The Terrible News

“When they are not using their machetes to pull off jewelry heists in broad daylight, thugs in the UK are assaulting people with them – to the tune of one machete attack every 90 minutes throughout the country.”

“The UK has one of highest rates of acid attacks in the world, according to the police. According to London's Metropolitan Police, 2017 was the worst year for acid attacks in London, with 465 attacks recorded, up from 395 the previous year and 255 in 2015. ... The vast majority of cases were in London.”

Self Defense Against Street Attack

Self defense classes are great until it doesn’t work. Often what happens in real life is different from classroom scenarios which often do not occur in real life. What occurs in real life is like the two news stories above and even much worse than that. In an ideal world we should not need to defend ourselves. But attacks can and do happen in any country around the world.

In the street, there are no classroom movements that you can count on. Attacks are not someone grabbing your hand or holding you by the shoulder although that could be the start of two or more people dragging you into their van.

Wing Chun was designed as a street fighting art where there are no rules. Wing Chun is not meant to be a style of fighting where you learn certain poses and try to remember all kinds of drills. You cannot count on any patterns to work. Movie Wing Chun is not wing Chun. It is unrealistic. Movies are meant for entertainment.

What is Wing Chun?

Wing Chun is just an organized collection of ideas taken from the world of street combat and various Chinese martial arts. It is the simplest possible form of self defense which is meant to be learned relatively quickly, much like a soldier who trains for six months and then is sent off to war. Wing Chun is meant to be an attacking art.

However Wing Chun is also a Martial Art. Where the second word Art means an in depth study of all things relating to combat. This cannot be learned in six months. Most students learn wing Chun for this reason.

Learn weapons first or empty hands?

In many martial arts you learn empty hand fighting first and then after many years you learn weapons fighting.

My feeling is that empty hand and weapons fighting should be taught all within one year because you may be attacked tomorrow with a knife, screwdriver, bat, hammer or any other object.

Wing Chun people are not usually good with weapons because they learn them too late. For example some schools teach them after ten years of empty hands training. By then who is interested? Isn’t it better to learn them early and train them for ten years instead? Weapons also train your power and your footwork. You are going to need those things before ten years are up.

Typical arguments for delaying weapons training is that the student does not have the required coordination, doesn’t know all the empty hand forms, doesn’t have the right footwork etc. But in the Philippines you learn weapons first. In ancient times you always learn to use weapons first. So I see a case for early introduction to the weapons.

But there are always two valid sides to every debate. In the worst case, you do not have any weapons. You have to rely on your empty hands. Therefore maybe it is best to learn empty hands first because that is your worst case. But don’t delay the weapons world for many years if the student is there to learn self defense.

The other thing about weapons is they are great to learn and lots of fun. Most people these days learn stick and knife fighting from the Filipino arts. But if you ever hit anyone with a stick you know where you will end up, straight to jail. If an average person thinks they can protect themselves with a knife against a convicted felon who trains that stuff all day long, then you better think again. Master Wong Shun Leung who mostly taught Bruce Lee said that he never teaches knife defense because the students might get overly confident, try it for real the result will be one dead student.

If you use knife training to enhance your empty hand skills or for ladies to use a kitchen knife for self defense in a home invasion then maybe that’s something providing you put in hours and hours of practice. A hand gun of course is better for this.

Self Defense Course

A one hour defense course can teach you about what really happens in the world (in case your head was in the sand all your life). It teaches you to be aware and alert at all times. If something should happen it will teach you that you should try to escape. In the worst case it teaches you to defend by using some weapon and if all else fails to defend using the natural weapons of your body which are your hands, elbows, head, knee, foot or anything else. It will teach you what targets to aim for and what damage is likely to result. If you use excessive force then you may very well go to jail where for sure you will get attacked on a regular basis. You should also learn about the legalities of self defense.

I heard Wing Chun is no good

Any art can be made to work. The art itself is dead. Only through proper practice and spending countless hours of having things not work, can you finally make an art work.

Wing Chun is just a theory, a set of ideas. For example Wing Chun tells you that you need to have a good stance so that you don’t get easily pushed off balance and so that you can deliver the maximum power in a strike. Is that not good?

Wing Chun teaches that you need to be mobile in a real fight. A good boxer is hard to hit because they are mobile. By the time you are ready to hit, they are no longer where you thought they would be. So is mobility a bad thing? Obviously not.

Wing Chun tells you that you should relax. Various drills train you to relax under pressure. If you cannot relax you will be too slow and also will produce less force when you hit. So is relaxing not a good thing? All good athletes know how to relax under pressure. Being stiff, tense and spastic is not the sign of a good fighter.

