NaamKyun.com Discussion Forum

Where is the crane in tiger and crane ? from what I can see the tiger and crane only has a few crane hand movements, in fact only two, pivot and peck from the side, and hook and peck forwards. That’s not much to justify naming the form tiger and crane so I guess I must be missing something. Do other movements count as crane even though the hand is not pecking ? If so, what are they ? what makes them crane like ? and what are the underlying principles of the crane.

e.g. tiger is about raw powerful strikes and gripping fingers that attack muscle and nerves. So what is crane about ?

well, the short answer is that the Crane appears in quite a few techniques-the phoenix eye punch while "blocking" is called the Crane's Comb, The spreading hands and snap kick is Flight of the Single legged Crane, the huge sweeping strikes are from White Crane (although they can be interpeted as the arms of the ape) The entire opening section of short bridging techniques is Crane as well as the section that steps off to the 10 and 2 oclock points. There are more, but you are also forgetting the other aspect of Tiger and Crane, which is the illustratiing and combining of yum/yeung-hard and soft, Aggressive and evasive, Angry and calm, etc.
Um, unless youare looking at a completely different Tiger and Crane set.

Thank you for the info TT.

Bob, I'm not really authoritative or anything, but try to think about the nature of the animals themselves.

A tiger is large, heavy, has no natural enemies, and so moves that way. A crane is far more fragile, it has to evade attacks (rather then a tiger who could press down an attacking arm for example). Also a tiger would use his weight. A crane's weight is like nada. Ever seen nature documentaries? Crane's kick differently, and use their wings in their own way as well. It is more 'whipping' so to say. Try extrapolate those to the movements (and mindset) in the set.

I'm not trying to advocate you trying to 'become' an animal or anything like that (that's just people not understanding Hung Kuen (or other animal styles) ridiculing it), just look at the way power is generated in those animals.

Hope this helps, and I'm sure someone will step in if I have a mistake in the above