Traditional Wing Chun, William Cheung’s system, has always contained ground fighting techniques and concepts. I had my first ground fighting lesson in 1977, from David Crook, who studied with William Cheung in the late 1960s.
Edit: I got a message from David after I first published this saying that back in the day William Cheung was not teaching much ground fighting, and told David he considered it largely a waste of time. David learned most of his ground techniques from his Northern Sil Lum instructor. The Northern Sil Lum had a pretty comprehensive set of grappling techniques., more like Wally Jay’s Small Circle Jujitsu than wrestling or BJJ.
Unlike the plethora of ground strategies, controls, attacks and submissions found in arts like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and catch wrestling, Wing Chun ground fighting has the following aims:
- Protect yourself
- Create distance and time to regain your feet and defend yourself there
- If the opportunity arises to hurt, knock out or take down the opponent before we can regain our feet, use it
Most of the ground fighting techniques I learned as a student of David Crook and Rick Spain, I also learned in the first few months of Jiu Jitsu and MMA training at the Jiu Jitsu academy I attend, Lange’s MMA. The overlap here gives me confidence that such techniques are pretty universal, and pretty effective.
You need some sort of defence on the ground to call yourself a complete fighter. You do not want to go there by choice, but choice may not enter into defence situations. If it did, you would choose not to fight, wouldn’t you? You may be attacked sitting on the grass in a park, looking at your phone, or lying on the sand at the beach. You may trip, slip, or be pushed over in a defence situation.
Reject denial, choose acceptance.
You are on the ground. Someone is standing over you with ill intent.
Keep your legs between him and your upper body. your arm strength alone will be no match for his kicks to your head and body, especially when aided by the force of gravity. Keep him at bay with your legs.
Position 1
On your side, say your R. Up on your R elbow. Your L knee is up to protect your ribs, your L foot low,protecting your groin. Keep your R foot in, leg bent, close to your groin. Do not leave it stretched out where he may be able to stomp on, and damage, your ankle or foot.
Keep your L elbow up, protecting your rib cage. I prefer to keep my L hand on or near my forehead (I call this the facepalm position), but in any case the forearm should be protecting my head and ribs. If he comes too close, you may be able to grab his arm with that hand, Do not reach out with this hand, wait for him to come to you. To do otherwise is to “chase hands”, a bad idea in both Wing Chun and Jiu Jitsu.
If he circles around to your R, scoot around to follow him , so your legs are always pointing at him.
If he circles back to the L, roll L into the same position on your L side, your feet always between you and him. You can kee witching sides as he circles as required.
If he moves in, sidekick his lead leg HARD with your heel or instep. Kick shin, ankle, groin – always attack the leading edge. If he wants to get close, make him pay, hurt him or at least make him think twice and keep his distance. Roundhouse and hook kicks can also be employed, but the side kick is the one that will cause the most pain and do the most damage.
It should be surprisingly difficult for him to close on you without sustaining damage to his legs, or, if he is impatient or careless, his upper body or even his face.
Position 2
Come up on your hands and feet in a “crab walk” or “spider walk” position. You can move back and forth, fairly rapidly in this position. You can front or oblique kick with your heels from here to a variety of targets, from the ankle to the head. An inexperienced fighter, who bends forward in an attempt to get close enough to punch you from here, is a sucker for you suddenly lifting your hips and driving a kick upwards into his face. You can easily get an extra foot or two of range into that kick from Position 2, as opposed to the range you would have sitting on the ground.
Not exactly the technique I describe, but this clip from a MARS event, in the early days of MMA when upkicks were legal, shows how effective such a kick can be.
You can (should, must) practice these kicks against a partner-held kicking shield.
Regaining our Feet
I was taught originally to come up by folding my bottom leg beneath me, stepping over it with my top leg and rolling over my bottom shin, my Wing Chun guard in place, to regain my feet.
When I began training Jiu Jitsu, I learned to “stand up in base”, a manoeuvre also called the technical standup. I believe this is a generally safer alternative, as you are moving away from the opponent while regaining your feet. The “shin roll” method brings you toward the opponent, and should only be used if he is not in a position to strike you from here, perhaps when you have put him down using one of the techniques of opportunity described later.
In the video below I show Position 1, Position 2, kicking options from Position 1, the “Wing Chun” method of standing up performing a shin roll forward, and two versions of the technical standup. The first method uses one hand as a post on the ground, allowing better head protection. The second allows less head cover, but allows me to move significantly further back from my attacker as I regain my feet.
The technical standup also works very well if I come up for tight defense in position 1, to a more offensive position 2, and kick the guy away, immediately moving into a technical standup.
I show the two positions, following a circling opponent in Position 1, kicking from both Position 1 and position 2, and how to use a clearing kick from position to gain enough space to regain my feet with the technical standup.
Techniques of Opportunity
Our overriding goal is to be able to regain our feet without sustaining major damage.
We keep him at bay, keeping our legs between us and him, and kicking his legs unmercifully should he venture too close.
