In Wing Chun’s current zeitgeist a question or two surround the two weapons. Do we keep them around? How do we train them in the modern day?

Wing Chun has always been primarily an empty hand system, but its two weapons are also deeply entrenched in our art and are symbols of it to this day. Yet, due to the popularity of combat sports, and dangers of weapons fighting, some Wing Chun schools have started to move solely towards kickboxing.

Many schools do not place equitable emphasis on the weapons vs the fist. When I say “equitable emphasis,” I don’t mean you have to train weapons as much as the fists. But maybe in equal measure to the forms. Typically, Wing Chun has three hand forms, the wooden dummy, and two weapons forms. So theoretically, you should be training the Lok Dim Boon Gwan or BakJom Dao at least one sixth of the time. Yet many Wing Chun schools do not even come close to this.

As someone who comes from a school that actively trains the weapons, I find this very apparent. I travel a bit every year and find other schools to train with while I’m out there. Some schools practiced the weapons, others only practiced the blades, and some only practiced the empty hand techniques. So why do we have these differences in training and curriculum? One answer that I have heard is simply space.

A lot of schools don’t have a ton of room and since Wing Chun hand fighting takes up even less space, a lot of sifus will go with a smaller space to save money on rent. And if you’re in a big city with little space (like Hong Kong or New York), you may have little choice about where you can train. Wong Hong Chung even discusses this issue of space in his interview with Wing Chun Origins.

Other schools have a different approach to the weapons, which is to see the weapons as beautiful relics. Important to the development of Wing Chun in its past, but not necessarily needed for its future. Yet, these two weapons in particular are so important because they are truly Southern Chinese weapons. The long pole and the butterfly swords found in Wing Chun are common in other Southern Chinese systems like Hung Ga, Choy Lay Fut, and Lung Ying. And while the fundamentals are the same, each style has its own method of these weapons, including power generation, defensive tactics, and just the forms themselves.

One way around the space issue is to train shorter versions of the pole. For example, while I am certified under Michael Valenti, I have also trained with Larry Rice during my time in Asheville, NC. With Michael, we use the traditional length of staff and practice with care. Only a few people are ever training the weapons at a time and if we need to, we’ll go outside to accommodate the space. When I was at Larry’s, we trained using six foot poles probably 80% of the time and would practice with traditional weapons when there was room. While I prefer the traditional length, I think the six foot pole training was also valuable.

Practicing the form and techniques with a variety of lengths and weights taught me to understand the details of this weapon more thoroughly and how to apply the concepts more broadly. And this helps me apply the weapon’s lessons in a broader context, as we are taught to do. I use lessons from both weapons in my grappling and kickboxing. They teach a surprising amount about body mechanics and distance management, if you are willing to train them.

But what options do we really have as practitioners and teachers?

Option 1: Train the Weapons as They Are

The first option is the most apparent: simply keep training Wing Chun in its entirety. Wing Chun is an historical martial art. This does not mean it cannot be used for sport or self defense. It can be. But it is a solidified system that is not prone to changing that much. On top of this, the traditional structure of Ip Man Wing Chun has only certain lessons in certain sections of the curriculum. For example, the Lok Dim Boon Gwan has the only major examples of level changing. It would be a much weaker art without this lesson.

If we want to truly preserve the lessons of Wing Chun then we should be willing to perform all aspects of the art, even the ones that are difficult. And it may not be the most lucrative, but if we were worried about that, we would just teach Tae Kwon Do in a strip mall.

There are many ways to do this, like the shorter staves for practicing in close spaces and padded foam weapons for sparring.

Option 2: Turn the Weapons Forms into Hand Forms

One way to maintain the lessons of the weapons is to practice the weapons forms as hand forms. I personally do this already, even though I still practice the weapons as they are. Since the hands and weapons inform each other, it’s not that far of a stretch. While this would maintain the major lessons of the forms, it would turn Wing Chun solely into a kickboxing art.

Even though beimo is historically the primary focus of Wing Chun, we would be losing certain aspects of the art if we move forward in this manner. It would result in less well rounded practitioners. Weapons training improves you as a martial artist in ways you often don’t realize until after the fact.

