Five Animals Eight Methods.

A while back, when I was running one of my TCMA forums, the topic of Northern 5 animal styles boxing was discussed.

I recall talking about “5 Animals 8 Methods” which came out of SongShan Shaolin, thus making it “northern” in origin.

Wanted to post some scans from a book I got but that book was left in the US.

Anyway, recently I downloaded another copy and now, couple of years late, I am posting a few pages from that book.

Also, found a clip of the same form …. man, we have it good these days with the internet and all ……

Top technique is “Crane” – a little like most Cantonese Cranes.

Bottom technique is “Snake” – Love the scooping kick.

Five Animals Eight Methods Fist – Click here for the most popular videos

You are what you are.

Found this brilliant clip over on youtube

And this comment from one of the viewers:-

Superb form at beginning – was he a contemporary nan quan athlete as well? Or is it just that we usually see such low level kung fu that we’re not used to seeing excellent traditional kung fu? Either way – that is seriously good martial art!

Really, these days we are so used to seeing slipshod kung fu, to the point that when we do get to see some good deliveries; we go “wushu”.

Or in the words of a wushu coach/friend here in Kuching – “Traditional Kung Fu is simply Wushu done poorly!”.

I am not going to get into wushu is not fighting blah blah blah ….

You move sloppily, chances are you are going to fight poorly.

I don’t care how you argue it or whether your base training is wushu or TCMA.

You fight the way you move period!