Interesting intro to Hung Gar Tiger Crane

[.Q.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VQW55fdJxA

I don't know anything about the style but some moves are interesting.

[Chris Fleming]

Looks like a standard rendition of the Tiger Crane set. I've often wondered why there are so many stationary standing movements before the form *really* begins, but that's how some of the different jin is trained.

[I am...]

The way those sets are played varies quite a bit between lineages, both in choreography and ging/jin training.

[bailewen]

I've often wondered why there are so many stationary standing movements before the form *really* begins, but that's how some of the different jin is trained.

Don't think it's really so abstract as "jin" training. A little bit of it is for developing a strong bridge arm but it's not preliminary warm up or anything. The form *really* begins right after the salute and even the salute has some application material in there if you tone it down a bit. The performer in this clip is a movie star and he tends to ham it up a bit IMO.

Those stationary standing movements just work the angles. Done properly, it ends up being extremely similar to good WC actually. You have a downward po bai, then a tan sau, pak cho, downward palm-biu jee combination and then some wrist grinds. Each of these blocks or attacks is repeated later in the form in combination with different footwork but working just the arm in relation to your own centerline is very important for developing a good bridge.

[Methods]

I always like watching Hung Gar, for me its the epitome of what Kungfu looks like...

[bailewen]

For me as well but I think that it is because:

A. It's the first form of authentic Chinese kung fu I ever trained.

and

B. So many of those old school kung fu movies from the classic Shaw Brother's era were Hung Gar guys. Mainly I'm thinking of Gordon Liu but there are a fuck of a lot of movies from that era featuring Hung Gar.

Master Killer
36 Chambers of Shaolin
Tiger Crane Fist
Shaolin Temple (not the one with Jet Li, the one where 3 guys get in and mostly do non-kung fu looking stuff until the guy mixing rice porridge finds out he's been learning spear basics, the guy laying out sutras on the rocks has been learning lightness skills etc. One guy learns Hung Gar and another learns Wing Chun)
Magnificent Butcher (Sammo Hung)
Spiritual Kung Fu (Jackie Chan learns the Iron Wire)

And I would want to mention the Wong Fei Hung movies except he, ironically, does no Hung Gar in those even though Wong Fei Hung was a Hung Gar movie.

The list goes on and on.

[C.J.Wang]

Back in the days, many Kung Fu film actors, stunt doubles, coreographers, and even directors (the Lius) were Hung Gar practitioners in HK. So just about every MA film from the 70s in Hong Kong has at least some HG in it.

[Adam S]

Yes well.....lets just say it's very very hammed up

Form is pretty different than what I've learned (in the past) but overall the style is there

His breathing is pretty poor/shallow compared to how I was taught

[canard]

Shaolin Temple (not the one with Jet Li, the one where 3 guys get in and mostly do non-kung fu looking stuff until the guy mixing rice porridge finds out he's been learning spear basics, the guy laying out sutras on the rocks has been learning lightness skills etc. One guy learns Hung Gar and another learns Wing Chun)

is this the one with the epic fight scene at the end with the one guy with light body skills surrounded by guys with spears and he kind of reverses direction in mid air all the time?
damn - i loved that movie - had a copy of it on vhs that got melted soooo long ago - must get a copy of it somewhere and watch it again.....

[Chris Fleming]

"Those stationary standing movements just work the angles. Done properly, it ends up being extremely similar to good WC actually. You have a downward po bai, then a tan sau, pak cho, downward palm-biu jee combination and then some wrist grinds. Each of these blocks or attacks is repeated later in the form in combination with different footwork but working just the arm in relation to your own centerline is very important for developing a good bridge."

That is what I mean by jin training.

[bailewen]

Well I guess we never really talked about "jin" in Hung Gar other than occasionally referring to "short jin" or "inch power" and that stuff really doesn't correlate with the idea of jin that I learned later in IMA. "Wrist power" perhaps could be though of as a jin but the rest, to me anyways, is just angles and muscular strength which is a very different concept, again IMO, from "jin".

What's your experience with Hung Gar?

[C.J.Wang]

Since I have never seen or heard of masters worth their salt who would show a form the way it is "really supposed to be practice," in a movie for thousands of viewers to see pubcially, we can safely assume that just about all the forms found in Kung Fu flicks are "hammed up" for theatric effects.

As for jin training in HG, although I don't practice the style, I am experienced in other southern systems that use similiar "hard" and seemingly external approaches in developing power. And my exposure to southern systems and several high-level practitioners, including my Bagua teacher and a couple of White Crane masters, have led me to believe that hard southern systems, when practiced correctly, are just as effective, if not more so, as Taiji/Xingyi/Bagua in terms of acquiring jin and structure.