Leung Ting's "Dynamic WingTsun"

[bartjam]

I recently watched "Dynamic WingTsun", made by Leung Ting and his closest students almost 20 years ago.
The video is very disappointing. You get explanation of Siu-Lim Tao and some applications, along with some clues on how to avoid mistakes. The fighting scenes are poor. But most importantly, the footwork is just unusable unless you are in a gym with a very regular surface and wear kung-fu shoes.
In fact, all the people I know who have used WT principles outside the gym have adapted the footwork. All exercises look like dead-patterns, the attacks against the WT guy are either sloppy traditional kung-fu strikes (performed in a bad way thus insulting other styles) or ridiculously slow WT attacks. All of the "top guys" in the video are out of shape and seem to suffer from a bad health...

I practiced WT for more than 2 years and a half, reaching the 8th student degree, but I trained the 3rd form and some advanced stuff several times with some more advanced students. What I can say is that you find some valuable tools in this system, like palm-strikes (that you can use with a straight-blast forward movement), axe-hands (faak-sao), eye-jabs (bil-tze), knees/elbows combinations... but the footwork really sucks, and I actually dropped it. Also, 90% of "trapping" and chi-sao drills are only suitable for the gym, not the street. What is depressing are the boastful and preposterous claims of Leung Ting and Keith Kernspecht about the "scientifical" and "ultimate" thing their style is supposed to be. Crap.

[Mr. Gordo]

I trained WC in the Hawkins Cheung lineage. I've seen some Leung Ting stuff as well. Basically, Wing Chun/Tsun/whatever has some OK stuff. Their footwork is definitely lacking. Like most styles, it just cannot stand by itself, it has to be crosstrained with another style like kali, or boxing, or BJJ.


mr. gordo

[Thai Bri]

Wing Chun seems to have gone the way of mainstream martial arts. It got popular, liked it, so adjusted the training to make it easy so that paying students wouldn't be lost.

[Mr. Gordo]

No doubt. Just keep the students doing endless trapping drills. Even though it's like impossible to trap a boxer.

[krys]

Their footwork is definitely lacking. Like most styles, it just cannot stand by itself, it has to be crosstrained with another style like kali, or boxing, or BJJ.

Again it depends how hard you train.... it's up to you to get good footwork.
Practice fast and digilently with the plum flower posts, fight other stylists, get under pressure by having multiples attacking you from different directions some at close range... your footwork will improve.....

There are peoples around who go twice a week to the dojo to socialize and afterwards complain wc doesn't work if they get beaten up in the street....TMA training is very demanding, as in most tmas lot of things are not obvious. If you don't do your personal research, never fight and aren't guided properly it is useless.

The way you train the way you fight.

[Mr. Gordo]

Krys,

I've trained long and hard in WC when I was into it. It doesn't have the nuanced footwork of kali or ba-gua. I know some Wing Chun people like to say "we have that too," but it is the manner in which it is trained that makes the difference. Overall wing chun is an aggressive linear system....it's goal is to occupy centerline and go forward...that is diametrically opposed to kali, silat, or ba gua which looks to zone out of centerline, as well as occupy centerline.

I agree though, I think many WC people should join a boxing gym and see how limited the system is when it comes to trapping.



Son of mr. gordo

[Thai Bri]

krys - you are falling for one of the oldest martal arts myths. That somehow the harder they are to make work the "better" they are. Tha way any lack of effectiveness is always down to the student not working hard enough.

[Mr. Gordo]

I whole heartedly agree Thai.

[krys]

I've trained long and hard in WC when I was into it. It doesn't have the nuanced footwork of kali or ba-gua.

First of all there is kali and kali.... lot of the stuff shown is mcdojo b.s. to make money. You can have all the good footwork you want if you never practice it under presure you lost your time.... I don't even talk about Bagua..... There are some serious instructors but most peoples I have seen doing silat in the west learn 1000 deadly prearanged techniques or practice internal stuff but never fight and can't even throw a proper punch....

I know some Wing Chun people like to say "we have that too," but it is the manner in which it is trained that makes the difference. Overall wing chun is an aggressive linear system....it's goal is to occupy centerline and go forward...that is diametrically opposed to kali, silat, or ba gua which looks to zone out of centerline, as well as occupy centerline.

The way it is trained depends on you.... you have to do some homework after class.
Well the way we train it we don't rush forward, we usually zone out and then attack from the side to avoid frontal attacks. Then we attack on our center line towards his head...I train wing chun, as well as other mas (arnis, boxing....) to sharpen skills I need in silat...

I agree though, I think many WC people should join a boxing gym and see how limited the system is when it comes to trapping.

