Re: Praying Mantis -- Martial Arts Discussion Board

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Date Posted: 14:35:43 01/31/03 Fri
Author: Goktimus Prime
Subject: Re: Praying Mantis
In reply to: OneDragons 's message, "Praying Mantis" on 13:50:36 01/31/03 Fri

>How much does the teaching of a particular style vary
>from one place to the other in relation to what is
>taught and how it is taught e.g. sticky hands???
>
>i.e. 7 Star Northern Praying Mantis e.g. different
>countries.

It can vary quite greatly. For example, Seven Star Mantis forms taught in Hong Kong are different from the traditional forms, with a lot of moves being more abbreviated and each line is punctuated. This was done because since Hong Kong is such a crowded place, many school halls simply lacked the room for the practice of long lines, hence the forms were broken down and modified to accomodate the limited space that people had to practice the styles in.

In terms of individual teachers, the style can vary depending on the teacher's knowledge of the actual style itself. Some teachers don't know the entire style and will haphazardly fill in the missing pieces with other fighting forms. For example, Cailifa (Choy Lee Fut) schools in Malaysia are mixed with Muay Thai -- although these styles are formidable forms on their own, it is not the best of combinations (after all, chicken and ice cream taste good on their own, but not in combination).

Some styles need to be filled in due to the loss of knowledge from the Cultural Revolution. For example, only 40% of Seven Star Praying Mantis being taught today is actually fully authentic. The rest was lost during the Cultural Revolution when many martial artists were executed and books were burnt. However, depending on how you repiece the style, you can recreate something that is very close to what the original style was like -- it's a lot like archaeology or paleontology. For example, many good teachers of Praying Mantis have studied other closely related styles such as Baguazhang (Eight Trigram Palm) and Changquan (Long Fist) and pieced together the missing moves from Mantis from these styles, which makes sense since Praying Mantis was originally developed from styles like these in the first place.

So the mixing of styles can be a good or bad thing, depending on which styles you mix, and of course, other external factors such as the training environment (as in the case of Hong Kong Kung Fu schools).

The teaching ethos of some schools can vary too. For example, Mantis schools in Japan teach the moves correctly and often their form work is very good, however they have virtually no concept of combat application of the moves because their drills are not geared for it. This is a very common syndrome amongst a lot of martial arts schools in Japan - one reason being the relatively low crime rate (2nd lowest in the world); most people don't fear being attacked and thus don't feel a real need to learn how to fight. Consequently, a lot of Japanese Mantis practitioners (and Japanese martial artists in general) don't actually know how to use their forms in a fight because it's something they don't think about in training. They have the moves, but they just don't know how to use them.

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Replies:

Re: Praying Mantis -- OneDragons, 11:46:21 02/01/03 Sat
- Re: Praying Mantis -- Goktimus Prime, 03:34:49 02/03/03 Mon