7 Star Praying Mantis

[MizuRyu]

After looking for a job for a long time, I got one at a Coca Cola factory about 200 miles from here. Great pay, good hours, but there seemed to be no martial arts around there (in the phonebook). So I did some asking around, made a lot of phone calls and did some internet searching, and found a 7 Star Praying Mantis school taught by Henry Chung in Midland, which is about 10 miles from where I'd be moving.

I plugged it into wikipedia and yahoo, but can't seem to find technical information about it. By that I mean how it operates strategically. How would a Mantis practitioner deal with a hook, jab, or front kick for instance? I'm very interested in this school, because I can't say that I know many people who know this style, and it has a certain aesthetic to it from what I saw in the youtube videos.

Any information you might have would be appreciated

[alsey]

i don't really know much about it, but i saw a demo once. it looks very cool, funky stances and stuff. from what i saw there is a lot of standing arm lock type stuff, and a bit of wing chun style intercepting punching stuff. the posture is strange, the legs sort of stick out forward with the body out of the way. it also seemed pretty linear. but this is based on one five minute demo so don't take too much notice of it.

you've probably already checked it out, but i found this page lurking in my bookmarks:

http://www.mantiskungfu.com/

[masterintraining]

well u have come to the right person here, i study mantis kungfu at my academy ( well its the tan tui mantis system but its still mantis) and there are many things we can and do against some of the moves u listed, first thing is that alot of the technques that we use consists of alot of defelect-trap-take control. we use method of defence for mostly every defence situation. u listed jab, we use that method of defence all the time for the jab. u also listed the hook. we use the same principle, but we just defele and trap in a diffeerent direction oh yeah i forgot to tell u we do ALOT OF TRAPPING MOVES, and we usaully always have are hand in the mantis claw postion or the mantis fist position. as for the front kick technique u can block down like u do in karate, or block with ur leg, or just move out the way and counter ( that is what sifu usualy uses own me.) i think it is a great sytem and i really like it. and we also do a good amount of ground work to, and alot of fast backfists it is a very made well style, and i like it alot.

[MizuRyu]

Thanks for the info. I'm the kind of person who's attracted to arts like that, being a Wing Chun junky : )

I believe I will drive up there this weekend and attend a class.

[DM2]

i never knew tan tui was or had a mantis form in it.

as far i know, tan tui is a system and form by by itself and not related to any mantis style.

[granmasterchen]

looking at the styles you have listed in your background i think you will like it very much. Your background of various styles is very similar(almost exact) to my own when i started to study mantis and tiger kung fu. I'm not sure of how many years you have studied but I had studied for about 10 years of tangsoodo/shotokan and tkds plus a few years of mixed grappling and several years of jkd. I was around my early twenties when i started mantis. SO with that back ground i found it a very very good addition to my skills at the time. Looking back i am very glad that i got introduced to it, but like always you must make sure that the instructors are good instructors.