Martial Arts Wooden Three Poles Sticking Out for Practice on the Wall
1 of the almost iconic images in the annals of Kung Fu training is that of the lone pupil, lost in the zen-like practise of his wooden dummy routine. Dummies of various sorts and sizes take a long history in Chinese battle. Kang, in his timeline of the evolution of the Chinese martial arts, notes that legends and references to their employ in military training date back to the 12th century BCE (Spring and Autumn of the Chinese Martial Arts, 1995. pp. 22).
In their simplest form a dummy might consist of a single living tree or planted pole which a practitioner can walk effectually (practicing entry), boot and strike. If one accepts trees or simple posts as dummies then they are ubiquitous throughout the Chinese martial landscape.
However, legend also speaks of more sophisticated, or even diabolical, wooden combat machines. A common story (dating to the second one-half of the 19h century) states that the southern Shaolin temple had a hall of ingeniously designed wooden fighting machines. Rather than being totally reactive these machines could also accept the offensive. One could not graduate (and leave) the temple's preparation programme without being able to make it across the preparation hall. This image of a training hall full of automated and unsafe wooden dummies lives on in modern sociology as anyone who has seen the contempo children's film Kung Fu Panda is enlightened.
In modern times (from the middle of the nineteenth century on) the wooden dummy has been markedly more than popular in southern, and to a lesser extent coastal eastern, China. Nor will nosotros be surprised to learn that this is also where the legend of the Shaolin hall of the wooden dummy men outset emerged (earlier being popularized throughout the Chinese cultural sphere—See Hamm (2005), Paper Swordsmen, chapter ane). Most of this mail volition focus on those areas where the greatest number and variety of dummies are found.
Earlier going on it might be useful to develop a typology of dummies. For the well-nigh part training dummies break down into two categories. In that location are those that focus on stepping and balance, and those that emphasize striking (either to improve technique or workout.)
Watch Your Step: Plum Blossom Poles
Stepping dummies are more broad spread than their striking cousins. While non all styles use them, "plum blossom poles" are currently seen in all regions of China. They are often employed past Plum Blossom Boxers (Meihua quan) in Shandong, Henan and in the north. Additionally, they are too an absolute fixture in a number of styles in Fujian and Taiwan, also as commonly encountered in Guangdong and Hong Kong. The wide spread adoption of this engineering science probably says something most its relatively ancient origins and the ease with which such preparation devices can be synthetic.
Traditionally a field of plum blossom poles (I am using the approximate English translation to avoid confusion as the Chinese proper name varies between dialects, regions and styles) was comprised of a group of two meter long posts, approximately x-fourteen cm in width, that were fix firmly halfway into the ground. The number and pattern in which these are laid out tin vary quite a bit. Ofttimes in modern southern martial arts merely five poles will be used, replicating the five blossom of a plum flower, but more elaborate fields of a dozen poles or more are fairly mutual. Additionally the height of the poles is sometimes kept fifty-fifty and sometimes staggered depending on the requirements of a given schoolhouse. If the posts are fabricated high enough it is not uncommon to see students also using them equally a striking target (for both hands and feet) while they are continuing on the basis. In fact, I have often wondered if this wasn't the bodily origin of the three posted kicking dummy seen in some Wing Chun schools today.
Different sorts of "portable poles" have been constructed over the years. Esherick (Origins of the Boxer Uprising, 1985) reports that in the tardily 19thursday century Plum Blossom Boxing instructors would travel between temple festivals and marketplaces in Northern China after the wheat harvest to demonstrate their skills, meet erstwhile friends and recruit students (pp. 148-149). Small benches, pots and other mundane objects were occasionally employed in these demonstrations of martial and acrobatic prowess.
Training on the plum blossom poles is still mutual today in a variety of schools. Information technology has a number of benefits but the most obvious are ameliorate balance and greater precision in stepping and turning. Working on the poles tin also build leg and cadre strength.
The Invincible Training Partner: Hit Dummies
Hitting dummies are also seen in the northward, but probably less ofttimes than the plum flower poles. Certain Bagua schools for example volition walk circles effectually a tree that might occasionally be struck. Others accept been seen using a single planted pole for like purposes. Some of these practices even resemble the Japanese utilise of the makiwara. This elementary only effective training device was used in Okinawan Karate and may be of Chinese origin.
