WCI Review - Wayne Belonoha - Workshop 13: Fight Strategy/Maai San Jong
For those unfamiliar with Sifu Wayne Belonoha, he's a highly renowned teacher who has produced several videos and books on Wing Chun, and is a former long-time columnist of Wing Chun Illustrated. Sifu Belonoha belongs to the Moy Yat lineage, with the late Sifu Moy Yat being one of the most well-known students of Grandmaster Ip Man.
This video is approximately 50 minutes long and focuses on the fighting strategy of Wing Chun. Since it's a video about strategy, it's mostly lecture style, covering just about what one would expect from a strategy lesson: objectives and goals, reasoning, analysis, risk assessments, measurements, and implementations. If you're looking for an action-packed video of other styles vs Wing Chun, this isn't it.
While some people will appreciate the "university lecture with demonstrations" style of this video, I found it to be too long and monotonous. Some of his students occasionally assist him in demonstrating certain techniques, but it's only for very brief periods, and the techniques used are not adequately explained. Sifu Belonoha briefly touches on how to deal with a Western boxer, Muay Thai boxer, Taekwondo stylist and others. However, the explanations are strategic, leaving viewers with many unanswered technical questions. I assume those questions are addressed in his YouTube channel, other workshops, books or online courses.
I feel a little more planning should have gone into the video to make it more engaging. Canned laughter is again used a few times in this video to accentuate Sifu Belonoha's dry humour, but I felt the jokes lacked humour and fell flat. There's very little, if any, useful tactical information shared. While Sifu Belonoha briefly touches on objectives and goals such as economy of motion, the centreline theory, and other fundamental objectives of Wing Chun, this video doesn't provide a technical deep dive into the explanations of the techniques.
Wayne Belonoha - Workshop 13: Fight Strategy/Maai San Jong
Language: English
Running Time: Approx. 50 min.
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