Help me make a choice: Wing Chun or Bujinkan Ninjutsu

Question

This September I will be going away to university and currently, I am dealing with a dilemma of signing up for either a Wing Chun or Bujinkan ninjutsu club, along with my MMA training. Now, I have been wanting to join a Bujinkan dojo for a while now and just recently got interested in wing chun. Ultimately, I am thing of acquiring knowledge from the arts I am interested in and apply it to MMA. I was thinking, if anyone had experiences with applying Bujinkan techniques or wing chun techniques in MMA and if they found them effective.

The techniques I have seen in Bujinkan, particularly in taijutsu (Ninjutsu's hand to hand combat) and kaiten (rolling) caught my idea, that I think would be beneficial in MMA. That's why I prompted the question to know if anyone has used Bujinkan techniques in MMA and whether it worked or not. Furthermore, I had a very keen interest in weapons training, which I think would be beneficial for in the street where anything can go down.

As for wing Chun, I haven't done much research on it yet, but the techniques I have heard have been used and proved to be useful in the UFC. The flowing motion of wing Chun caught my eye a lot and how they try to defend while attacking really made me think it's usefulness. Now bear in mind, I want to try to become a better mixed martial artist as I have a strong belief in bruce lee's philosophy of the "formless art"...but it certainly doesn't hurt to learn different techniques and use them properly in a mixed form.

These arts don't practice a lotta a live sparing and pressure testing, hence inductively deemed unfit in MMA. But until or unless someone uses them, at least parts of them in MMA, no one would really know if these techniques actually work.

Another art, that I have studied a while back and am still interested in is Kyokushin Karate, which I reckon would be very applicable to MMA. However my university doesn't cater to that style, hence I am stuck with wing chun and ninjutsu.

So, what do you guys think? Which one, should I focus more towards?

PS: I won't be able to focus on both given there's a strong factor of money and time.

Answer 1

One of the things that is present in Steve's answers that he linked in his comments is that neither style is going to do much to prepare you for MMA due to a lack of active resistance. I've done a bit of Bujinkan and Wing Chun (more of the former) as well as several other styles, and they don't really do the sort of free-sparring that happens in MMA where your opponent is not following a script. Wing Chun has push-hands, which has some free-form aspects, and we did some Kumite setups in the Bujinkan system where you entered a circle, and had random attacks from people around you but they were only allowed a single attack and then they "acted" out your pulled strikes and moved along with the throws. Yes, MMA has rules that are followed as well, but you face a situation where you don't know what strike your opponent will throw, they won't necessarily go down in one hit, they might keep hitting you, and you need to keep fighting as you're being hit. You perform how you train.

Now what you might be able to gain MMA-wise from this sort of cross-training is new techniques to try out. Anderson Silva is notorious (not always in a good way) for how he'd see a particular technique in a martial art and then try to use it in MMA. He'd also then drill that movement in the ring with an opponent who would feel free to counter and hit back, and keep hitting back. Overall, I suspect Bujinkan would be a bit more useful for your purposes here, as there was an emphasis on learning a technique and then training it in different circumstances, so it was a bit more grounded in learning to do it under pressure and when the opponent doesn't stand in the right place. Heck, there have even been some Capoeira techniques that have been used in MMA (possibly not as surprising when you look at historical Capoeira, which was often trained alongside Luta Libre).

Fundamentally, most Traditional Martial Arts, which include Wing Chun and the Bujinkan styles, aren't really taught in a way that fits actual application in a fight. That's not to say that they're fraudulent, or worthless. Many of them were originally built for very specific circumstances, such as how Wu Shu was a way of quickly training people to fight other Chinese martial arts, or how some of the Bujinkan techniques are based on how to hurt someone who's wearing traditional Japanese armor. And, since then, they've been adapted to more study the theory and culture of the style than to actually train to fight. And if you enjoy doing them, that's great. I don't expect my Capoeira skills to ever be how I win a fight. I know from experience that they've helped me in other ways, such as catching myself when slipping or falling, or not falling apart after I take a blow to the head, but what I train there exists under a set of formalized rules that approach combat, but comfortably stop before that so that it can be enjoyed as a musical and cultural experience.

So, ultimately, Bujinkan is probably your better bet in my opinion, but as Dave says, if you want to fight in MMA, you train in MMA. And if you want to use other styles in the MMA ring, you take them to the MMA ring and try them out and see how they work.

Answer 2

The vast majority of wing chun and bujinkan schools would be more likely to have a net negative effect on your MMA training than a net positive effect. You're better off spending your time doing strength and conditioning, or looking for a school that spars.