"break flank" move compared with "tiger catch

[brianlkennedy]

Happy Holidays,
Sorry I have not been so active on this board; a mixture of family and job duties, alongside my own martial arts training have been keeping me busy.

I am in the process of setting up my teaching program and as part of that I am putting a focus on the Tiger and Crane form. One of the things I am going to do is to pull out the 10 Unique/Deadly Hand Techniques and teach them separately.

Sifu Macek’s article was most helpful in listing them with the illustration numbers from the old Tiger Crane training manual. While putting together a little mini-manual for myself and my students I ran into some questions.

The first one being: what is the difference between Breaking the Flank Hand Technique” (Po Paai Sau Faat) – number 26, 27 and “Hungry Tiger Catches the Lamb” (Ngo Fu Kam Yeung) – number 61

Is the first one different in that it is a two step move; i.e. clear/grab with one hand (while pulling the opponent’s arm across his torso to get him crossed up and off balance) and then (move two) tiger claw to jaw while yanking on his arm to pull him into it.

While Tiger catches lamb is a simultaneous double claw? Or do I have that all scrambled?

Take care,
Brian

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hello Brian,

how are you? long time no see!

before i answer, 2 notes on so called "10 killing hands":

- the list in my article is based on a book by Leung Daat; when i was in Gwongjau this year, i have met 3 different Hung Kyun sifus (Jau sifu, Wong sifu, Ho sifu) - they have told me that Leung Daat is a (poor) Baakmei practitioner, writter, and has nothing to do with Hung Kyun. too bad, as many westerners take the info from his books as the real deal. i liked some parts of his books, but i alway took the info in the cum grano salis...

- throughout the years, i have met different lists of sap jyut sau/sap duk sau, so i would suggest not to depend on the list in my article - it is just one of the few publicly available and known. personaly, i do not like Leung Daat's list that much. when i have asked my sigung, Grandmaster Lam Jou, he said: any technique that works for u could be one of your sap jyut sau. Lam Saiwing dod not inherit any list of 10 from Wong Feihung.

as for the 10, check out this discusion here:

http://www.hungkyun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=64

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now to the topic, just couple of ideas:

both techniques actually belong to the same group of techniques (these two plus butterfly palms, bring the horse to the stable, bik jaang, paau jaang...).

po paau sau is sometimes called jaak min fu, ie. "side-ways tiger", so i prefer to look at the similarities than differences.

both techniques could be used in the way you have described, although we would of course prefer lin siu daai da, ie. simultaneous defense and counter.

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ok, A = ngo fu kam yeung, B = po paai sau faat

- A is more about stepping in and leaning into it, B is more about turning (or zig-zag stepping as in our sparring sets)

- both are bik kiu, ie. pressing bridge, B can use also bik kiu and fan kiu and bik kiu again (again, like in our sparring sets). A could be also followed by fan kiu as in clasical double tiger/single tiger combo

- both can just clear (pa, "rake") and strike, or grab and strike, however A is more about grabbing (catching the lamb)

- does not matter if the opponet attacks your upper/lower or inside/outside gate, both techniques work perfectly

- A could be used as a palm strike, but real thing should be the claw. B could be used as palm strike to the jaw or you can go for the throat

- i like the elbow position in B more, actually B works for me much better, but it is just my personal preference

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both a and B are imho one of teh key techniques in our systems, so i look forward to read input from other guys here on the forum

all the best

[markt]

[brianlkennedy]

Hi Pavel,
Yes, I will try and participate more here because you do have a great group of people. Thanks so much for the information; both about the general idea of the 10 Deadly Hands and about the comparisons between those two moves.

When I was in the Buck Sam Kong lineage I never heard much talk about the 10 Deadly Hands and truth be told I found the list (or as you pointed out "lists"--as in many different lists) to be kind of "odd". When I was thinking about it the other night, I thought "well maybe it is supposed to be 10 moves that are kind of 'signature' moves of hung gar". But then I thought, "not really"!

So thanks much for filling me in on how there are multiple lists and that many teachers do not really pay much attention to the idea. It is however interesting to compare and contrast the different moves.

Hung Gar really is a great system. I really like it.

take care,
Brian

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