A class with Sifu Maury

On Saturday the leadership class were honored to have Sifu Maury teach an additional class focused on forms and polishing the details. Sifu's way is to provide a solid background of instruction to do with the background and practical combat uses of the moves at the same time to help get an understanding of each move. It was just fantastic and brought the basic patterns to life for me. We went over the genesis series of blocks, temple sequence, 36 point block, our chi building exercise and mantis 1. Without understanding, Mantis 1 seems more like a dance with those strange mantis hands movements. In reality it is a way to teach speed and agility and the mantis hands a very clever blocking tool which is not obvious to look at. Mantis hands is a way of blocking that uses very little energy projected to the attacker. This is fundamental to the 'white eyebrow' style we are doing. Combat is fundamentally a series of energy flowing back and forth. If you defend someone with a strong energetic move as I have been trained in TaeKwon-Do then the opposing reaction is to react strongly to it. A low energy block doesn't create this reaction in the opponent and there is less likely to be any defensive reaction before you deliver your attack which you focus your energy in. The power of energy flow in combat cannot be underestimated, the samurai would win fights before they reached for their weapons.

Sifu made if very clear how important the stance work was, such as the temple sequence. The main point, besides developing power in the 'power generators' was to strengthen the knees and ankles, the weakest parts of the body. Shaolin would spend the first 3 years of their training in horse stance alone. The movement between the stances is critical as well, generating the power in the stance shift is fundamental to our art and allowed Bruce Lee at 135 pounds knock men about that were 2 times his weight.

The class was inspiring, helped to continue to fuel my passion for kung fu.

Nick
White sash