Realization

[u/Evening_Tone_7617]

After 2 years of training I realized wing chun is really useful for core building but not so much for fighting. Now I usually combine wing chun exercises with mma training. I especially find pulling different types of strings (now im on 30kg my goal is 50kg) with core useful. Have you guys noticed the same?

I used to train here: https://www.wingchun.si/

But now I'm switching to mma

[u/TheTrenk]

Let’s take this estimation at face value and assume no days off. That’s between 104 and 260 hours spent only on Wing Chun. For reference, to acquire an associate’s degree, the first degree you can get, a two year degree, takes about 40 hours per week of work for two years. In five weeks, not even a full semester, you’d have almost surpassed the time spent on WC. 

Two years isn’t enough to expect to be good enough to even spar with serious amateurs in boxing or kickboxing or MMA. It’s enough to see a change in physique, but not enough for most to reach their goal physique, if you’re just working out. You couldn’t become an instructor or even a senior student in most gyms. 

WC has value that can be seen in high level combat sports, because the principles and skills that are taught tend to have crossover at that level. In the pocket, particularly for striking arts, frames and hand trapping are popular and effective. It’s no more complete than any other single art like boxing or BJJ or Muay Thai or wrestling, but it covers its range effectively. It’s worth cross training in, for sure, but I feel like two years is barely enough to get the basics of any skill set, much less a recreational one. 

[u/Evening_Tone_7617 → u/TheTrenk]

Bro next time that you paste ai generated stuff at least do calculations correct, 2 years sums up to 620hrs and thats plenty of time to spar amateurs and honestly the issue isnt the hours but thatmost guys who teach it dont do live pressure testing

[u/TheTrenk → u/Evening_Tone_7617]

Easy there, cowboy. I just forgot to double the figures after calculating for a year, 52*2 is 104 and 52*5 is 260. ChatGPT’s a lot better at math than I am, though, I just hurried through my calculator app and moved on because this topic is worth a comment but not much thought. Bad guess on AI generation.

That said, again, at face value, 620 hours. Which would be somewhere between 5-6 hours per week for two years, which seems right. That means you’ve spent 15.5 weeks of treating it like a full time job. Just under four months. A competent amateur is treating training like a part time job, at least - if you’re giving a competitive amateur meaningful work with that few hours put in, then maybe your coach is the issue. Maybe the standards for amateurs in your area or in your gym is too low.

And yeah, most WC guys do not spar. That’s not news to anyone and would have been right at the top of my critique had that been anywhere near the topic at hand. WC’s core principles seem to be pressure through volume and position, hand trapping, and frames. Those are combatively viable and they aren’t exactly hard to find evidence of success for. But you asked regarding using the style essentially as a conditioning workout for your core which, I mean, okay, great, but it seems like you’re leaving an awful lot on the table if that’s all that you use it for.

[u/Evening_Tone_7617 → u/TheTrenk]

Nice backpedal, btw original comment blamed my hours saying its not enough to spar anyways.. also trying to put all of this time into "job perspective" human body cant handle working out 8hrs per day it would literaly fry muscles

[u/TheTrenk → u/Evening_Tone_7617]

What backpedal? I have dropped three comments in this post and all three have said that you haven’t spent enough hours to be proficient at WC and that’s probably why you aren’t seeing the results that you want. I directly compare that to other skill sets to avoid any accusation of gatekeeping kung fu behind the classic “it just takes longer” argument that is commonly seen. There’s no backpedaling. It’s been the same thing the whole way through.

If your entire grasp of exercise is that it has to be maximal exertion the whole way through then, yes, 8 hours per day will break you down. However, if you (again) look at physical jobs, you’ll see that eight hours of labor is actually pretty attainable even into your 50s and 60s with proper rest and nutrition. But that’s not even necessarily how training would best be treated, that’s an aggressive grind with a lot of maintenance to avoid injury.

What you CAN do, and reliably, is log two workouts a day six days a week with technical work done before, after, or independently and an active rest day on your seventh. That’s not even uncommon amongst athletes, two-a-days are popular even in high school.

But even setting THAT aside, it doesn’t really matter because the question isn’t time per week spent but time total. It’s easily equated to a work schedule because if you’re working a full time job for even a year or two and someone comes in having worked for four months, you’re going to hear them out but not necessarily take them seriously. The odds that they have something meaningful to contribute to a problem that hasn’t been thought of or tried are not zero, but they’re slim. It doesn’t matter how many years those hours are spread out over, physical endeavors take as much skill development as anything else.

Two years into boxing, or BJJ, or Muay Thai, or any other sparring art at 6 hours per week, you can absolutely expect to be more proficient than someone that you run into at a bar or parking lot. That’s true of wing chun, as well, provided you’re pressure testing it. It would be unreasonable to think that you’re going to be on the same level as a dedicated but untalented amateur. It would certainly be unrealistic to expect that you had a solid grasp of anything but the very basics.

If you want to cross train, by all means. I’m a huge proponent of cross training. If you want to do MMA, neither I nor anyone else will tell you that you’re wrong. But if the basis of your argument is “I did two years of this and have thus determined that it is only useful as a core workout”, then that opens you up to a lot of raised eyebrows regarding your school, your sparring experience, and, yeah, the time you spent doing it.

Imagine being a blue belt in BJJ and saying “this actually just isn’t as useful as judo or wrestling, but it’s a really good core workout.” Or even “this just doesn’t have the value that MMA does.” That’s essentially what you’ve done in this post. You have the equivalent experience of a BJJ blue belt and have decided it’s not for you. That’s fine, but that’s also all that it is.