Pragmatism and Martial Arts

I spent five years training in Lau Gar Kung Fu, one of the five family styles from mainland China, and one of the styles to utilise the five animals: leopard, tiger, snake, crane, and dragon. I’ve just had a year off due to a lack of facilities and decent clubs to train at, and had a lot of time to reflect on my training and where I want to take it. As far as I’m concerned, the style itself is solid, and well-rounded given its emphasis on practical application and its concentration on sparring rather than patterns and choreographed line work. But that’s not why I’m writing this, I’m more concerned with individual techniques: their usefulness and efficiency, and their versatility.

To start with it has to be established that Kung Fu’s animal work was developed by observation of the respective animals’ movements and behaviour. The leopard is based around a strong core and stance and uses swift, penetrating strikes; the tiger attacks with unrelenting force, and does not defend, it rips its opponent to shreds with ferocity; the snake is the epitome of energy efficiency, striking openings and vital points and using its agility to avoid being hit; the crane represents self-control and grace, a master of evading coupled with effective redirection and counter-attack, frustrating its opponent into defeating itself; the dragon is balance, the cultivation of mind and spirit, attacking in a multitude of ways, parrying and off-balancing, exploiting weakness.

More important than the hand formations that any Internet image can show you are the mindsets that are brought out by appropriate training – there is a specific reason why the animals are in the order that they are, and that is because each one adds on the previous. Using the leopard one does not have to use a leopard fist, one has to remember that the leopard uses strength and speed to win, when that did not work one could go on an attacking rampage like the tiger, without regard for injury. If injured, one could then add the snake and avoid being hit again, using minimal energy to avoid stressing the injuries, adding in crane to then counter-attack if and when one has enough energy, and finally moving to the dragon when the opponent is equally injured.

You might be wondering where I’m going with this, I’m getting to it. The point so far is that techniques are only the surface, the tools with which a martial artist fights. Anyone can be given a box of tools, but only the people who put the real energy in will learn how to properly use them, and that is what the five animals teach a student to do, because a martial artist who can think and react efficiently in a fight is going to be far more effective than a simple rampaging tiger, and a person with a versatile mind is going to be more effective still. The hand movements that one learns while practicing the animals are to help them get into the mindset, and are to teach them how the body can be used outside of the orthodox punches and kicks, to open their mind.

The leopard’s paw is a very useful palm-striking hand, the tiger’s claw is excellent for grabbing and controlling, the snake is effective for blocking and controlling (making a C shape with the left hand, this is sometimes known as the snake’s mouth – because it’s about as big as, and looks like a moderately sized snake’s mouth from the side), the crane can be used for locking, and the dragon’s eye can strike vital points, as can the dragon’s claw (tip of the middle finger presses against the tip of the index with a slight curve). But using them is unnecessary, as is using the mindset of a single animal.


To that end, the following are a list of the hand strikes that I consider to be the most versatile and useful in combat. A cake is made with a basic recipe, this is the metaphorical cake mix of punches as far as I’m concerned, everything else is just icing. There are five basic kinds of movement one can perform with the arm: centerline, ascending, descending, exiting, and crossing.

Centerline
Palm strike: Open hand technique targeting the chin and nose
Straight punch: Basic Wing Chun punch in which a vertical fist travels in a horizontal line from your chest to your opponent (can be chambered through twisted hips).
Horizontal punch/jab: A light and fast punch to the head mainly used to keep the opponent on the defensive in order to set up for another attack.
Twisting fist: Similar to the straight punch, but the fist twists to horizontal in the last few inches of the strike (preferably either twisted from palm facing up, and slightly past the palm down horizontal level).

Ascending
Uppercut: Moves upward at a 45 degree angle from the shoulder to full arm extension, aiming for the chin.
Rabbit punch: Short uppercut that hits under the diaphragm.
Palm strike: An upwards palm strike to the chin or nose.
Elbow strike: Upward swing to the side of the body, if the hand is at hip level, the elbow simply rises sharply.

Descending
Hammer-fist: As though you were swinging a hammer down (normally to the bridge of the nose).

Exiting
Backfist: Like whipping a towel, this punch is fast but does not have the sopping power of centerline punches.
Elbow strike: The hand shoots in front of the body and the elbow then bends and simultaneously shoots outward.

Crossing
Forearm/elbow strike: With the forearm pressed against the upper-arm, the elbow hooks.
Cross: Similar to a jab but twisted so with some extra body-weight, though given the slight disadvantage it can put one at, it should be avoided.
Hook: Slow, weighted punch that should generally be avoided. A quicker variation can be performed by shooting the hand to the side and then sharply bending the arm whilst moving the upper arm across the body.


Those are basically all the punches you should ever, ever... Ever need (and then-some). If you find that you need to use anything more than a palm strike then you need to improve your palm strike skills, because of the bone formation in the hand the palm strike the least damaging to your hands (the bones naturally line up when the palm is flat and open, and you can quite easily damage the fingers and knuckles by comparison).