Wing Chun tells you to always attack the center. To always face the center or to face the target. The basic attack is to the eyes and throat just like a dog would do. If the situation is one of life or death, then you don’t have much choice. If Wing Chun were no good then the arty would tell you to do something else. Maybe it would tell you to always put the person into an arm bar or some kind of leg lock or wrist lock. But it doesn’t tell you that, it tells you to attack the throat. In military combat you attack the throat. Again this is for life and death.

I find that it is difficult for ladies to have the idea that sometimes you need to hurt an attacker or else you will be hurt yourself. Often ladies just cannot imagine needing to hurt someone. In civilized countries, we are not brought up to hurt people.

Think of the case of a home invasion where you and your family will be killed. Think of the case where you are walking with your young daughter hand in hand and someone grabs her to drag her into a car. In these cases, you better act fast or someone will be dead..

Wing Chun tells you to be economical in your actions because small actions are faster. Everybody is fast but you can be faster if your actions are economical. Smaller movements are faster than bigger movements. Real combat is all about seed and power. Wing Chun tells you to keep the elbow relatively fixed so that movements are smaller. The first part of the bsic Wing Chun 108 form teaches that. So is it bad to be economical? Bad to be fast? of course not.

Wing Chun emphasizes close range combat. Proper distance is elbow range. If you try to strike people with a stretched out arm, then you will not be able to produce enough power, also the opponent can easily move back an inch to avoid the hit and a stretched out arm is easily broken or cut with a knife. In the case of self defense the attacker will close quickly to attack you. He solves the problem of trying to get within elbow range. But in ring combat the defender will keep his distance and then getting in close enough is not easy. All good teachers of self defense tell you always to escape and run. But if you cannot then Wing Chun teaches you what to do. This is what sticking hands is all about. Without this training you cannot be effective for a close range hitting art. If you cannot hit effectively at the close range then you will certainly end up on the ground.

I have asked a good friend of mine to write an article about what happens in the real world. He is a jail guard and has seen many people killed. He said classroom fighting, what happens on the street and what happens in the jails are very different. If you don’t want to have nightmares then don’t read one of his stories below about what really happens in jail.

One day an inmate was sitting on the sofa watching his favorite TV show. Then another inmate who he did not know sat down beside him and said “how’s your day going?” The first inmate responded “Pretty good.” Then the second inmate said “Not for long” and immediately stabbed him 20 times in the neck with a pencil. The first inmate died. The second inmate was in prison for life so he didn’t have anything to lose.

Nothing can prepare you for that. No martial art could have helped that guy. The only thing is to not have your head in the sand and always to be aware of your surroundings at any time of the day. Martial arts may just give you that slight edge to save yourself but is never a guarantee.

Beware of fighting in other countries

I once went to a Silat seminar given by Grandmaster Herman Siwanda. He said one tactics they used in Indonesia was to have coconut oil on your palms with acid on top. Then when you grab the opponent, his skin gets burned off. Your palms would be protected because of the oil. Again not rules on the street.

Another tactic was to have two glass Coke bottles behind your back. These are flung at just the right angle and speed and distance so that the two Coke bottles would smash into each other about 12 inches from someone’s face to produce hundreds of glass particles that go into someone’s eyes. It’s all very gross but again in the street nobody needs to be civilized.

The more common thing of course is to just use guns especially in the USA. If you win in a fight one day, you can always get shot the day after for revenge. That’s why they say, avoid all fights unless there is no other way to save you or your loved ones lives.

One of my friends went to the Philippines to learn stick and knife fighting from some famous Master. The Master said, we don’t do that anymore, these days we just shoot people.

The Chinese Boxer Rebellion

In 1900 they had something called the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. At that time there were eight countries in China trying to steal everything they could steal from that culture while getting the population hooked on Opium to make them all more passive.

Finally they got fed up with these foreigners and the top martial artists banded together to kick the foreigners out. Mass rallies were held with talks by leading Kung Fu experts to get all martial artists to fight for China’s freedom from the foreign devils.

The foreigners of course had guns. But the Kung Fu artists were told not to worry about bullets because certain Qi Gong training can protect you even against guns. Unfortunately they found out that wasn’t true. Many martial artists died. After that Kung Fu went into rapid decline as it was no longer considered even by the Chinese to be of any practical use.

Later the Chinese government also banned any fighting practice in fear of some kind of anti-government rebellion which resulted in the establishment of Wu Shu as just a performance art just like you see in the movies. For practical fighting, it no longer had a use.

These days, nobody takes any Kung Fu art as something serious. Also most people think training in martial art is a waste of time which would be better spent trying to earn some money for your family and to get ahead in life.