What style to pick?

I'd have to agree with Magr. JKD is GENERALLY considered a concept. And WC is GENERALLY considered a style. That's the popular concensus at least.

I am not confusing JKD and WC, you are misinformed if you think there is much difference between the two "categories". Wing Chun may well be taught as a style by most, but this is not how I am taught, nor how Wong Shun Leung taught Bruce Lee & Nino Bernardo. This form of Wing Chun is flexible and adaptable. How is Wing Chun anything but a concept? How can understanding of efficient use of body mechanics, in an adaptive and responsive manner, non-telegraphic attack, interception, economy of motion, practicality etc be anything other than concepts?

You don't have to use bong sao in Wing Chun, and you can use it in JKD if you wish. Don't forget that JKD was born from Lee's Wing Chun base

Wing Chun is also a concept that works for each individual. You use what works for your body, what you consider to be effective, and what you consider to be practical in a fight. It has been taught as a style by many, and I guess that is fine, but that is not the only "Wing Chun" there is. Just like JKD is also taught as a style by many.

The dummy & 3 forms are not for use in fighting, they are more like manuals to condition the body to move in certain ways and certain lines. You think "the form" is done the same way by everyone who does "Wing Chun", or that it means the same thing or contains the same concepts? Of course not. Yip Man even told his students to minimise everything, every motion...some of them went on to radically change their 1st form as a result. Here, Wing Chun is not seem as fixed or static, it has changed over the hundreds of years and continues to change. It is an adaptive and flexible system. Your form will reflect your understanding of the WC concepts, it's that simple.

You don't HAVE to put JKD-esque logic into practice as a novice, but once your body understands how to move in certain ways, then you can develop your own way of fighting with an UNDERSTANDING of the concepts and an ability to apply them. I see little point in beginning your MA journey by trying to do "JKD" or whatever because your body and mind will not be able to understand what it is looking for or best judge what to incorporate.

Noone teaches or performs "Wing Chun" the same way...so who is doing the "real" Wing Chun? I think you are being very simplistic in arguing that the only concept based fighting philosophy is the "JKD" of Bruce Lee - Bruce's fighting style was unique and he may have trained harder than was normal at the time, but his philosophy was not greatly different to that of Wong Shun Leung and certain "lineages" of Wing Chun. I am constantly told that we are practising concepts in WC, not that we are learning fixed "techniques" or a "style" of fighting. And I am constantly told that I should only use what is practical and what works for me.

When we do Wing Chun, you can include anything practical. Knees from Thai Boxing, any locks etc. As long as it is practical and effective - there is no "set" Wing Chun repetoire.

Wong Shun Leung did not adopt other ways of fighting, just like Bruce Lee didn't. This is like saying JKD is a specific way of fighting and that everytime Lee used something new then it wasnt JKD by another style. Wing Chun is a concept, and following this concept Leung incorporated anything he considered useful from his observations and fights with other MAs. If it was practical, non-telegraphic etc, then he would use it...just like Lee later would. This was his Wing Chun, it wasn't "ah, now I'll use a Judo throw" or "time for the fencing stance" - anything practical was incorporated into the "automatic pilot" you develop based on the WC concepts...concepts largely shared with Lee's JKD.

You consider WC to be a fixed style, well then JKD could also be a fixed style by the same logic. You simply understand WC as fixed, and many people don't. I don't think you should be telling anyone that WC only exists in the limited way that you understand it, simply because of the way you have been taught it and others have "generally" understood it to be. I understanding WC and JKD to be extremely similar, but with different journeys to reach similar ends. I don't know how Lee taught his JKD to novices, but JKD today is certainly taught in a different manner to how WC is (the WC I experience) - but the goals are essentially the same and were being put into practice before Lee coined "JKD" in the West.

I am sorry but you are assuming that I have been taught WC in a specific way. You are not even reading my responses. Like someone said before, intelligent people usually agree after a reasonable arguement has been put forward.

Read this:
I am not saying that you have to use bong sau, I am saying that you have to learn bong sau. I am also taught to use what works for me, but I am not going to subtract anything from wing chun because it doesnt work for me, that is how martial arts get watered down. I am not in any position, and neither is leung or Lee to choose what stays and what goes in WC. Something may not work for you but it may work for someone else, so if you want to be able to teach someone WC you should be able to teach him/her everything not just what works for you, and ofcourse there are versions of it a lineages, but you cannot decide "oh, I am not going to teach bong sau, because it doesnt work for me!" that is a very arrogant attitude.

You want to take an art form and bastardise it then its your perogative, but if you are being taught that you can take any technique and incorporate it as a wing chun technique then you are mistaken and misguided.

I also have taken techniques from other fighting styles and incorporated them into my sparring not. BUT if someone asks me to teach them wing chun I would not teach them those techniques as wing chun because they are not. MAs evolve and so does wing chun, and the forms between schools and lineages have differences, but you cannot add an extra that suits you form and say that "MY WC has 4 forms!" gimme a break!

You obviously are being taught non-traditional WC and that is fine, and you may even be a better fighter for it, but recognise it for what it is. Yes you can do knees, yes you can do anything you damn well want, but there are some things that have always been part of WC and some things that you have added.

You obviously have a completely different teaching to mine, and believe when I tell you that I see nothing wrong with the way you are being taught, but also believe me when I tell you that however adaptible WC is not a concept! It may have less strict boundaries and syllabus than say shotokan, but its definetely not anything goes! The footwork for example is specific, if you are dancing around like a boxer that is not WC footwork, you may not like it, it may not suit you, but that does not mean it doesnt have a set type of footwork.

Read the Tao of JKD by Lee, since you are mentioning him so much to defend your arguement, and you will find that when Lee talks about formlessness he says that in order to truly have formlessness you first have to learn it as it is, with the rules the boundaries, the specific techniques, and then you can break it down and use what works for you. If someone straight from the beginning incorporates whatever they want, they will never understand the true concepts behind the art. If you have just started (and that is a royal you) WC how can you decide if the bong sau works or not before you master it?
What you are saying is right but for very, very advanced practitioners of wing chun.

Ok, so we do agree.

You know what my problem is? And I am sure we agree on this also, is when I see idiots entering tournaments and what not, claiming that they are doing wing chun, and they get battered because they have done 2 years of some hybrid-whatever-works-for-you malarkey. There are a lot of wing chun schools that are phoney and teach a watered down version/MMA wing chun right from the beginning. And there there is the other extreme of schools who are so involved in their "tradition" that they teach no realism or application, no fitness, no nothing, why? because wing chun is the best, because its so easy and all that crap. And then there are other people that because they havent seen a single decent WC dude in action they assume WC is not effective.

In fact, I have seen very little in the way of actual WC and thats why I got a bit defensive and rude, and I apologise.

Good luck in your training!