The following are the list of kicks that I find most versatile and the only ones I ever really use. There are two kinds of kick: linear, and circular. There are three heights of kick: head, core, and below the knee; the former however, should be avoided in favour of punches to that area (however, when training power, one should strive to kick powerful high, as it will make the low kicks all the more powerful). As you can imagine, this list will be short. I favour linear kicks because they are quicker and physically the more powerful.

Linear
Front Kick: The knee rises to waist level as the lower leg shoots forward. Body weight can be utilised but speed is normally sacrificed for the extra stopping power – something easier gained from side kicks.
Side Kick: Arguably the more powerful in terms of muscles. The knee raises to waist height, and the leg shoots out to the side at waist level.
Knee Strike: To the groin, ‘nuff said.
Stamp: Knee raises and the foot then stamps down at a forty-five degree angle into the opponent’s ankle or knee (either the side or the front is fair game).

Circular
Turning Kick/Roundhouse Kick: Knee raises to waist level as the lower leg snaps to full extension, all done while twisting the body and leg so that the kick moves horizontally.
Sweep: Very close range attack, best done as part of a more complex move where the hands push or pull the body in the opposite way – the foot contacts the legs as one’s stance is lowered, the leg then taking at least one of the opponent’s feet off of the floor (the hands then taking them to the floor).

In general, use of kicks should be minimum and they are best used when a moment of opportunity allows. They will typically inflict more damage, but require more time to perform and if your opponent is quick they can put you at a severe disadvantage because your stance is based upon a single leg once the kick has begun. If you feel like trying a jumping knee, grabbing their shoulders and driving your cap into their solar plexus, feel free, but that’s just icing on the cake. A martial artist’s skill is based on how many encounters he survives, not how many techniques he can perform.

Mediocrity and Social Contribution

Why do martial arts?

I have a better question: why do anything? You're going to die, and it'll accomplish very little in the next 1000 years for you to really do anything with your life. Oh that's right, because individuals do impact society, either by their own exploits or as part of a communal contribution. What was I thinking...

There's very little for us to do in life but enjoy ourselves and try to make a contribution to the species, because we are finite beings. We won't get to see what happens in the twenty-third century, so we have two things we can do: we can enjoy our short lives, and we can do what we can to ensure that we make humanity better. We're like bricks in a house, whether you want to recognise it or not we leave behind a mark on humanity, and each of us is important in the whole: our individual actions affect small groups, which affect larger groups, which affect larger groups in turn, which can affect society and even civilisation.

So maybe your training is for fun. So is mine. But in addition to the training itself, I find satisfaction in pushing myself and achieving new things, new heights. This might affect other people who I train with, make them push harder, and they might go out and affect other people. Or they might not, I might affect them negatively by making them feel bad, and they might soon stop training because they feel outclassed and that there's no point, and might go on to focus on other aspects, and end up affecting those areas.

Why do I train? Because I enjoy it. I'm the kind of person who enjoys martial arts, I don't know why. I don't know why I enjoy writing as well. Maybe I'm looking to understand myself and the world around me, and have chosen these routes to try and do so. I find things like football to be trivial (perhaps because I see it as a shall, media-drenched, over-hyped sport which takes up too much of human concern where it should be spent elsewhere), other people don't (it brings them enjoyment to watch it or to play it). So which is better? Who is right?

Athletes of extraordinary skill have come out of both football and martial arts, who have, for thousands of years, pushed the known boundaries of the human capability to its very limits. There are also athletes of moderate skill (the supporting bands in music). Both football and martial arts also have the amateurs, people who aren't famous but still train in and play them anyway. Why would they bother? They enjoy it. Moving beyond amateurs' concerns, I'm sure a fair few of the professional athletes are quite humbled by the number of amateurs there are who look up to them, driving them to perform better, which in turn gives the amateurs a higher pedestal to move toward, to look up to.

For years I've always thought of football as something that humanity might be better off without. But I've come to realise that it is, quite simply, the result of human creativity, of the drive to seek pleasure and happiness, and more lately the result of such a large a population of intelligent beings. There can only be so many people who contribute to any one field before the progress of that field can go no faster. Generally, the professionals will make the largest contribution, and the amateurs will sit in their shadows, trying to be like them, living their lives for their own reasons.

Maybe we won't all be famous and acclaimed, and the success rate for that is low. But maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is that, while enjoying our training, we also enjoy the idea, the fantasy, that maybe one day we can be that good. Fantasy can be a lot more powerful than reality in such matters. So why do I train? Why do I write? Because I enjoy them, but why do I enjoy them? Because maybe there's part of me that despite my doubts, believes that I can be famous, that I can leave my mark on humanity. Maybe volvox's altruism gene wasn't the only gene that a species contained for the good of the colony.