Dand And Baitak

I recently read Robert W. Smith's "Martial Musings" and he mentions two excellent exercises used by Indian wrestlers as warm ups and also by certain military groups. The exercises, which he speaks very highly of, are called Dand (cat stretch) and Batak/Baitak (deep squat)- Can anyone describe how to do these?

try searching on matt furey
he hav these 2 excercises with pictures on his site.
-TkdWarrior-

I went to Matt Furey's site and clicked on the link for body weight exercises. Are hindu squats the same as batak? Also, I didn't see any photos or description of dand/cat stretch. Can anyone describe this?

Is this what you mean by "cat stretch"?

cheers

TKD warrior is correct but-Matt Furey doesnt quite do the baithak right- but it is good enough.
Folks do the dunds usually wrong when they call it a cat stretch.
There is a pull back- diving in and up into suryanamaskar- greetiing the sum- and coming back into the pull back.
Frank Gotch started calling the baithaks Hindu suqats- baithaks is more accurate.
Hindus did ancient Indian wrestling(Kusthi) and it had martial applications. With the coming of Moghuls and Muslims additional throws were introduced. So anyone can do baithaks. Much better for the knees than western squats.
Smith talks about the great Gama- one of the best wrestlers ever.
As a young boy I had the privilege of meeting Gama when he visited a Calcutta akhara (martial gym)- before the partition of India and pakistan(1947). he ended up in Pakistan.
The lack of financial sponsors and the rise of Olympic sport wrestling has adversely affected the classic "kusthi".

joy chaudhuri aka yuanfen
www.azwingchun.com

Yuanfen- how do you do the pullback? I guess I know how to do the batak now, but still am not clear on the dand/cat stretch? Anybody? Also, for the hindu squat, I was always taught that it's bad for your knee to have it go forward past the toe, which it does big time in the hindu squat- so- how can this be good?

Kung Lek- good picture! That is not the dand. That is the suryanamaskar in yoga and also in some ma=s- including kalaripayit. In the dand- both legs remain aligned along the same
line in the back.

Nothingness- try not to use too much tension in the dand or the baithak- lots of repetitions of correct motion is the key. When you dive down and forward- you come head up into the suryanamaskar head pose in kung legs picture(for the head)- your behind is down without your stomach touching the ground. Then-
you lift your behind up and back into position with a swing--- you do
not do dynamic rension with the arms in going back or go back exactly the same path you came diving in. Its a full rhythmic swing cycle- down/in, head up, pull back with your behind, head goes back to starting position--- four stages in the cycle.
On the baithak----of course if you put weightlifting type of weight on your body and your knees are way out in the front- you dont do your knees any favors. But the baithak done right- does not do that. the devil is in the details. There is a hand swing in the baithak.
let gravity do your work for you. There is the double arm swing
thats the key. You sink down and the arms swing back-- then your arms swing forward and up and that helps you rise without overstressing the knees.
Body shaping in many Indian and Chinese arts is different from
some western exercise systems. The former strengthens the ligaments first- the latter too often- the muscles first.
IMHO-FWIW and the usual bunkum abbreviations.

thank you, Yuanfen. I guess what confused me is that Robert Smith refers to Dand as being a 'cat stretch', whereas what you are describing is what I am familiar with as a 'hindu pushup'. I guess I thought a 'cat stretch' would be a single posture/asana/stretch. thanks- Now I just gotta find a good explanation/description of Salute to the Sun online. I was thinking it would be a good thing to do a few times before my weightlifting.(and after, too)

u can watch 11 dands (indian push up') and 7 baitaks(sit up's) in the below youtube link


dand baitaks will start at 34 mins in the below video by ram dev.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdye4AjmBNg

The pushups are done in Northern Mantis as well. We call them Iron Ox Plows the Field. Or just Iron Ox pushups. The only difference from the video is that we follow the patch back to the starting position instead of the circular path the video shows.

Cheers!

~edit: he does those type as "Dand 4"

Cat Pushups and Dragon Claws: Secrets of O-Mei Kungfu Featuring Sifu Tony Chen in our MAY+JUNE 2002 issue.