More rarely Bagua schools might use a pole with four arms radiating out from the top in the class of a cross. These objects are struck in a gratis flowing manner, and in that sense they are fairly different from the more than rigorous set up dummy forms that are practiced by folk styles further to the southward. The accent here appears to be on both workout and the initial arroyo of the target.
Not merely do striking dummies become more common every bit one travels further southward simply, in the modern era at least, they also seem to become markedly more complex. R. W. Smith, who studied various forms of Chinese battle in Taiwan during his tenure there every bit a CIA officer in the 1960s, noted the utilise of dummies among some of his informants and provided helpful photographs.
His first photograph is of Tung Mentum-tsan (aka, the "Gold Dragon") whom Smith get-go met on his tour of Southern Taiwan (Chiayi) in 1961. Tung was a somewhat unreliable source. He claimed a bully martial heritage, having studied at Wudang, the Shaolin Temple in Henan (where he learned Plum Blossom Boxing) and the southern Shaolin Temple in Fujian. Given that scholars are at present agreed that this terminal school never actually existed 1 must also dubiousness his other credentials.
What Smith did know through his law enforcement contacts was that Tung had a number of followers in the Blackness Dragon organized crime club. He had also been imprisoned considering of his own membership in the group. While Smith establish his Judo and boxing average at best, Tung Chin-tsan truly excelled in the realm of dummy piece of work and Smith came away quite impressed. So much and so that he commissioned a replica of Tung'south dummy to exist built at his own residence.
A few days later in Tainan, Smith was introduced to someone who actually was trained in Fujian. Wu Ku-Ts'ai studied in Yong Chun County (Wing Chun in Cantonese). Smith states that his style was simply "Shaolin." Apparently Wu was a believer in the importance of concrete conditioning. His students (all family unit members) would do strikes on the mail service pictured here. He also used fe balls (for hand forcefulness) and contact sparing to condition his students. It does non announced that Wu had a dedicated dummy form, at to the lowest degree not that he shared with Smith.
As nosotros travel further South we hitting Guangdong Province. Many of the schools hither accept adopted various sorts of dummies into their do. Farther, the actual use of the dummy is more likely to be systematized into a complex, even theoretical form, rather than a simple conditioning exercise.
Some of the first references that we have to dummies in southern People's republic of china really date dorsum to the Cantonese Opera tradition. We know for example that members of the various opera groups used wooden dummies in preparation their younger members in the martial arts. The Foshan Opera museum has a planted dummy (bottom half buried in the footing) that they claim is representative of what was frequently used. Withal, this dummy is so like in both size and shape to the sort favored by modernistic Wing Chun and Hung Gar players that information technology is difficult to tell how authentic information technology actually is. Period photographs of opera singers in grooming appear to evidence a much larger dummy and greater variability in the types of dummies used.
Throughout the late 19th and early 20thursday century Choy Li Fut was the numerically and socially ascendant martial art throughout the Pearl River delta marketplace. Like Tung they seemed to favor more "mechanical" dummies. There is likewise a lot of diverseness in the sorts of training equipment that is seen in Choy Li Fut schools and this practical to their dummies as well. Very often dummies from this style will accept one upper arm that is either weighted, or attached to a leap (a more than recent add-on) that can be manipulated by the student.
Traditionally hitting dummies in Guangdong were planted in the basis. However, unlike the plum blossom poles, which were supposed to be firm and unmoving, a dummy that is intended to be striking should have a little movement and spring. Every bit such dummies were placed in a hole and and then secured with gravel, reeds or modest shoots of bamboo so that it would take some natural springiness when struck.
Other regional styles also employed dummies. Mok Gar seems to have favored a relatively simple striking pole, similar to what we already saw in Northern China. Hung Gar and Fly Chun seemed to take a middle position. Their dummies were more complex than the simple striking pole, possessing arms (usually three) and often a leg (one or none), but they lacked the more complex mechanics and moving parts favored by other regional practitioners. Rather than being strength training and workout devices, the dummies favored past these schools were meant to correct a pupil's angles of attack and entry. They were ever more concerned with geometry, posture and proper technique than forcefulness.
The Appearance of the Mod "Fly Chun" Style Dummy.
