How many practictioners here blend the movements of their animals together? Do you feel as if this strengthens or weakens your movement? By "blending" I mean something such as "Tiger Crane", where you have Crane lower body and Tiger upper body. I think it would be cool to see Panther/Leopard footwork with Tiger upper body. If that exists, please throw me a video clip.
Well, I think that each animal is more or less designed to incorporate both halves of the body already. I think that a master of the styles would be able to recombine them in various ways without losing anything. For example, the guy who invented mantis style (wang lang or something like that) added the footwork from monkey style.
I am a traditional Snake practitioner, as well as Tiger, I often blend their movements/techniques together as I find their strenghts supplement the other's weakness.
When I first read the title, I had images of frogs in food prcessors ... I think the whole point of the original 5 animals was to understand each animal on its own, then eventually to learn to 'blend' them to improve your kung fu.
So, for clarification: Has it been said that a part of Mantis comes from Monkey? Does Mantis find it's origins in Monkey?
Seven Star Mantis borrows it's footwork from Monkey. Otherwise I'm pretty sure there isn't any other origins.
I already know your opinion >_< Kage. I wanted to hear from someone else. Haha. Just incase they had other information neither of us were privvy to.
A lot of Northern Mantis comes from Monkey, actually, not just the footwork. A lot of the sparring methods, attitudes, strategies, and even attack methods are monkey. Really, Mantis is closer to a monkey with Mantis arms than anything else. Mantis (there was originally only one style) was a hybrid style to begin with. The legendary creator, Wang Lang, supposedly hit upon the idea of creating a new martial art based on the mantis insect's rapid prey-capturing motions. He supposedly invited 17 other masters of famous styles at the time and they all combined them into one "super-style" designed to have the best of everything. For example, Mandarin Duck style (probably related to modern Chuo-jiao) was considered to have the best kicking at the time, so its kicking techniques were adapted. One of the masters was a master of Monkey style, and his footwork and many other aspects were incorporated. Taizu Longfist was considered the base, another guy offered the best close-range attacks, etc. etc. The Monkey style that is part of Mantis either no longer exists as a stand-alone style or is very rare... don't go looking to Paulie Zink et. al. to understand Mantis Monkey. All Northern Mantis styles are influenced by Monkey. The Liuhe and Meihua forms may not explicitly use the Monkey footwork, but there's no reason you can't in actual usage. Liuhe, for example, uses a type of footwork called the "flowing water step," which is useful for throwing applications... Is there any reason I can't mix that in with the usual Monkey stepping? Of course not--because Mantis was originally designed to be one style. The distinctions between 7*, 6 Harmony, etc. are really more a matter of lineage and emphasis than anything else. The original Mantis art is so huge that people had to specialize in certain parts of it. That doesn't mean, however, that Zhang Xiangsan, a famous 6 Harmony master, wouldn't use any Monkey footwork just because his lineage was 6 Harmony. It also doesn't mean that my GM didn't know 6 Harmony footwork and forms, just because his lineage was 7*. These may be the case with some modern practitioners, but it didn't used to be. There are many obscure substyles of Mantis, like "Mandarin Duck Mantis." But this isn't really a whole new style, it's just a lineage of practitioners that chose to put special emphasis on the Mandarin Duck kicks of Mantis. Otherwise, it's still just Mantis. Mantis is Mantis, it's just too big. The exception is 8 Step Mantis, which is new and apparently combines the footwork of Xingyi and Bagua with Mantis. All the other "styles" of Northern Mantis should be thought of more as "areas of concentration." Of course, there's also Southern Mantis, but that's either completely unrelated or else diverged too long ago to be linked with much certainty.
Yang style taiji contains snake, crane and tiger, in the 'standard' form all 3 are present all the time - for example snake would be expressed in the relationship of the hips to the floor, crane in the movements of the torso and arms and tiger in the stability, neck, head and arms. The form can be done in the 'style' of any of the animals - but the others will still be present albeit in a more minor way.
The craziest-sounding "animal-blending" I've heard of is Sunbin-quan. Look at this description I got from kongfu.org: "Sun Bin Quan is unique in its combinations of ideas culminated into one system. For example, within the system the legs are from a chicken style, the waist is dragon, the style of motion from posture to posture is monkey, the eyes are eagle, the arms are ape, and the fist is elephant nose."
