the house to fight the fire.”