Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu Training Diary / Blog

Unfortunately I couldnt make saturdays class today as I had family things to do and that had to come first. I was feeling it though as from 12-4 I train mantis, grappling, sparring, kalari and thai and miss it when I cant make it!

Instead I trained at home in my gym and I more than made up for it by training hard for just under 3 hours non-stop once all the family stuff was out the way and I wasnt need for anything.

Chow Gar Forms

I started with warm ups and stretching and went straight into some of my forms which I did twice each - concentrating on executing the technique well, gripping, using ribs, rounding the back, dropping the shoulders, keeping the elbows in and controlling my breathing. I trained:
saam bo gin
saam jin yui kui
saam bo pai kui (3 step slicing bridge)
saam bo pin kui (3 step level bridge)
yum yearn kum la sau (ying yang seizing hands)
and bic sarn (lift the moutain i think this is called).

Once I had trained these forms I disected some of the techniques from some of them and trained combinations with them whilst stepping and moving quickly using mouse steps, side steps. I than went on to train the power building gungs for the back, waist, ribs and neck - I didnt train these as hard but enough to ache as I had done a lot of it during the week.

I trained the chee sarn garp (mantis press ups) and did them a mixture of slowly with constant tension and when I was getting tired I speeded it up to finish the sets. This was tiring and made my arms burn as well as my stomach! I think it is hard to do this press up with good form after a while but it is still very important like all exercises to keep good form for safety, correct building of the muscles / tendons and because the more you do them correctly the better for you.

With the chee sarn garp in particular you have to keep the elbows tucked in at all times, they dont flare out,when you dive down all the way you body should be straight, when you come back up you have to come up the way you dived down. This means your body doesnt come up - if you imagine you are diving down underneath a bar that is slight above the level you are at once you are parrallel to the ground, when you come back up - you shouldnt touch the bar with you back at all. Then when you perform the 2nd part which is like a normal press up (but elbows are in) your body should be straight and the core is tensed.

After I finished the press ups I decided to do Chy Sau. Now this is a 2 man exercise but I have developed different ways to train chy sau on my own when I dont have a partner. My main way is to use elastic built onto a handle which provides me with a constant tension whilst I do the box shaped chy sau motion. It is still very hard to train like this given that I am dropping my shoulder, extending my arm, keeping my elbow really tucked in, compressing my ribs when I need to and locking my stance. I trained this on both my arms and went for a nice burn, trained past the burn and went until my arms felt like they couldnt do any more. It felt good.

Bag work

I than went on to do bag work with combination drills. I use a heavy thai bag and I worked 6 combination attacks whilst moving around the bag and really trying to put the power into the techniques whilst keeping good form, protecting my head, using my waist and ribs and keeping an eye on my stance / footwork. I trained each combination about 50 times and over (25 on the left and 25 on the right) - I’ve uploaded some video clips and the combinations i trained were:-

chop (chic jeurng), chop, gow choy
http://www.tonglong.co.uk/chic_chic_gow_choy.html

chop, fun sau, gow choy
http://www.tonglong.co.uk/chic_chic_side_gow_choy.html

chop, chop, side gow choy
http://www.tonglong.co.uk/chic_cover_side_gow_choy.html

chop, upward block, phoenix eye low punch (helped condition my phoenix eye hitting the bag)
http://www.tonglong.co.uk/chic_lift_chic1.html

chop low, chop, back fist

side gow choY, palm, gow choy
http://www.tonglong.co.uk/pai_sau_palm_gow_choy.html

punch, punch, gow choy (single / double).

I than trained gow choys using banging the drum motion and kau dau sau movements.

Sand Bag Conditioning

After a little drink of water I went to condition on the sand filled 3 sectional bag. I really gave this a beating today and made an effort to use my waist and ribs on each attack as well as really hit into it.

Double palm slaps (front palm slap flowing into back palm strike) - 100 times each on the left and 100 times on the right.
Palm Strikes with a slight claw grap - 100 times each on left and right hands
Back of wrist strikes - 100 times each on both left and right
Gow Choys - 100 times with each hand.
Pai Kui and phoenix eye punch both sides x 50 - this would be a slicing bridge attack (ie left arm on top) and the phoenix eye punch with the other hand underneath the pai.

Once I had finished conditioning I massaged my hands, fingers and wrists and stretched the joints. I than did the clamping palm form and some qi gung.

Southern Mantis Kicks

I did more bag work but this time I concentrated just on kicking. I trained the mantis kicks and really tried to put the power in this and it gets tiring kicking against a moving bag as you are kicking and pushing against the force and it weight! I trained a few hundred kicks today, I lost count after 200 altogether on boths side and just carried on working through all the sweat. I trained groin kicks on both sides working from leading leg groin kicks and back leg groin kicks. I than did the same for solar plexus kicks, low knee kicks, side step kicks with the outside of the foot (with a slide down imagining scraping a shin) and kicks with the inside of the foot. Again the kicks were trained from chambering with the leading leg and back leg on both left and right stances.

Ground and pound

I was wet with sweat and still had energy left to burn. I did some kalari yoga type warm ups, stretches and exercises and grabbed my other 4 foot heavy-ish punch bag. I put this on the floor mounted it and worked on my ground and pound. I made sure i tried to keep my centre of balance, grip the sides of the bag and keep an eye on how my body was. From here I did 100 normal punches to the bag imagining it was someones head, I than trained single continuous punches with the other arm to the side of the bag and holding the bag like it was someones head (again both arms).

Next I trained hooks from a low position and just pummeled into this bag. I than did 100 gow choys and really pounded down on to who ever this imaginary person was! I than worked elbows on both arms and pummelled again into the bag. Elbows are deadly, you only have to see the way the bag gets pushed in to kinda guess what it would do to someone face. I tried different elbow attacks and really felt the burn in my arms, back, lungs and legs.

To finish off I stood up and did continuous foot stomps with both feet to the head and mid section of the bag and continous low type toe punt kicks with speed and power with both feet - again imagining it was someones head or ribs.

After all that I did some chi gung postures, 18 dark internal power hands, breathing exercises and finished with some stretching…helped calm me down and think less violent things..

I was good aching, drenched with sweat, pumped and mentally happy that i more than made up for missing todays class.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 1:02 am and is filed under Chow Gar Southern Mantis Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.