If you’re worried about self defense, you have to know how to fight in Stand, Clinch, Ground, and Weapons. Wing Chun is only missing ground fighting. If we cut the weapons, we’re left with only the first two. Wing Chun’s weapons are not as dynamic as Kali’s, or as broad in scope as Kobudo’s, but few things beat a big ol’ stick.

Another issue with losing the weapons is the loss of conditioning. While basic hand and leg conditioning would still be apparent, the weight training, precision training, and core training of the Lok Dim Boon Gwan would have to be supplemented with other drills.

And if one decided to be rid of the blades as well, certain wrist and forearm conditioning drills would also be lost. You can’t go around fighting with weak hands. Wing Chun is not that internal.

Option 3: Lose the Weapons but Keep Their Drills

This one is even more austere than option two. If we plan to lose the weapons forms, we could keep the drills of those forms to maintain some of these lessons. For example, the arrow punching drills from the Lok Dim Boon Gwan are essential to Wing Chun’s explosiveness. The pole also is the only area to teach the sei ping ma and cat stances. Using these footworks makes your Wing Chun more fluid and quick.

But depending on your school of Wing Chun, you may not have that many drills for each weapon. Many schools of Wing Chun mainly focus on the forms for the majority of their training and may only have two or three drills for each weapon. The Bak Jom Dao form is so different in order from school to school, in part because it is just a series of drills.

So you may have to add some of these lessons into other forms. This leaves you with a system that begins to shift outside of the tradition. But this isn’t necessarily bad or wrong.

Each generation has changed Wing Chun to fit its needs. Leung Jan originally taught Wing Chun with a strict curriculum, but later boiled it all down to techniques with the Kulo style of Wing Chun. Ip Man taught the forms in different orders at different points of his teaching career.

Option 4: Teach Different Weapons

This one is a “Thanks, I hate it,” option for me. I’m discussing it here because this does happen and it can go well or poorly. I have seen Wing Chun from a school where the instructor was not required by his sifu to know the weapons to open his own school. He taught Wing Chun, but taught Eskrima solo baston as a weapon during his Wing Chun class, and frankly not very well. And I love FMA, I train it constantly, but it’s not Wing Chun. Nor is it wrong to train Wing Chun and another art. That’s often good. But there was a disingenuousness to this instructor’s decision.

To me, this plug and play mixing, it doesn’t show respect to the art as a whole. He couldn’t be fucked to learn the traditional weapons, so he throws some basic stick fighting into his Wing Chun class. I’m not saying you can’t cross-train, obviously you should do that. But there is the issue of misrepresenting Wing Chun to the next generation. There is the issue of not having all the tools and concepts to discuss Wing Chun and even how it relates to an art like Eskrima. And not fully understanding Eskrima and trying to add it to Wing Chun.

Wing Chun is not the only art I train. So I think it is fair for me to say that it is not a large curriculum, especially not for a Chinese art. So it seems impatient and immature to add a weapon to a system you have not completed.

And I treat that situation differently than instructors who have completed the curriculum and then added weapons or other techniques. I have been lucky enough to drop in during my travels on schools where the sifu has added weapons. One simply taught the blade techniques with machetes. The other kept the traditional weapons and forms, but also added cane fighting. They know what Wing Chun is and they have made a conscious decision to adapt it. There was intention about what they were adding and how it affects their student’s learning.

They are not incidentally severing their students from resources, the traditional weapons are still there. Or if they take out the traditional weapons, they have a good reason for it. They’ve done the work and they understand the choice they are making, and I respect that. These teachers took the fourth option, but applied Wing Chun to these weapons. In my limited experience with these teachers, many of the lessons are still there. And it is in a sense, an extension of what we already do with the weapons: view them not only as the weapon itself, but also as a prototypical signifier of any weapon you may pick up. So, while I may not personally enjoy it as Wing Chun, I have to respect it as an option.

So what do we do? Where do we go with this? Personally, I say go with Option 1. If you need, add what you feel is necessary, but don’t cut away the weapons that our kung fu ancestors saw as essential.

As the decades pass, arts will change and what we do now is not what Wing Chun will be in the next 50 years. That’s okay. That’s not a bad thing. But we do have to ask ourselves what is right to change and what must stay. When the art changes, does it continue the fighting spirit of Wing Chun or mute it for the next generation?