When we have created enough space, and the associated amount of time, we use one of the methods discussed earlier to regain our feet, from where we can either continue the fight from a better position, begin peace talks, or GTFO.
There are a number of techniques of opportunity that can allow us to put our attacker on the ground himself, buying us more time to regain our feet, or to unleash more attacks on him from a grounded position.
These are techniques of OPPORTUNITY – if the opportunity is not there, trying ot manufacture it is probably not a good idea. But if our attacker makes a mistake, we may be able to capitalise on the opportunity his mistake provides.
When possible, we trap his foot with the instep or heel and use our top kicking leg to drive him to the floor, as shown in the video below.
Protect the Head
We want to stop him from passing our legs and getting close to our head. Our arm strength will be no effective match for his kicks. We want to regain a position with our legs between us and him ASAP. Even so, if he does manage to get past our legs, we are not completely without options, as this video shows:
Can still recover or operate from bad positions … with some luck. Don’t get caught there if you can avoid it!
Sport Fighting Examples
If you only train for “da streetz”, feel free to skip to the next section, though I’d advise you to stay with me all the same.
We can review some videos of sporting events to see how this ground fighting strategy may be pretty effective in certain situations.
The first is a match between Muhammad Ali, Olympic gold medallist and heavy weight boxing champion of the world, and Antonio Inoki, then professional wrestler, in 1976. The referee was the legendary “Judo” Gene LeBell, graappler and stuntman extraordinaire.I actually watched this on television at the time it took place. I only post a highlight video, as the entire match was an exercise in boredom and frustration for the audience. The entire match is easily found on Youtube.
Still, against arguably one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, this was an effective survival strategy. Ali’s legs would have sustained a fair bit of damage, and Inoki went about fifteen minutes without very little damage. MMA before there was MMA – not exactly a high point in sporting history, arguably a farce, even, but still interesting from a strategic point of view.
For a more interesting and effective use of ground fighting in an MMA event, while kicks from the ground like those I detail above were still legal, this match between Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt, Allan Goes, and a worthy opponent indeed in Kazushi Sakuraba, is well worth studying. Hopefully, it goes without saying that Goes’ technical repertoire is much more sophisticated than the basic techniques I demonstrated above. He effectively shuts down Sakuraba’s ability to punch and kick with any authority. This, in my opinion, is one of the best examples of effective use of this groundfighting strategy available.
Jiu Jitsu, etc.
This article restricts itself to what I learned about ground fighting as a student of Wing Chun, and Bac Fu Do.
The ground fighting strategy of these arts is to regain your feet as quickly as possible, and take advantage of opportunities to hurt, or take down, the opponent, should the opportunity arise.
There is little or no concept of the positional control on the ground, and ground chokes and submission holds, of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Catch Wrestling, Sambo, Judo, etc.
There is nothing wrong with the Wing Chun ground fighting strategy, as long as you realize its overarching and only aim is to regain your feet ASAP.
If you try to use Wing Chun techniques for purposes for which they are unsuitable, e.g. positional fighting on the ground against a trained Jiu Jitiero, your are very likely to fail. Opinions and experiences vary in this regard, but I believe my statements to be true for the overwhelming majority.
Some of David Crook’s ground fighting in particular makes use of such techniques as grabbing a wrist and putting your foot in the opponent’s armpit to maintain the distance and control him, while (usually) kicking him in the face with the other foot. I would regard this as a form of Jiu Jitsu guard ,and thus treat it as outside the scope of the article.
I certainly would encourage anyone interested in learning more about ground fighting approaches to seek a good Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or other submission grappling style academy, and perhaps attend some MMA classes, to learn about striking effectively from ground control positions.
The ground and pound game is definitely very different from stand-up striking. And both are different again from pure grappling.
I have trained BJJ for over twenty years, and hold a black belt first degree in the art.
Um, practice ukemi – breakfalls and rolls. I can do a variety of “ground engagement”(falling”) techniques and shoulder rolls on concrete without injury, though it’s not something I’d want to do every day.
Multiple opponents, “That won’t work in da streetz”, etc.
You are fighting multiple opponents armed with weapons. (How did you get here?)
Your chances of survival, let alone victory are pretty slim. 99% of you will end up in hospital or the morgue. Defeat is not a province populated solely by non martial artists. But, as my BJJ instructor who has also taught arnis and edged weapons for two decades says, “I’m dead. But then, I have nothing to lose and so might as well try my hardest to survive.”
I wouldn’t pull guard or engage the ground by choice in a defence situation, either.
Against one person, the chances of you getting knocked over, or falling yourself, are greater than zero. Against more than one, with so many more variables, I suggest your chances of going down increase exponentially with each additional opponent. Your chances are slim on the ground, but they will be even slimmer, if you have no strategy or tactics should the worst happen. Protect your head, try to get your back to a wall or escape, try to ride out the storm, and hope the cavalry arrives.
Good luck. Train hard. Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.