Boxing, is a great system.... takes lots of efforts to become really good but proper fighting skills can be learned in a short amount of time. A pb is that fists your may get damaged if you use boxing in the street, but you won't worry about this if you get attacked...Wing chun is not all about traping Traping is a byproduct of wc, a secondary skill... if there is an opportunity to trap, trap but this is hardly possible against a fast opponent and you shouldn't deliberately try to trap for the sake of traping... the goal of wc is not to trap but to knock down your opponent. Most students don't understand that....

krys - you are falling for one of the oldest martal arts myths. That somehow the harder they are to make work the "better" they are. Tha way any lack of effectiveness is always down to the student not working hard enough.

Well if you look at peoples at the top of the tree, it is hard to deny they haven't got skills and all of them trained like crazy.... Other point is that in TMAs (especially chinese mas), you won't be shown good stuff unless you have the favor of the instructor. Those who trained in asia may understand what I mean. This is difficult to accept if you think you should expect value for your money but unfortunately it is often like that.....
I am not speaking of the "secret techniques of yellow bamboo" , deadly dim mak or other bull... but the instructor may simply not correct you or avoid showing you good training methods, or simply small details that makes what you learn really efficient if he feels he is wasting time with you.

As a matter of fact I don't really care about the style but the instructor.... The best I found close to the place I live is teaching wc and san shou, that's why I choose to learn those arts.

[Thai Bri]

Another myth - the myth of the Martial Art secret! You're on form tonight mate.

There are no secrets. There is no magic. Fighting is down to common sense. Martial Arts hide behind bullshit, as evidence by your posts. No offence intended.

[Mr. Gordo]

First of all there is kali and kali.... lot of the stuff shown is mcdojo b.s. to make money. You can have all the good footwork you want if you never practice it under presure you lost your time.... I don't even talk about Bagua..... There are some serious instructors but most peoples I have seen doing silat in the west learn 1000 deadly prearanged techniques or practice internal stuff but never fight and can't even throw a proper punch....

The same could be said for any style. It really doesn't address the question. There's a ton of McDojo Wing Chun schools too. I've also studied real ba gua and hsing-I. There's a ton of crappy Ba gua and Hsing-I too. If you want to see real silat, check out the DeThours brothers in Colorado....it's not some B.S. prearranged jive you see at most schools.

The way it is trained depends on you.... you have to do some homework after class.
Well the way we train it we don't rush forward, we usually zone out and then attack from the side to avoid frontal attacks. Then we attack on our center line towards his head...I train wing chun, as well as other mas (arnis, boxing....) to sharpen skills I need in silat...

I've done my homework just as you have....or else you wouldn't be cross training in arnis or boxing. Once again, yes, Wing Chun does zone out at 45 degrees and move forward.....any good style has that. It's the manner in which it is trained. Wing Chun doesn't have a star of david pattern they run for footwork, they also don't have an eight pointed star they do drills with. They also don't train a footwork pattern that looks like the infinity symbol. It may have something to resemble it, but the manner in which it is trained is inhernetly different from real kali, silat, southern mantis, or ba gua.

Wing chun is not all about traping Traping is a byproduct of wc, a secondary skill... if there is an opportunity to trap, trap but this is hardly possible against a fast opponent and you shouldn't deliberately try to trap for the sake of traping... the goal of wc is not to trap but to knock down your opponent. Most students don't understand that....

It can be said of any style that the primary goal is to knock down the opponent. There's a reason we used to practice two man trapping drills. There's a reason why we used to devote so many hours to chi sao.....so that a Wing Chun practitioner can dominate in trapping range and use a bil gee to the eyes or throat. But if one can't trap a boxer's arms.....I don't think it would be wise for a Wing Chun man to try to attempt to out box a boxer. That's why I'm such an avid fan of cross training, and from you tell me, so are you. That's a great thing because some people get stuck in the groove where they think that there's one style that has it all, or they just want to be the "kung fu" guy. That's dangerous thinking and will lead to that person getting a rude wake up call one day.



mr. gordo

[Mr. Gordo]

Another myth - the myth of the Martial Art secret! You're on form tonight mate.

There are no secrets. There is no magic. Fighting is down to common sense. Martial Arts hide behind bullshit, as evidence by your posts. No offence intended.

Bri,

Don't hold back, tell us what you really think. LOL.

[krys]

If you want to see real silat, check out the DeThours brothers in Colorado....it's not some B.S. prearranged jive you see at most schools.

I'm already training in real silat at the source....
There seems to be a lot of unnecessary mysticism in the systems you mentioned, I've seen some peoples showing me stuff from that school and the techniques seemed to work only against willing opponents. I may have met the wrong peoples but I am sceptical when it comes to commercial schools.

