Mantis Kung Fu help?

Question

I used to be a practitioner of this amazing art and recently over the years have lost much memory of the forms and such... I cannot get a hold of my old Master and would appreciate if someone could show me what i could do as if i was just starting again?

Answer 1

If you can't find a school on your area, try looking for some DVDs that do manis style.  Century Martial Arts has a decent selection of DVDs and books, but I'm sure there are other sites

Answer 2

find a mantis, and give it a stick. It would fight the c**p out of you. LOL

Answer 3

Why not join a decent club? I am sure there are many good clubs teaching Mantis style, but I know that the Wah Lum system is really good! I am sure that this style will bring you plenty of great training. It is a seven star mantis style, and was passed down to quite a few people by Grand Master Chan Poi. Look it up, I am sure you will find it!

Good luck!

Answer 4

i can show you, just try and get into the proper position, you know wide stance, first fingers out blah blah, oh what is that praying mantis? is that the same thing? agh anyway look it up or something

Answer 5

if you were a true hard working practitioner you wouldn't of forgot

Answer 6

Read about it, most of the time, forms don't matter much anyways, it's the technique that matters, with that, you can take what you remember, take the applications in the book, and do research on the internet to modify and tailor Mantis to your needs and advantages. I think it would help if you mentioned whether it was northern Mantis or southern Mantis because that would allow me to elaborate more on a solution.

Answer 7

I agree, mantis style is very enjoyable and when you get right down to it done properly it is very effective. I did a series of seminars under Grandmaster Sin Kwang The that covered the entire Mantis system and thought it was just awesome.

I'll be completely honest with you I went from style to style and from art to art many times over the past 32 years I have been training in martial arts and I never worried as much about the forms once I had really gotten them down, what I always tried to hold onto out of all of them were the applications. I wouldn't sweat the forms too much there are a few from mantis that I still remember pretty clearly, but I can still tell you at least a couple of applications from most of it's movements.

If you just need a refresher, than there are several different dvd and video tape series available on the mantis system. I can't honestly say that I have ever seen any of them, but I have seen ads for them. I'd go grab a black belt magazine, or call century for a catalog( they'll send you one for nothing) or something along that line and then check out what they have available. Then I would check out the background and history of the given instructors and try 1 or 2 out. Yes, you could end up wasting some money, but then again you could find a little treasure to help you recall your training.

I don't normally recommend using videos for training, but since you already have experience with the style I don't really see where it could hurt, you should already have a pretty good understanding of the styles major concepts.

Best of luck!!