Each week sports reporter ROBERT CARRY tries out martial arts from around the world. This week it’s China’s famous Kung Fu
China has been steeped in martial arts for more than four thousand years. The massive Asian country boasts the oldest and most varied styles in the world, but none are more famous than that which was popularised by the late great Bruce Lee: kung fu.
Kung fu itself it split into a variety of forms, but the tale of how the dramatically monikered ‘Fujian White Crane’ style came into being won me over, so I decided to pop along to a Tuesday night class at Clúid Community Hall on Upper Buckingham Street (off Amiens Street in Dublin’s north city centre).
The story goes that Fan Qiang Liang, the daughter of a famous martial arts master, was orphaned at the age of 17 when her father died fighting off unwelcome suitors who were trying to get to her. I reckon someone must have made a movie about this because Liang then vowed revenge (as you do) and joined a temple as a nun. Next – and bare with me because it’s about to get a bit weird – Liang had a recurring dream about being in a row with a white crane. Unfortunately, the pesky bird kept evading her attacks and slapping her around with its wings. After the third night of getting battered by the bird, Liang realised she could adapt her fighting style to incorporate that of the crane. She later moved to the Fujian province of China from where she taught her graceful, but oddly flamboyant fighting style. Since I’ve dreamt about birds myself on occasion, I felt this must surely be the style for me.
The old-style martial arts forms have a reputation for being impractical and for eschewing strength and fitness training in favour of learning routines that would be virtually unusable in a fight. However, concerns about a lack of focus on fitness were quickly dispelled when Dublin native Eddie Walsh started putting his prominently diverse 20-strong class through its paces. Notably, the warm-up – which consisted of laps of the hall interspersed with push-ups, sit-ups and seriously strenuous stretching exercises – was strikingly similar to the one espoused by former Irish national boxing coach Nicolas Cruz.
After warming up, the class paired off and I was matched with Karol, a burly-but-cheerful Slovakian national. Karol looked to be the second-in-command in the class and he was pretty handy at the kick drills we then practiced. These drills involved one person holding their hand out around chest high while the other swung kicks, in various combinations, under and over it. Oddly, I was one of four people along to the class for the first time, and Karol took us aside to run through the fighting stance, movement, blocking and striking. To his credit, all four of us had a grasp on each aspect within 15 minutes.
Eddie Walsh, 37, who has also practiced tae kwon do and judo, told me afterwards that the minutiae of these movements, which are easy to grasp but difficult to master, is kung fu’s key strength.
“Kung fu has evolved over such a long period of time that its masters have thought about every little detail of what can happen in a fighting situation,” he said, adding that a kung fu black belt would have little to fear from an established fighter from another discipline. “Most kung fu black belts have spent 20 or 30 years getting their grade whereas other styles give out black belts more quickly. If you compare it that way, from standard to standard, then the kung fu guy would do very well.”
Kung fu is predominantly for self-defence as some of its moves are unsuitable for competition. Walsh explained: “The problem with kung fu is that you learn to basically maim people, with the idea being to end fights quickly. It’s not viable to be doing these things in a competition environment. Adapted forms of kung fu are used in competition, but in practice they’re quite similar to kickboxing or tae kwon do.”
The class was by no means dominated by men, with females making up around 30 per cent of those in attendance. Walsh feels that the nature of kung fu is making the form attractive to women. “Kung fu is quite aesthetic,” he said, “the movements tend to be quite beautiful when done properly and I think girls often admire that. The guys just want to smack people!”
Ethnic minorities were very well represented at the class, with people from Poland, Latvia, Slovakia and Greece all adopting tiger stances and doing white crane blocks. However I think this owed more to a combination of the general appeal of martial arts and the city centre location of the class than it did to any particular ethnic minority attraction towards kung fu.
“When you come here you’re a human being trying to learn something difficult and intense, regardless of where you’re from,” said Walsh of his charges. “When it gets tough and it is hurting, you see others having difficulty too and this helps develop a bond within the class.”
Eddie Walsh, who is the only First Dan Chinese grade instructor in Ireland, believes that all sports practiced in a group are a good way of integrating minorities. “It also gives you a way of getting fit and meeting people. It’s a lot better than sitting on a bike in a gym, hoping to get a wave off someone. ”
We rounded off the class with some endurance work, which involved holding yourself in a push-up position but with your hands in a fist. We then had to spring ourselves up and land again, on our fists. That wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination and it sent me out the door with a dull ache in my knuckles and a slightly different view of one of the world’s most famous martial arts.
