November 14, 2025
Edge of the Blade
Many Wing Chun students and teachers believe that the blades were taught first to the early generations. We will abstain from debating that point fully due to the dearth of historical evidence. As is often the case with Chinese history in centuries past, it’s quite difficult, even impossible, to be exactly certain of specific events and issues. In a day of social media and all that it’s hard to remember that we live in an age of unprecedented information overload. We must be careful to be intellectually honest, therefore, and not expect absolute certainty of things that happened in eras where information was scant – not to mention that was deliberately kept secret.
Warfare and combat tricks weren’t something you wanted to share with everyone like we do today. A master would hardly think to alert potential foes of his skill and strategy for any reason. That was an easy way to end up dead. Today, all of us have YouTube pages and things like that. Knowledge is power, right? Well, think about how the military trains its special forces. Even with all the information availability, they work hard to keep essential things secret lest the enemy gain an advantage.
Thus, we think it’s quite likely that Baat Jam Do or some other weaponry that’s passed into historical oblivion preceded empty hand training. It makes perfect sense for a fighter to first get knowledge of weaponry and then hand-to-hand training. It would also make sense of why so much empty hand Wing Chun training is focused on stability and rooting because the student would already know how to move quickly and freely due to blade work. Nevertheless, we have no solid historical proof of this, only common sense speculation.
For that reason, though, we believe the Wing Chun fighter should take seriously the lessons of Baat Jam Do in that so much of the system makes sense in doing so. Without the knife form we have a something akin to BJJ students who never practice striking. The early days of UFC and Royce Gracie showed what happened to combatants who had no grappling skill whatsoever as Royce, no master of the striking arts, be sure, dominated them with his ground game. But today it’s a completely different story. To go into the UFC without a stand-up game that’s professional is to flirt with brain damage. Imagine Jon Jones versus Royce!
Vexing as this might be to many Wing Chun traditionalists, we believe the comparison is quite logical. Today’s combat reality is unlike what Ip Man and his students faced in their day. For both the reality of the athleticism of modern fighters and the advancement of common sense methodology, “traditional” Wing Chun is ill-suited. What we mean is the Wing Chun approach of the hyper-rooted and nearly stationary target up against modern fighters. But the answer is not, repeat not, a rejection of Wing Chun itself, but a rejection of an interpretation of the system as it’s often understood today – that of an empty hand system alone. And a rigid one at that. It’s our contention that the weapons are significant factors – especially and to the point of this book – the Baat Jam Do form. And not merely for the weapon itself, but also for the crossover skills they provide.
In other words, Baat Jam Do not only gives the Wing Chun fighter edged weapon skills, but also provides the cat-like quickness, range and mobility needed to excel in all-out fighting. Indeed, good footwork is always and forever a fighter’s best friend because it allows for positional advantages. It’s our contention that Baat Jam Do is essential to Wing Chun because it provides both the content and context of total warfare. Just as the BJJ student knows he/she needs a stand-up game to be a well-rounded fighter, the Wing Chun fighter needs the rooting power of Siu Lim Tao and the speed of foot provided by Baat Jam Do. They are both Wing Chun!
People often see our YouTube channel and other videos and send me this basic inquiry:
Why is your footwork different than other families?
It’s precisely because we apply the aforementioned principles of Baat Jam Do to the application of the empty hand system. We see the one as critical in applying the other. Most people think it’s boxing that changes the way we see our Wing Chun and, therefore, they draw (the irrational) conclusion that our Wing Chun has been thus corrupted by an antithetical system. But the truth is that we see the system comprehensively. Weapons and empty-hand together. They both make sense of the other.
Oh, and incidentally, modern boxing is derived from – you guess it – fencing. The European way of war throughout the centuries was heavily sword-based. The Sabre and rapier were taught first and the empty-hand program – that is, boxing – was taught upon that platform. The old-school “straight left” style was a kind of sword-and-buckler style of fighting (that buckler being a small shield used to block/parry and only sometimes strike with at close-range). We believe that Wing Chun is best served with seeing our own system in the same light. Baat Jam Do is, then, a sort of missing link in the modern sense.
This approach will, we believe, enhance your respect for the masters of old like Leung Jan, Leung Bik, Ip Man, Wong Shun Leung and, yes, Bruce Lee, rather than diminish it. You see, these structures (the forms) are absolutely essential as our foundation. In a time without worldwide communication and Google, the masters of old crafted a system of self-defense based on logically sound physics and principles of application. The error, as we’ve stated, wasn’t in these masters of yore but in the traditionalists’ refusal to do the hard work of applying these truths personally in the modern era.
We like to say that we teach Ip Man Wing Chun but not the way Ip Man taught Wing Chun in the 1950’s in post-World War 2 Hong Kong. That was a specific time and place with specific geo-political realities and types of opponents. We like to say that we take the whole system seriously as an integrated thing so as to better understand the contextual truths of application particulars. Far from breaking from the masters of old, we uphold and honor them. They were fighters and warriors, after all. They were trained and prepared to meet the challenges of their day with Wing Chun and it’s upon their shoulders that we now stand.