Wing Chun really is an amazing martial art. There are many different families of Wing Chun. A long time ago my Sifu said to me that lot’s of Wing Chun schools got it wrong. They focus to heavily on the external side of the martial art.

He was not talking about Wing Chun lineages. He wasn’t talking about anyone in particular he was just saying in general. To be honest with you I didn’t believe him. I simply thought he was running a business and didn’t want me to stray from his teachings.

Over the next 20 years in my travels I visited different schools and played with many different people. From different skill levels to even different styles of martial arts.

The same story occurred over and over again. I would end up playing someone who was very external , very strong and not really able to bend and blend or like my Sifu likes to say B.A.B.E ( Bend And Blend Energy).

Many times the problem was they simply were not projecting their energy correctly. A common mistake is rather than sending the energy from the shoulders to the the elbow then the wrist. Their wasn’t any energy projection at all.

I found this to be true from the East coast to the West Coast. Part of me didn’t want to believe my Sifu. He himself told me there were others who trained the internal side of martial arts. After all he didn’t learn it all on his own. He had his own teachers. After some years I realized that he wasn’t just saying people didn’t understand the internal aspect of Wing Chun to keep me as a student. He was simply speaking truth from his own personal experience. Which I discovered the same thing on my own journey.

So back to the title of this blog post… [Read more…]