Excerpt from the interview:
Q: In a previous interview you said people today cannot focus on one marital art, they are all over the place. What if your Sifu or Marital Arts instructor cannot provide everything you need? For example if I live in an area where Wing Chun is very limited, would I be wrong to fill in the gaps with boxing?I think for the most part I would agree with Sifu Lam. My own Sensei is considered a karate master. More specifically a Matsubayashi-ryu karate professional/master. The problem for me is, I'm not necessarily interested in becoming a professional of a particular martial art as I am with becoming a professional in how to deal with what the art was intended to be used for; in the case of karate, this is civilian violence. I am interested in gaining functionality with "personal-protection/personal-safety" skills. But the other thing is too, I don't consider myself to have "left" karate. I feel like I am still doing karate. But again, because modern karate has lost its real-world fighting functionality in favor of sport, it was important for me to look into other systems that still carried some degree of functionality that corresponded to the close-quarter fighting methods of Okinawan karate. And being that Chinese martial arts greatly influenced the development of karate, it made sense to investigate the Wing Chun system in order to better understand the "engine" of karate. The other thing is too, I don't feel it makes sense to become a "professional" in a system that isn't geared towards building real-world skill (what does training for tournament/competition have anything to do with knowing how to keep safe out in public?). Ironically, that is of course how karate developed; as a way to deal with the most common types of real-world civilian violence (and we know this in light of the research that karate historian Patrick McCarthy has done). The Matsubayashi school itself was even influenced by a pre-WWII master (Choki Motobu) who gained notoriety by testing out his fighting skill in Okinawa's red-light districts. You could view what he did as sort of like "field testing" what was practical and what was not with regards to fighting/violence. I think this is the most crucial missing piece of the modern pedagogical approach to karate today. It's like students going to flight-school and being taught by an instructor who has never flown; or if he has flown, never takes you up in a plane! Now, while my own Sensei may have actually had real-world experience with violence, the kind of karate that I learned from him had little to do with that. I mean, I'm not suggesting karate students need to go out and pick fights in order to see how physical violence works; I'm saying that if we aren't training in the dojo in a way that corresponds to reality, then excuse my language but, what the f--- are we doing?
A: There is really no “right” or “wrong” to what I had said. It’s just a matter if you really want to be an expert in one specific art or not. If you mix in too many things, it’s really hard to really consider yourself as a true professional since there are so many other influences. For myself, I also dabbled in Muay Thai and competed in Freestyle Boxing, but I had only done so after I had felt that my wing chun skills were at a very high level. That way none of those other things would be able to disrupt my Wing Chun background. As tough as it sounds, if you want to really take Wing Chun seriously, then you should make extra effort to learn Wing Chun through other means. It’s a matter of wanting to truly excel and devote yourself into your passion. Filling in the gaps with boxing would not exactly be wrong, but it wouldn’t necessarily complete your Wing Chun training. An example I can give would be an aspired Chinese cuisine cook learning to complete his lack of skill in Chinese cooking by learning Italian cooking instead. You’ll be able to be a cook with more diverse skills, but you would not be able to call yourself a true Chinese cuisine master.
Elbow SMASH.
- Hiji Até
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