Kung Fu Sparring and Other Fun

My schedule would not allow me to watch the new school spar kung fu style. So it’ll be another three months before I can see that again. By then I may already be trying their Mantis along with their chin na. We shall see. Right now we are adjusting finances so it may be iffy. If I can’t swing the extra money I am at least in the chin na for the foreseeable future.

I did get some play-by-plays from some of the new guys who sparred this week. Basically slap sparring with light to medium contact. It sounds like the intermediate to advanced guys also try to stick, trap, etc. I could not find many Mantis sparring videos. However, this one looks like what was described to me by some of the guys including the instructor.

It’s drastically different from taekwondo sparring for sure. Anyhow, we shall see what the future brings. I’d love to learn how to spar Mantis style! I’d also love to be allowed to try a combination of taekwondo and boxing against someone versed in Mantis. I guess it always gets back to testing myself and trying to climb the highest mountain…

In chin na we reviewed a few of the old techniques then learned a couple new ones. We did not spend enough time on the new ones for them to stick. This because we did something called the line drill. Basically two lines that meet in the middle. You either attack with a grab or defend with chin na. The idea here is to just respond with a technique. Since I knew so few techniques I kinda felt lost! In fact, I caught myself wanting to try techniques from the other arts I know. The good news is that I was able to keep it to the few chin na techniques that I barely know.

Past that the only other new thing was something called panther push-ups: You get about an inch off the ground then spring up about 3″. When you do that you use the momentum to move forward and repeat. You basically can’t touch the ground and you can’t go higher than 3 or 4 inches. We did these going forwards, backwards, and side-to-side.

Forward and back were fun. Side-to-side kinda sucked!

The thing I’ve noticed with the two main instructors is how solid their arms are. They are very hard to crank on, crank REALLY good, and by all reports are very good strikers. I guess that’s what 10+ years of Mantis will do to you. In fact, it’s kinda reversed from taekwondo. We spend an awful lot of time strengthening legs and doing all sorts of kicking drills. Well it sounds like Mantis focuses all that into the arms. I guess that makes sense when you consider what Mantis is famous for.

~BCP