In the 1950s, a number of martial artists fled the communists on the mainland and settled in Hong Kong. Ip Man (a prominent Wing Chun instructor) was one of these. In 1952 he wished to resume teaching the styles wooden dummy class in his school. Unfortunately he lived in a multistory flat edifice and information technology was incommunicable to install a standard planted dummy. After thinking the thing over he asked a friend, Fung Shek, who was a talented carpenter to create a system whereby a dummy could be mounted on a wall. Fung devised a organization whereby the dummy is held in identify by thin wood slats that human activity as natural springs giving the dummy more life and move when struck than was e'er accomplished with traditional "planted" dummies.
Unfortunately Fung was non able to supply the Wing Chun clan with many dummies. Later making less than a dozen dummies his son was killed in a tragic car accident. Almost respectable citizens of Hong Kong took a rather dim view of the martial arts in the 1950s. These pursuits tended to be associated with criminal and youth delinquency. Obviously Fung felt conflicted about his association with Ip Human and concluded that the decease of his son was divine retribution for creating devices that would railroad train unreliable young men to better hurt 1 another, and other members of the community. While Fung stuck with his vow and never made some other dummy, his basic design was adopted past others and is now produced on a massive scale (Ip Ching and Ron Heimberger. Mook Yan Jong Sum Fat. Springville, Utah: King Dragon Press. pp. 47-fifty). I mention this story non merely as an interesting footnote in the mod history of the wooden dummy, but also because information technology nicely illustrates the ambiguous place that the martial arts occupy in mod Chinese society. Even subsequently all of the work of the reformers in the Jingwu and Guoshu movements, the martial arts still engender a level of suspicion that students in the west have a hard fourth dimension fully comprehending.
Fung's new mounting system has succeeded because it is platonic for urban environments. It was portable and could be easily installed in apartment buildings. Students responded enthusiastically to then new grooming tool and for the chance to work with dummies in an urban environment. As a result the standard Wing Chun dummy, modeled on the 1 deputed past Ip Homo and produced by Fung, has go the most common wooden dummy seen throughout southern People's republic of china. This is the blazon of striking dummy that virtually martial artists will picture in their minds unless you lot specifically specify a different variant.
Further, the rising visibility of Fly Chun (due to the media presence of Bruce Lee and his instructor Ip Man) has led students in all sorts of styles to begin to experiment with different sorts of dummy exercises. I think we can safely say that there are vastly more than wooden dummies in apply in the Chinese martial arts now than there ever were in the 19th century. Further, they are more standardized in their size, shape and function than ever earlier.
In an era increasingly dominated by modern, scientific, equipment and training regimes information technology is interesting to watch the rediscovery, and even the spread, of wooden dummies to new areas of the traditional Chinese martial arts. No doubt this reflects the growing affluence and media exposure of mod martial artists in Red china (and the due west). Yet information technology also speaks of a demand to reconnect with the past, even if it is the imaginary by of the southern Shaolin Temple and its room of diabolical dummies. I think for a lot of Chinese practitioners in that location is an odd, near self-orientalizing, aspect in this rush to rediscover the dummy. Of course it goes without proverb that to offset students in the west, the wooden dummy is always the most exotic and intriguing piece of equipment in the training hall. Information technology appears to exist the absolute acme of Chinese martial mysticism. This is why the humble wooden dummy is elevated to such heights in martial arts entertainment, including films like "Ip Man" and "Kung Fu Panda."
These tendencies make me slightly uncomfortable. I would adopt for practitioners to recollect the past as it was, as opposed to how they hoped it would have been. Still, every bit a educatee of the martial arts myself I tin attest that a good dummy is a very useful bit of equipment with a lot to offer. Mayhap their wider adoption will ultimately stop up improving the quality of practice in a variety of styles. While not a complete history of wooden dummies (a project of that scope would require a book) I am always interested to hear more about traditional practice methods. Feel gratis to share any photos or stories that yous might take below.
washingtonhapromeen.blogspot.com
Source: https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2012/08/24/traditional-training-equipment-in-the-chinese-martial-arts-part-ii-attack-of-the-wooden-dummies/
0 Response to "Martial Arts Wooden Three Poles Sticking Out for Practice on the Wall"
Post a Comment