It's the manner in which it is trained. Wing Chun doesn't have a star of david pattern they run for footwork, they also don't have an eight pointed star they do drills with. They also don't train a footwork pattern that looks like the infinity symbol. It may have something to resemble it, but the manner in which it is trained is inhernetly different from real kali, silat, southern mantis, or ba gua.

Everything cannot be covered in class.... seing more patterns won't make you necessarly more mobile. WC combines triangular stepping with subtle turns of the body, the point is to master those and be able to use them under pressure. You don't need many techniques but just to master a few... The way it is trained depends on you, all cannot be covered during class.... If you watch some chinese masters (like Yp Ching) you'll see they are really mobile even at their old age.

There's a reason we used to practice two man trapping drills. There's a reason why we used to devote so many hours to chi sao.....so that a Wing Chun practitioner can dominate in trapping range and use a bil gee to the eyes or throat.

Traping is part of these drills but I see them more as exercises to enhance sensitivity and reaction time..it is also a safe way to test your techniques under pressure at close range.

But if one can't trap a boxer's arms.....I don't think it would be wise for a Wing Chun man to try to attempt to out box a boxer.

Why outbox a boxer? You have other weapons at your disposal....
Besides if you know wc and boxing you will be better equiped and won't be surprised.

Another myth - the myth of the Martial Art secret! You're on form tonight mate.
There are no secrets. There is no magic. Fighting is down to common sense. Martial Arts hide behind bullshit, as evidence by your posts. No offence intended.

Good for you if you think every trainer is willing to share his whole knowledege with everybody and look after each student in the same way even if they are lazy.

[Tee Sok]

I recently watched "Dynamic WingTsun", made by Leung Ting and his closest students almost 20 years ago.
The video is very disappointing. You get explanation of Siu-Lim Tao and some applications, along with some clues on how to avoid mistakes. The fighting scenes are poor. But most importantly, the footwork is just unusable unless you are in a gym with a very regular surface and wear kung-fu shoes.
In fact, all the people I know who have used WT principles outside the gym have adapted the footwork. All exercises look like dead-patterns, the attacks against the WT guy are either sloppy traditional kung-fu strikes (performed in a bad way thus insulting other styles) or ridiculously slow WT attacks. All of the "top guys" in the video are out of shape and seem to suffer from a bad health...

I practiced WT for more than 2 years and a half, reaching the 8th student degree, but I trained the 3rd form and some advanced stuff several times with some more advanced students. What I can say is that you find some valuable tools in this system, like palm-strikes (that you can use with a straight-blast forward movement), axe-hands (faak-sao), eye-jabs (bil-tze), knees/elbows combinations... but the footwork really sucks, and I actually dropped it. Also, 90% of "trapping" and chi-sao drills are only suitable for the gym, not the street. What is depressing are the boastful and preposterous claims of Leung Ting and Keith Kernspecht about the "scientifical" and "ultimate" thing their style is supposed to be. Crap.

I totally agree with that. Kernspecht always talked about Wing Tsun as the most efficient and scientifical fighting art, and when they compare it to other styles they will say stuff like "It is good but in Wing Tsun we do that better". I was in a WT school in Italy and that was the main attitude...
Another thing about Kernspecht: he always has to say that his wing tsun style is the most original and the purest expression of wing chun...
It is also true that the WT footwork works in the gym, but not outside!

[Mr. Gordo]

I'm already training in real silat at the source....
There seems to be a lot of unnecessary mysticism in the systems you mentioned, I've seen some peoples showing me stuff from that school and the techniques seemed to work only against willing opponents. I may have met the wrong peoples but I am sceptical when it comes to commercial schools.

I don't really think there is such a thing as a commercial "silat" school. LOL. In regards to the DeThours, there's a possiblity that you did meet with the wrong people. I'd have to agree with Dan Inosanto when he said the DeThours were the real deal when it came to street fighting....Indonesia's not exactly the suburbs.

Why outbox a boxer? You have other weapons at your disposal....
Besides if you know wc and boxing you will be better equiped and won't be surprised.

This is what I've been trying to say all along. Why isolate oneself to one style or system? I say study everything from boxing, to kali, to silat, to ba gua, to chinese jump rope if it'll help.



Here's a great thread on footwork from a good forum:

http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15523

I totally agree with that. Kernspecht always talked about Wing Tsun as the most efficient and scientifical fighting art, and when they compare it to other styles they will say stuff like "It is good but in Wing Tsun we do that better". I was in a WT school in Italy and that was the main attitude...
Another thing about Kernspecht: he always has to say that his wing tsun style is the most original and the purest expression of wing chun...
It is also true that the WT footwork works in the gym, but not outside!

I concur Tee Sok. For some inane reason, Wing Chun players that don't believe in cross training think they are the end goal in martial arts....and if something they train doesn't work in sparring, they give the same typical answer: TRAIN HARDER!


mr. gordo