the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Translating the video title using Google says the style is Secret Door Praying Mantis

This particular style (a.k.a. closed door praying mantis) was brought over to southern Taiwan by Master Zhang Dekui from Shandong. As the name suggest, it's a secretive style taught behind closed doors with techniques specifically designed to counter those found in other mantis systems. Very interesting and quite different from your typical mantis in terms of frame and power generation.

C.J.W. wrote:This particular style (a.k.a. closed door praying mantis) was brought over to southern Taiwan by Master Zhang Dekui from Shandong. As the name suggest, it's a secretive style taught behind closed doors with techniques specifically designed to counter those found in other mantis systems. Very interesting and quite different from your typical mantis in terms of frame and power generation.

Thanks for the info. Very interesting. I have changed the title of the thread to match the style name.

This was shot during a mantis boxing conference back in 2013. The master who demonstrates applications on his student from 4:40 to 7:00, Shi Zhengzhong, is a secret-door mantis practitioner. There are some interesting close-range trapping/locking/throwing moves that you don't typically see in other styles of northern mantis, such as the techniques shown at 6:04 and 6:37.

nice kind of reminds me of 8-steps

met James a while back. He was quite quick
which may not come across to well in the demo clip.
http://8step.com/mantis/grandmaster.shtml


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yau24iA_mZk

Looks fun. Counter strategies are fun to practice as it makes you think more about what you do and why. Quite a few southern styles have "secret" counter-the own-style-forms and methods. Wing Chun has one form that use a lot of horizontal slicing kind of movements that was supposedly to be kept by the instructors to have an advantage over the students. Don't remember the name of it though.

Bao wrote:Looks fun. Counter strategies are fun to practice as it makes you think more about what you do and why. Quite a few southern styles have "secret" counter-the own-style-forms and methods. Wing Chun has one form that use a lot of horizontal slicing kind of movements that was supposedly to be kept by the instructors to have an advantage over the students. Don't remember the name of it though.

Biu jee. I heard different stories/theories around it. The one I think is the most plausible is that BJ was designed to teach one how to 'break the rules' (of wc) when necessary. SNT and Chum kiu are essentially instilling those rules, so it made sense to me - multiple elbows and 'horizontal slicing' movements as you put it, help the practitioner thrown out of the prescribed structure, to regain the centreline/correct structure.

C.J.W. wrote:This was shot during a mantis boxing conference back in 2013. The master who demonstrates applications on his student from 4:40 to 7:00, Shi Zhengzhong, is a secret-door mantis practitioner. There are some interesting close-range trapping/locking/throwing moves that you don't typically see in other styles of northern mantis, such as the techniques shown at 6:04 and 6:37.

Really enjoyed this. Thanks.

S

Its an offshoot of Meihua Mantis I believe.

But to say it was designed to beat other mantis styles sounds pretty dodgy to me.... its like it perpetuates the idea that styles are like jigsaw puzzles, where each move is fixed and has a fixed counter to it.

It is indeed an offshoot of Meihua/Qixing, and was brought over to southern Taiwan by Master Zhang Dekuai of Laiyang, Shandong.

According to Su Yuzhang (a Mantis expert of Wutan fame), in his youth, he once showed the forms he'd learned from Master Zhang to GM Li Kunshan, the most senior Mantis master who'd immigrated to Taiwan, and Eight-Step Mantis GM Wei Xiaotang. And he was told by both that they came from closed door mantis, a secretive system taught to a selected few within the Meihua/Qixing family mainly for the purpose of defeating other Mantis practitioners. The idea was that if someone in the Mantis family stepped out of line, punishment would be dished out by those armed with the knowledge of closed door mantis.

As dodgy as this may sound, CDM actually contains very specific strategies (written into poems) and techniques about how to deal with those found in typical Meihua/Qixing systems.

Not trying to prove or argue it is superior or anything -- just presenting the facts based on what I know.

I have heard the story before.

Interestingly enough, in the village Wei Xiao Tang comes from in Shandong, the people there practice a system called Closed Door Mantis. They say Wei renamed it Eight Step after going to Taiwan.