Application Sets of the Monkey, the Tiger-Crane and the Five Animals

One of the objectives of the Special Shaolin Kungfu Course of September 2005 was to enable course participants

• to apply the patterns of their specialized sets for combat
• to link their techniques into sequences to meet particular themes
• to link their combat sequences into sets

Nowadays it is quite widely known that most kungfu practitioners cannot apply their kungfu techniques for combat, even though they may have practiced kungfu forms for many years and are able to perform them beautifully in solo demonstration.

Many of them attempt to overcome this problem by trying to use kungfu techniques in free sparring. They wait for their opponent to attack, then think of what kungfu techniques amongst the many they have learnt in solo practice, to use against the attack. They fail to realize that to be competent they need to have prior training in the particular counter, and that what they do is responding haphazardly without prior training. As a result, they often spar or fight haphazardly, which is another way of saying they fight like children. For convenience, we call this sparring at the haphazard level.

The next level is sparring at the technique level. Here, a kungfu practitioner responds to a particular combat situation in a prepared manner using an appropriate kungfu technique. An effective way to achieve this is practicing “san sau” or “miscellaneous techniques”. For example, a sparring partner may attack with a strike, a kick, a throw or a grip, and the exponent responds accordingly using a pre-chosen, appropriate kungfu technique. In the West, this is often referred to as “one-step sparring”.

In real fights, combatants do not normally stop at one attack or defence; they usually execute series of attacking or defending movements. A knowledgeable and skilful exponent can often predict possible series of movements his opponents would use. Hence, he can prepare and practice series of appropriate counters beforehand.

This part of the Special Shaolin Kungfu Course specially dealt with this aspect of combat training. This is sparring at the sequence level. The next higher levels are sparring at the tactic level and sparring at the strategy level. While these sparring levels were not specially covered in this course, tactics and strategies were important considerations in choosing techniques and composing sequences.

Obviously, if your opponent fights haphazardly but you use appropriate techniques, if all other things were equal, you would be a more efficient fighter than he is. If your opponent uses individual techniques but you use combat sequences, you would be more combat efficient.

Then, why do most kungfu practitioners today fight haphazardly? Why don't they use kungfu techniques or combat sequences? The answer is actually straight-forward. Surprisingly it may be, most of them do not even realize this philosophy. Further, even when they realize it, they lack the methodology to do so.

The video clips here show both the effort as well as the result of course participants working on their combat sequences for the Shaolin Monkey Set, the Tiger-Crane Set and the Five-Animal Set. Those for the Dragon Form Set and the Dragon-Tiger Set are listed in another webpage accessible here.