ONE FORM TO RULE THEM ALL.

We are in the ‘End-Game’, only results matter here.

When Leung Jan began developing what we all now refer to as Wing Chun it was a method of refining his own, quite substantial Martial abilities.

Because of this, there were no specific conditioning IDEAs added to the new work, he would have already been using his previous conditioning from his previous style.

To fill this void we always needed to bring conditioning tools in from outside sources, and, where possible, convert them to align with Wing Chun’s thinking, our Fist Logic.

The most important skills to have if we wish to better our opponent in a violent interaction are speed, strength, and aggression.

Or more to the point the ability to deliver our Wing Chun training with speed, strength, and aggression.

This appears to fly in the face of much of the basic Wing Chun approach, especially once we explore how to ‘load’ what we do.

In my opinion, this is why Ip Man made the Baat Cham Dao one of his training protocols, to step outside of the box.

Wing Chun is a ‘FIST-ART’ after all, there is no need to add weapons.

Training is not fighting, they are closely related but not as joined at the hip as many think.

As clearly as I can state, training Wing Chun teaches us Wing Chun, but it does not teach us how to fight.

Each of us, in our own way, needs to be able to use the Wing Chun we have learned while engaged in what is essentially unrelated fighting.

In fighting, there is no time to think, no time to try it again, no place for relaxing, deliberately introduced softness, or any organised movement sets.

This is true of every style and not just Wing Chun.

The external attributes of speed, strength, and aggression, all of which are quite rightly excluded from training practice because they clash with our training ideology, are the backbone of the Baat Cham Dao.

There is no other reason for this FORM to exist, as I say, Wing Chun is a ‘Fist’ art.

This does not need to be a problem.

In the Big Picture everyday world that we think the brown will become airborne in, not everything we do needs to be Wing Chun.

Just because we train in Wing Chun, believe in Wing Chun and recommend Wing Chun, we have not in any way committed ourselves to some unbreakable contract that means that we can only use Wing Chun if we are in a dire situation.

Over the years I have helped hundreds of students with their training and at some time or another during practice, they have asked “Can we do this in Wing Chun”?

Do what?

Survive?

What is the Wing Chun end game?

Wing Chun exists to escape violence.

Holding an opinion that there is a raft of things we cannot do is sports thinking, imagining that there are rules that if broken can get us disqualified from the match.

There are no ‘Sportsman-like’ rules in an unasked-for violent situation, especially no rules that would force the referee to intervene and save our Ass.

To survive a violent situation we need to be faster, stronger, and nastier than our attacker, otherwise, at best, we are only a 50% chance of getting out in one piece.

Of all of our movement sets, the Baat Cham Dao affords us the opportunity to add the much-needed increased load to the training.

There are no new learning objectives in the Baat Cham Dao Form, we have done all of the actions and movements in a previous Form and should be comfortable with, if not capable of, making these actions and movements, so we have little need to focus on specific mechanics.

The overall scope of work we do in the Baat Cham Dao From is to gradually, but continuously, increase the load while trying to keep it inside the envelope of Wing Chun philosophy.

In training, we all try for perfection, but in a violent situation ‘close enough’ is usually good enough.

Especially ‘close enough’ delivered fast with unrelenting aggression.

Working in this way with the Baat Cham Dao allows us to find the limits of how fast we can move, how much strength we can use and how aggressive we can be before we erode the very stuff we have spent years trying to understand.

Forgetting our objectives.

During the journey, we commonly forget our goal.

Almost every profession is chosen and commenced as a means to an end but continued as an end in itself.

Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent of all acts of stupidity.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, 1844–1900