Hung Gar

As an aside looking at the illustrations above. I just realized that the "shadows" on the ground actually indicate the distribution of weight in the stances.

I had not really looked at them before - another thing learned from conversations on map.

 

Thank you Tom.. So far I have seen the Horse stance, intimately.. Bow and arrow, the cat stance even thou I could barely sit in it after doing Horse for half the class. We moved form stance to stance at the beginning of class, stepping in front of the other foot and slightly across. So not sure if that was Crane or not. In the next class other than the regular stuff we learn i'm going to try and remember all the conditioning stuff we did and write it down. Im in pretty decent shape but by the end of the conditioning my quads were shot. It was like I was squatting for 3 1/2 hours.

 

Tom, would you be able to tell me what book you copied the pictures from?
Thank you,

 

Most of the pictures are from Lam Sai Wings books, although I got them of the internet so I cannot tell you which ones. As a beginner I would repeat the recommendation of spending less time on books and more time on stance training, unless you want something to read whilst stance training of coarse

 

Im aware of the Lam Sai Wing Book. Saw it on Amazon for roughly thirty dollars. But like I said earlier ive been cheating since I also do yoga. So off the bat I can sit in Horse for a few short minutes.

 

What do you call the stance that he's in then?
That end point could be one of 3 CLF stances.

 

Tom,

It seems you have some of the stance names mismatched (and whether or not we're talking the Wong Fei Hung lineage or the Lam Sai Wing branches). For #3, that is not Crane stance on the left, it is the Dragon or Unicorn step. #5 is not Dragon stance, but the Crane stance (also known as the Character "2" Adduction Stance).

You'll find that if you can read the hanzi, it says as much.

In order they are (again according to all major lineages I am aware of)

1 - Gi/Jee Ng Ma (the "bow and arrow" or sometimes the "side horse"). Used a lot with transitions back and forth from #2. The "Gi Ng" name refers to hands of a sun dial, so this is sometimes called the "12 and 6 O'clock stance", front toe aligned with back heel (like a sun dial).
2 - Sei Ping Ma or Sei Ping Daih Ma (variations on canonical "Horse"). Various levels of this one.
3 - Kei Loong Ma, the Unicorn/Dragon step. A very difficult stance to hold, also a transitional stance, but strengthened with both dynamic and static training.
4 - Diu Ma, the Empty Leg stance (also called "cat" or "false leg").
5 - The Yee Ji Kim Yeung Ma, or Crane (Adduction Stance).

 

They are from Lam Sai Wing's books on Fu Hok Seung Ying Kuen, the Tiger Crane Double Pattern Fist.

 

This is the Duk Gerk Ma or Single Leg Crane stance, one of the Baat Ma Bu or Eight Stances of Fu Hok. It's a variation of "Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg", or Gum Gai Duk Lop Ma, except instead of the fists locked at the waist, they are extended outward in one of the Crane techniques in the Fu Hok.

 

The Dragon or Unicorn stance/step (kei loong ma bo) is a common stance to various styles. The Hung gar version is very difficult to endure, because of the weight distribution and low posture but it is designed to strengthen that "weakness", since the ultimate goal is a strong transitional capacity.

Here is a Mantis technique (1st image) very similar to a Hung gar technique from Taming the Tiger in I Pattern (2nd image) to illustrate the similarity. Both are considered "Southern Dragon".

 

To be fair I did say "names vary" this is why I provided pictures along with the names used within the school to which I belong (neither a Wong fei hung or lams Sai wing branch) in order to avoid confusion.

I am much more interested in the similarities between lineages than the differences. To me that fact that different lineages have different names for the same stances is less interesting than the fact that different lineages use the same stances.

 

Are you able to say any more about these 3 stances or is it a secret?

 

That's just the thing brother, the different mainstream lineages don't use different names for these stances, they use a relatively unified taxomony. Your school's names seem to be outliers with regards to swapping "dragon/unicorn" and "crane". It's not uncommon to find people changing things (or simply mixing terms up, if their grasp of Cantonese terms is poor), but as far as I know the Wong Fei Hung/Lam Sai Wing terminologies are really considered the 'mainstream' are they not? And so other lineages choosing to name things differently diverts from what most people consider "canonical" sources.

What I am saying is I think it would be hard to find any mainstream Hung gar sources that describe the twisting/"scissor" leg stance as "Crane" or the adduction stance as "Dragon". All of the available materials say the opposite and for about 200 years they have had relatively formalized names (and that's documented in Wong Fei Hung's curriculum and the Lam books, which I do have and they use the same terminology).

Of course any school can change names as they see fit, but since this thread was about Yee's family Hung gar, I just wanted to clarify what the terminology should be. The Yee's class notes and illustrations are in fact largely based on the Lam Sai Wing book pictures, because until recently there were no Dang Fong family books with pictures of the stances (there are a few now). The same names are used across both these schools for almost every technique/stance/term I've come across. Anyways no desire to argue or correct you really, just wanted to "name the stances" according to the Wong/Dang and Lam family trees. As far as I am aware those trees comprise most Hung gar schools (though every one is certainly entitled to artistic and creative license with their own terms, I have seen some people completely change these terms, give them new English names easier to remember than the Cantonese, and so on).

 

No worries and no offence taken.

I've have always been constitutionally non standard.

 

If you execute it on the spot it's Nau Ma/ twist horse
If you step forward with the turned out foot it's Quai Ma/ cripple horse (so non PC)
If you retreat back with the heel up foot it's Tau Ma/ stealing horse.

 

Interesting that you distinguish between stances by how you get into them. A neat way of underlining the importance of movement.

 

They're dynamically different, and CLF is all about the waist movement.

 

In my experience people just say the Chinese name, but that's what it means. I can fully understand not using the literal translation.
Interestingly I've known non PB schools that call Lok Gwei Ma crippled horse, which I suspect stems from a historical confusion between Quai and Gwei.

 

Why stealing horse? What is being stolen? Any clips of it being used in application ?