Striking in Wing Chun Kung Fu

There are three principles to the martial art of wing chun kung fu: economy of motion, economy of time and economy of energy. When first learning how to apply striking in wing chun kung fu, students generally tend to have a hard time trying to apply these principles, as I did myself when I began. They would draw back their shoulders and try to generate a powerful punch. As a result, they would tire quickly and they are much slower. Wing chun kung fu teaches us that by using these three principles, we can keep attacking much longer than an opponent and much faster.

Let me begin with the maths behind a punch. The main purpose of a punch is to throw force into your opponent and cause damage. But to generate force, we need mass and speed. These are the factors that generate force.

The mass does not change in wing chun. It is possible to use mass to generate more force by throwing your body forward. But this is slow and could send you off balance. The mass of a strike in wing chun is simply just your fist.

The speed is how we apply more force. Mass x speed = force so we relax when striking and just keep striking with very fast punches.

This is difficult to understand at first for a beginner. They want to deliver strong punches every time they hit. But this is not how the system works. Instead of having slow, one punch knockout power, we aim to accumulate more damage faster with weaker punches.

With practise, you can learn to tense your fist just before you hit your opponent to deliver explosive power each time. For a beginner, it is best to just develop an understanding of “how it works” and “why it works” to begin with.

The other difficulty beginners tend to have is relaxing while striking. Indeed it is still something I have yet to get the hang of. The feeling of tensing when you strike gives the impression that you are dealing more damage when you strike. Again, this may be true with one punch but it is slow and you get tired very quickly. By relaxing your arms when you strike, you can keep punching and punching rapidly and not get tired at all.

There are also a couple of other principles that also apply to striking in wing chun. These are the centreline theory and simultaneous attack and defence. @sifu33 goes into detail in his blog on the three theories of wing chun kung fu.

All these principles combined outline what could be wing chun. It is a very free martial art with very few restrictions. Anything that falls within the guidelines and works could be considered wing chun. So the main things to remember are: economise your time, movement and energy, use the centreline theory and simultaneous defence and stay relaxed while striking. It may be difficult in a real life situation but mastery of this could mean that while you’re still going, your opponent quickly gets gassed and the fight is yours simply because you learnt striking in wing chun.

Guest Blog written by Jack Ricketts, find me here on my twitter or on facebook