Vietnamese Martial Arts in the Digital Age

Digital transformation is an inevitable trend and spares no field, but implementing digital transformation in sports seems difficult to imagine. However, a national sport that seems to be immune because of its traditional characteristics is transforming very dramatically.

Vovinam martial arts school at Mr. Bach Ngoc Chien's small house.

It is Vovinam martial art with a rapid digitalization journey.

When wondering what Vovinam has to do with digital transformation, I was really surprised by the journey of bringing this national martial art to the digital world by Mr. Bach Ngoc Chien, Vice President of the Vietnam Vovinam Federation (VVF), Vice President of the World Vovinam Federation (WVVF) and his associates.

Enter the digital world

Unable to find the signboard of Vovinam Digital Company according to Google maps coordinates because it was a house under repair in a small alley turning from Thanh Binh street, Ha Dong ward, Hanoi , I followed Mr. Chien into a deeper alley.

In front of me was a large martial arts training ground in front of a family church. It was lunchtime so there was no one there, but I could still imagine a traditional martial arts school with Vovinam students, covered in sweat, practicing the unique martial arts forms, wrestling moves and kicks of the school.

However, when I returned to a small space temporarily used as a living room, I saw a Vovinam gym many times larger. That gym was on Mr. Chien's iPad projected onto a large screen.

There were no martial arts masters or students around, but after Mr. Chien's quick actions on the iPad, I was overwhelmed by a martial arts world filled with images of martial arts teaching and learning with both real and virtual martial arts masters, automatic testing tools, and short videos of self-defense situations.

As if to dispel my surprise and astonishment, Mr. Chien explained about a digital platform called Vovinam Digital that has been built for over a year. He said that Vovinam Digital gathers a database of information about Vovinam practitioners around the world through the creation of personal digital profiles.

After registration, Vovinam students will have an electronic Vovinam ID with all information about themselves, the date they started training, the belt level they have... The main goal of Vovinam Digital is to meet one of the criteria of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) regarding the popularity of the sport if it wants to become a summer Olympic sport.

Vovinam martial arts school at Mr. Bach Ngoc Chien's small house.

With this platform, Vovinam can provide accurate, official and reliable data on the number of Vovinam practitioners worldwide, currently estimated at over 2 million in more than 70 countries and territories. Over the past year, Mr. Chien and his colleagues have been diligently digitizing all the techniques of Vovinam's self-defense (initial) level to serve the goal of developing the movement.

His ambition is to digitize all technical movements and Vovinam exercises from elementary to advanced levels for practice and storage.

Another goal, as he said, is to "fight against the loss of martial arts secrets, which is a problem for many national martial arts schools, including Vovinam". On this digital platform, Vovinam can store all techniques to accurately pass them on to future generations. More importantly, it is to set a common standard as a basis for scoring in competitions or belt exams.

And the most interesting thing is that all Vovinam techniques have been taught to a "super martial artist", whose mission is to preserve the martial arts and Vovinam martial arts heritage for future generations. That is an artificial intelligence (AI) under the name "Virtual Martial Artist BamBoy".

Mr. Chien revealed: "I am doing the things that Grand Master Le Sang (1920-2010) directed to be done more than 20 years ago."

Preserve and spread values

To date, Vovinam is one of the few Vietnamese cultural products successfully exported to the world. The World Vovinam Federation (WVVF) is the largest international organization of Vietnamese people with 61 national member federations and three continental federations.

However, the biggest difficulty for the in-depth development of Vovinam is the lack of martial arts masters and coaches, and the high cost of going to Vietnam to study martial arts for foreign students, especially from Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

On the contrary, sending martial arts masters from Vietnam to teach martial arts abroad is also very costly and inconvenient. Therefore, the leaders of VVF and WVVF have considered Vovinam Digital as an effective and economical solution for training Vovinam students abroad.

According to Mr. Chien, in addition to being trained in martial arts, BamBoy also receives input from knowledge about Vietnamese martial arts, culture and ideology. With AI capabilities, BamBoy can convey martial arts and martial arts knowledge in many popular languages ​​of the world.

Mr. Chien humorously said: "A martial artist can get tired and only teach a few hundred students. BamBoy works continuously, does not need to eat and can teach as many students as he wants." "Is training BamBoy expensive?" I asked. Mr. Chien thought for a moment and then revealed: "Training BamBoy's intelligence is not expensive. The problem is the time to collect existing data and add new data. To teach BamBoy full Vovinam techniques, I need to photograph and digitize tens of thousands of movements. This costs a lot of money and takes several years."

In addition to BamBoy's application and a series of solutions such as automatic scoring "Vovinam Seeing" for programs such as "Online Learning - Live Practice" for college and university students, "School Titans" for elementary school students and "Vovinam Martial Arts" for teenagers, Mr. Chien also does not hide his ambition to make action movies to put on platforms such as NetFlix or Prime Video.

Mr. Chien added that in the near future, Vovinam Digital can generate revenue to support the development of Vovinam. VVF is a social organization, financially and budget-driven. Therefore, the organization of major Vovinam events and tournaments all rely on personal sponsorship.

He affirmed: "With current resources, Vovinam can completely generate its own revenue sources, not only enough for operations but also enough for reinvestment and development. This is also something that the State allows and encourages."

However, Vovinam’s digital transformation path has not been entirely smooth. The difficulty lies not in technology or finance, but in the hesitancy of some people who fear that technology will replace their role.

In reality, no one practices martial arts solely through a screen. Direct practice and real-life interaction are still the core of martial arts. Technology only plays a supporting role, not a replacement for humans. Therefore, instead of viewing technology as a threat, Mr. Chien believes that AI helps systematize, standardize, improve training efficiency and expand the reach of the discipline.

The Vovinam Digital project contains a great aspiration: To integrate Vietnamese martial arts into the global flow with intelligence, courage and creativity. With what is being done, Vovinam Digital not only contributes to raising the status of the national martial art, but is also a vivid demonstration of the harmonious combination between tradition and modernity, between cultural identity and advanced technology.

And in the journey of developing the country towards modernity and integration while still maintaining its roots, digital transformation in Vovinam can be seen as a model for the spirit of innovation imbued with Vietnamese identity, so that one day not far away, Vietnamese martial arts can appear at the Summer Olympic Games.

Source: https://bvhttdl.gov.vn/vo-viet-nam-trong-thoi-dai-so-20250822093452111.htm