Kung fu itself it split into a variety of forms, but the tale of how the dramatically monikered ‘Fujian White Crane’ style came into being won me over, so I decided to pop along to a Tuesday night class at Clúid Community Hall on Upper Buckingham Street (off Amiens Street in Dublin’s north city centre).
The story goes that Fan Qiang Liang, the daughter of a famous martial arts master, was orphaned at the age of 17 when her father died fighting off unwelcome suitors who were trying to get to her. I reckon someone must have made a movie about this because Liang then vowed revenge (as you do) and joined a temple as a nun. Next – and bare with me because it’s about to get a bit weird – Liang had a recurring dream about being in a row with a white crane. Unfortunately, the pesky bird kept evading her attacks and slapping her around with its wings. After the third night of getting battered by the bird, Liang realised she could adapt her fighting style to incorporate that of the crane. She later moved to the Fujian province of China from where she taught her graceful, but oddly flamboyant fighting style. Since I’ve dreamt about birds myself on occasion, I felt this must surely be the style for me.
The old-style martial arts forms have a reputation for being impractical and for eschewing strength and fitness training in favour of learning routines that would be virtually unusable in a fight. However, concerns about a lack of focus on fitness were quickly dispelled when Dublin native Eddie Walsh started putting his prominently diverse 20-strong class through its paces. Notably, the warm-up – which consisted of laps of the hall interspersed with push-ups, sit-ups and seriously strenuous stretching exercises – was strikingly similar to the one espoused by former Irish national boxing coach Nicolas Cruz.
After warming up, the class paired off and I was matched with Karol, a burly-but-cheerful Slovakian national. Karol looked to be the second-in-command in the class and he was pretty handy at the kick drills we then practiced. These drills involved one person holding their hand out around chest high while the other swung kicks, in various combinations, under and over it. Oddly, I was one of four people along to the class for the first time, and Karol took us aside to run through the fighting stance, movement, blocking and striking. To his credit, all four of us had a grasp on each aspect within 15 minutes.
Eddie Walsh, 37, who has also practiced tae kwon do and judo, told me afterwards that the minutiae of these movements, which are easy to grasp but difficult to master, is kung fu’s key strength.
“Kung fu has evolved over such a long period of time that its masters have thought about every little detail of what can happen in a fighting situation,” he said, adding that a kung fu black belt would have little to fear from an established fighter from another discipline. “Most kung fu black belts have spent 20 or 30 years getting their grade whereas other styles give out black belts more quickly. If you compare it that way, from standard to standard, then the kung fu guy would do very well.”
Kung fu is predominantly for self-defence as some of its moves are unsuitable for competition. Walsh explained: “The problem with kung fu is that you learn to basically maim people, with the idea being to end fights quickly. It’s not viable to be doing these things in a competition environment. Adapted forms of kung fu are used in competition, but in practice they’re quite similar to kickboxing or tae kwon do.”
The class was by no means dominated by men, with females making up around 30 per cent of those in attendance. Walsh feels that the nature of kung fu is making the form attractive to women. “Kung fu is quite aesthetic,” he said, “the movements tend to be quite beautiful when done properly and I think girls often admire that. The guys just want to smack people!”
Ethnic minorities were very well represented at the class, with people from Poland, Latvia, Slovakia and Greece all adopting tiger stances and doing white crane blocks. However I think this owed more to a combination of the general appeal of martial arts and the city centre location of the class than it did to any particular ethnic minority attraction towards kung fu.
“When you come here you’re a human being trying to learn something difficult and intense, regardless of where you’re from,” said Walsh of his charges. “When it gets tough and it is hurting, you see others having difficulty too and this helps develop a bond within the class.”
Eddie Walsh, who is the only First Dan Chinese grade instructor in Ireland, believes that all sports practiced in a group are a good way of integrating minorities. “It also gives you a way of getting fit and meeting people. It’s a lot better than sitting on a bike in a gym, hoping to get a wave off someone. ”
We rounded off the class with some endurance work, which involved holding yourself in a push-up position but with your hands in a fist. We then had to spring ourselves up and land again, on our fists. That wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination and it sent me out the door with a dull ache in my knuckles and a slightly different view of one of the world’s most famous martial arts.
