Wing Chun Chinese Boxing vs. Western Boxing

Wing Chun Kuen is a style of Chinese boxing, but it would seem not everyone sees the difference between the Wing Chun boxing style and Western Boxing styles once the fists start flying.

One thing I have noticed over the years is that many Wing Chun practitioners do not recognize Wing Chun once it’s being applied. This may be due to the fact that lucky enough not everyone has been in fights or in fights with skilled opponents. The down side is without the experience of pressure the art can move in the wrong direction.

Look at Tai Chi which was once renowned as the Supreme Ultimate Fist, but by many it is now seen as an exercise style based on slow training for health and stress reduction.  When you see a real Tai Chi Master you can see the power within the style and depth of knowledge it holds. Wing Chun has the same problem, mainly due to the fact that it is very effective and in some ways hard to express without causing damage. Some people play more with the skills rather than train the system.  Also some lose sight of its application and start to see the drills and play as the art. The training of the art and the application of the art are not the same.

As I have a very active fight team (The Iron Wolves) completing in many areas of combat sports from Boxing, K1 and of course MMA, this has allowed us to really see the basics of Chu Sau Lei Wing Chun under pressure. Some people think we are using Western Boxing rather than Wing Chun as they can’t see Tan, Fuk, Bong. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The reason you don’t see the Key Training hand positions of Wing Chun in combat sports so much is because these are how we train our Wing Chun. The higher level of Wing Chun is interception and when fighting a ready opponent often your strike is your first bridge. So you will not see a counter striking self defence application at that level. Another quick point to make is some think Chu Sau Lei Wing Chun is sport focused and not self defence based, again this is nonsense. Only 20% of my guys compete the rest train for self defence ad self development. But everyone trains the same. The martial requires live timing and glove training adds that extra element outside of the normal traditional protocols of Chi Sao and Gor Sao. Plus it adds safety to your hands when you are working outside of a set drilling pattern.

So let’s breakdown the keys that make up the Wing Chun Fist and set it apart from Western Boxing, but let’s also look at the common links as well.

Now Western Boxing can be broken into pre glove training and post glove training. If you look at older bare Knuckle Boxing then it looks very much like Wing Chun.  The vertical fist is seen and the elbow down position is very clear. This is because when you are punching without a glove you must land you knuckles not finger joints of the hand. Otherwise you will break your hand.

The use of gloves changed, this in some ways is what has caused a loss of understanding in hand placement and knuckle positioning. Quite simply you can hit more with your whole hand as a club rather that focus with your fist. This means with gloves you can punch from more angles and land maybe more punches.  But with this power is often lost and hand injuries go up! In terms of Real fighting for self-defence or MMA (mixed martial arts) competition the problem becomes worste. If you have no boxing gloves or as with MMA much smaller gloves then hand issues become a real problem.

The most common injury is what is known as “boxer’s fracture,” which is a fracture of the long bone that runs across the top of the hand (metacarpal) and/or the knuckle of the little finger and sometimes the ring finger too. The top of the hand is not well supported for the transmission of force because it connects to other bones of the wrist at an oblique angle. Other common injuries include the fracture of the wrist and/or the elbow

The shoulder joint must be strong and healthy if you want to be able to strike. Therefore the striking method we use - Elbow down and in. The shoulder ‘packed’ is very important to avoid stressing your shoulder joint.

The muscles of the rotator cuff are in position to stabilise and hold the joint in place. This is the job of the rotator cuff in striking. It should not be taking the full pressure of the punch.

In Wing Chun we strike with the Vertical fist and Elbow down to connect the power line to produce Vector Alignment and correct the Kinetic Chains of the body.

Breaking down Kinetic Chains in Chu Sau Lei Wing Chun Kuen.

The classical 7 Bows are the 1) Foot Arch 2) Ankles, 3) Knees, 4) pelvis, 5) shoulders, 6) Elbows, 7) Wrists

In application the Bows start the focus of the whole body’s Kinetic power

Foot            -         Spring Wave / Pump / Points of Balance

Knee           -          Spring / Pump / Locks

Hip             -           Press / Locks / Pressure Changes / Lifting / Sinking /

Torque

Spine          -           Spine Wave

Forward Flexion and Extension

Spine Wave           Rotations

Spine Thoracic    Lateral Slide / Lateral Hoop / Forward Flexion and Extension

Spine

Bow and Arrow Wave

Pelvic Pump         Hip Lock / Wave

Cranial Pump       Neck lock/ wave

Shoulder     -         Packing – Whirl

Head           -           Direction / Locking

Elbow         -           Locking / Spring / Twist

Wrist           -          Locking

Knuckles     -        Focus point

Fingers        -        Squeeze on and off

All these elements allow us to become like a coiled spring.  Using each joint to store and control our potential power. The hips are our center point of the focus of our spring.  Making our lower body the first strong spring and when needed to issue power our upper body the second.

Jack Dempsey was a boxer that understood the old skills of hand positioning and body weight transfer.

The extremely important POWER LINE in punching seems to have been forgotten.

Jack Dempsey

Extend the fist at arm's length toward the spot on the wall-only toward it. The fist should be upright, as if you were holding a stick running from ceiling to floor. The little knuckle is down, toward the floor.

Jack Dempsey

Sounds a lot like how Wing Chun trains wall bags. Confirming the power line.

The "fist angle" and the "hip hunch" are important features of all shovel hooks, whether to body or head. The leg spring used in the hip hunch

speeds up your body whirl and, at the same time, deflects the direction of the whirl slightly upward in a surge. Meanwhile, the combination of the

angled fist and the bent elbow points your striking knuckles in the same direction as that of the whirl-surge. You have a pure punch. Your fist

lands with a solid smash that packs plenty of follow-through, AND YOUR PURE PUNCH IS ANGLED TO SHOOT INSIDE AN OPPONENT'S DEFENSES.

Jack Dempsey

Again the old skill boxing style matches up with Wing Chun’s punching principles as the skill was based in bare knuckle application.

Boxers train to fight. The training is not the fight. So forms, drills and Chi Sao are for the training of our skill they are not the application of them. You don’t see boxers bringing speed bags; focus pads etc into the ring. They are for training skills.

So we can learn a lot from boxing in terms of training to apply your art because we are also a boxing art. A Chinese Boxing system which can hold its own on many levels if trained with the insight of dealing with the chaos of combat.