Author: Situ David Crook
WITHOUT MEANING to sound too parochial, I’ll stick my neck out slightly and say that Chinese combat methods are renowned for the wide variety of their hand techniques. Most Kung-Fu styles use a wider range of hand/arm weapons (such as claws, gouges, palms, backhands, punches, backfists, hammerfists, forearm, elbows and shoulder strikes) than their Japanese, Okinawan and Korean counterparts.
In addition to the actual number of natural body weapons used there is also a tremendous range of different applications due to the regionalised development of Kung Fu styles and the different approaches taken by “hard”, “soft” (or “rigid” and “not-so-rigid” as the Large, Hairy One would say) or internal/external styles.
In this article, I would like to give you an overview of Chinese hand/arm techniques – dealing mainly with the most common types and their broad uses, the tactical framework within which we use them and the slightly different approach to power development that we use. In future articles, I will be concentrating on individual natural weapons and going into a lot more detail on their practical applications in various situations.
Tactical framework
The importance ofhand/arm techniques to Chinese stylists can best be summed up by using the old “Infantry/Artillery” analogy. In this analogy, the legs are used as the body’s heavy artillery, while the hands are the body’s infantry. In a military encounter, it is common to use artillery to soften up the enemy and to provide a moving cover behind which the infantry can advance to seize and hold disputed territory. Without the benefit of the artillery, the infantry would take heavy casualties.
However, artillery on its own cannot seize and hold territory – a major bombardment may drive the enemy out, but they would only return, unless the infantry seized their territory. So it is with arm and leg techniques – we often use our legs to soften up the opponent and to enable us to bridge the gap until we can close in and finish the fight with hand/arm techniques. It is rare to see any kind of inter-personal conflict resolved by kicking techniques alone. However, the proper use and co-ordination of hand/arm and leg techniques is often crucial to success/ survival.
In Bac Fu Do, we espouse a combination approach which uses a highly co-ordinated approach using al111!hand/leg attacks from different angles of attack and at various target levels. We also use an approach based on Primary/Secondary/Tertiary ranges-in which apunch (primary range) will convert to a claw, grab or elbow (secondary range) which then converts to, say, a shoulder charge (tertiary range) as
necessary. Without chambering in between, since we believe that chambering breaks our continuity of attack, thus giving the opponent a gap into which we can strike, while not adding materially to power development. The concept is to keep a flow of offensive techniques moving into an opponent’s target zones from different angles and at different levels, in order to disorientate him/her completely. This concept worked fairly well for the Germans in the opening phase of World War Two, if memory serves me correctly. We believe that this approach is superior tactically to reliance upon one ortwo heavily committed techniques.
Power development
Most Chinese styles use a relaxed approach to power development. We try to keep unnecessary muscles from being involved in a technique, in order to avoid inhibiting the prime movers behind a certain technique from doing their job. Forexample, let us look at the basic straight punch. Many Chinese styles use a Sun Fist punch (see photo) starting from a relaxed guard position – rather than the full corkscrew punch starting from a chambered position used by many Japanese/Okinawan/Korean stylists. Essentially, a straight punch is a triceps-driven technique and the Chinese style of punching allows the triceps to do its job without the inhibition of significant biceps involvement in the punch. By contrast, merely drawing the fist back into a chambered position engages the biceps, which acts antagonistically to the triceps like driving a car with one foot on the accelerator (triceps) and one riding the brake (biceps). This results in a slower punch – thus less velocity and power and more opportunity for the opponent to successfully block or evade.
Most other techniques can be viewed in a similar fashion – you have muscles which are vital to the effective execution of a technique and muscles which are not, or which are even counter-productive when involved in that technique. No matter which style you do, try to avoid unnecessary muscle involvement.
The other difference in power development between many Chinese styles and their Japanese/Okinawan/Korean cousins is in’ overall body action. The J/O/K stylists tends to produce power as a result of the entire body locking momentarily into a fixed unit at time of impact. In this concept, everything climaxes (or focusses) in the same split second to produce a shock wave. Like falling off a high building, really: “It ain’t the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end”!
By contrast, many Chinese styles use more “follow-through” in theirtechniques and achieve their power by driving the entire body weight through a target zone at speed. The arm is totally relaxed until contact is made and the body is still driving deeper into the target when focus is brought to the technique using a trigger such as a “sqeeze point”, with “horsetrembling power”, as myoid instructor used to call it.
In addition, we also often use a dIscernible shoulder dropping action which is foreign to most J/O/K stylists and, in fact, cannot be done with the full corkscrew punch. You will notice that most photos of Chinese stylists punching or striking will show a rounded shoulder and slightly concave chest in contrast to the squarer more upright delivery in say a gyaku-zuki, or tseiken-zuki by a Japanese/Okinawan stylist or pandae chirugi by a Korean stylist. This shoulder drop enables the power to penetrate at a descending angle and does not result in the opponent disbalancing as much as with an angle of penetration that is horizontal. The body has more inertia to overcome before it can move with the descending line of force and, as a result, the power is more completely absorbed by the bodyrather than being partially dissipated by the body moving more freely with the punch, as with a horizontal line of force.
Natural body weapons
As I said earlier, the Chinese use quite a large array of natural body weapons, some of them fairly specialised. The main ones are:
• Fist. (Sun Fist, Dragon Head, Phoenix
Eye and Leopard Paw are typical specialised fist formations)
• Palm. (Tile Shattering, YinlYang, Willow Leaf and Hurricane Palm are some specialised forms).
• Fingers. (Flying Fingers, Immortal Pointing the Way, Twin Dragons, Tiger Claw, Eagle Claw, Dragon Claw, Rat Claw and Crab Claw are specialised formations).
• Back Fist. (These tend to be followthrough rather than the ‘snap’ versions generally seen).
• Bottom Fist. (Iron Hammer equates to the Japanese tettsui technique).
• Forearm. (This is used for smashing, sweeping blows of great power as well as for other more subtle uses).
• Elbow. (This is generally used in a very flexible manner using multiple strikes).
• Shoulder. (Used for close-in work, often to propel an opponent out into punching range).
As you can see, there is an emphasis on “spot-hitting” or tightly targetted use of a specialised hand formation in many cases. It is not enough merely to lash out in the hopes of an effective strike. In a ring situation, the “when in doubt, lash out” tactic may gain you points, but in the street it will be ineffective, unless you are lucky enough to impact on a vital point. (As I tell my students, “Put ’em down, don’t just irritate ’em”). A precise, surgical strike or kick into one of your opponent’s vital or weak targets is needed and your combinations should be structured with this in mind.
I hope this brief run-down on Chinese hand/arm techniques was useful as background to my future articles on specific techniques. In those articles, I propose to deal with individual techniques in a more in-depth manner.
