I get what you're saying, and didn't take it as criticism or anything.

I had started writing a much more point-by-point response, but kept falling back on "we do things that don't make sense unless you've seen them," so it got kind of repetitive :) What I posted was basically an (apparently inadequate) attempt to explain this. I'm also wary of ending up making a no true Scotsman fallacy. I'm also wary of explaining why we do things too much just because I don't necessarily know. I mean, I know a reason to do things, but I've only been training 6 years. There's still so much I don't know about how our system works, and every time I'll think I have something figured out someone will show me something that makes me realize how far off I was. Just the other day I had a new student ask how long I'd been training, and when I told him, he said something like "you must know it all then." I felt kind of bad for laughing at him :) But I want to emphasize that what I'm saying isn't necessarily everything, and there may be details that I either take for granted (possibly) or don't know (almost certain).

But I'll give you an example of what I mean about it being tough to explain. You mentioned a couple of times about how the human body can take more punishment than we think. This is true as far as it goes, but no one hits like we do in Ving Tsun. Basic Newtonian physics tells us that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, which means that a hard punch is going to put as much energy back down the arm of the puncher. When I see e.g. MMA on TV, it looks like they're on roller skates; everyone is almost falling over just from trying to strike each other. Boxers are typically much better about this, but even then there's some bouncing off people. A good Ving Tsun punch transfers as close to 100% of its energy into the target as is possible. We learn to maintain our connection to the ground, so you become an immovable object, and the only place for the energy to go is into the other person.

This has two results. The first is that the punch almost literally hits you in the feels. The energy penetrates the surface in the way most people's punches don't generally, so you feel it on the inside. I've literally been punched in the chest and felt the impact in my back muscles. It also has a surprising emotional response...the first couple times I was at the point of being hit and really got lit up (proportional to my skill level), I went home with a case of the shakes like you get after a car accident. The body's response is just different.

The other thing is it means that there's a structure between you and the opponent. So even if your punch against someone trying to tackle isn't enough to stop their momentum, they still can't actually get a good grip on you (with what they can get dependent on relative reach, obviously). The nice thing about this is that even if your "horse" (connection to the ground) doesn't hold, your whole body moves back, which means the other person doesn't actually get any closer.

It's worth noting that this is a more advanced way of defending yourself. You have to have developed the accuracy to hit a moving target and the technique so that your arm and structure hold. I would try this with someone my size or smaller; someone bigger than me, I'd probably do something else. Hopefully as my kung fu gets older that'll be less and less of a restriction.

Again, though, I completely understand why someone reading this would be skeptical. My explanation and actually feeling it work are two wildly different things.

There is a lot of talk in the martial arts world, and my school's culture is to generally not engage in it very much (another reason why it feels kind of weird to me to explain all this). Our rule is to talk with the fists, since that's really the only way to know for sure if something works. But obviously you and I don't have that option, so this will have to do :)