Kung Types?

[Buddha's Hand]

I was recently given a book about Dim Mak... When I read it, I found such hilariously written passages as:

(About a vital point)
"It is located in the genitals of both the female and the male. It will cause life if hit."

and

"One will feel soft without vitality on the body unconscious as a wooden chicken after being hit."

but I digress... in the intro, the author lists a bunch of types of kungfus, some familiar, others, well, I think some might have been mistranslated... I retype the more obscure ones (well, obscure to me) here for your info, and if some of you know what they are, feel free to elaborate:
Jiang Yin
Hsi Tai Ho
Chao's
Hee's
Yu Fei
Chang Fei
Pa Hand
The Child Pai Kuan Yen
The Tibet
The Cinnabar Palm
One Finger Tsan
The Well Spring Fist
The Pulling Mountain
The Dividing Water
The Kung Fu of Lightness
The Shrinkage of Private Part
The Belly Kung
The Iron Bull Kung
The Paper Box
The Horse Saddle Rock
The Fairy Palm
The Iron Broom
The Waist Band
The Kuan Yen Palm
The Head Kung
Ho Pan Palm
The Lying Tiger
Hercules's Elbow [Hercules, the famous Chinese Hero???]
Jacking Up One Thousand Catties
The Stone Post
The Container's Kung
The Bamboo Leaves
The Turtle Back
The Stone Peach
Softening the Bone

There's another list of them here (not related to the book I got): http://www.kungfulibrary.com/shaolin-kung-fu-4.htm

Here are a few headscratchers (tho this site has the chinese original names in pinyin next to them, so people who know Chinese might be able to figure out what those techniques really are):
The rocket palm
The shuttle palm
The hand of eight wizards
The dislocated thigh
Twisted roots of a dry tree
Sorceress Chan E ascends the moon
The Heaven's Dog eats the Sun
The toad drills the sky
The skull blooming out like a flower
To break a wooden stove-couch
The coffin broken into pieces
To change in an instant the stool

[Arioch7]

Wow... they sure do go to a lot of trouble to fabricate the ludricous claims that they make.<p>

[Felipe Bido]

Check out the book "Kung Fu, History, Philosophy and Technique" by David Chan. You'll find explanations to most of the Kungs that you mentioned, apart from other ones (Like the Lizard Kung, or the Iron Forearm)

[Stacey]

felipe bido is trilingual and has exceedingly good posture. He obviously understands kung fu in a way that very, very few forum members do.

[No_Know]

The Cinnabar Palm--rubbing the palms over a type of sand until the day the sand moves without contacting it

One Finger Tsan--A training whereby pointing of the gfinger can strike without touching with the finger to hit

The Well Spring Fist--improves knocking strength. Knock the inside of a well (while in horse-riding stance) until on day the water is very disturbed, and much splashing is heard, caused by your knocking.

The Pulling Mountain--pulling until the post comes out from the ground. Thenwhile in Horse-riding stance pullair into you through your claw like hand that pulled up post. (an imaginative process perhaps).. When complete one supposedly can pull a bird from the sky in flight or call a horse from over? a mile away. Improves grasping strength.

The Dividing Water--a wall of bamboo tied close so that they cannot be pryed apart. Arms straight pry the bamboo wall apart forom the middle. It trains the seperating strength like seperating (chest high) water

The Kung Fu of Lightness--training to move with your body weight more comfortablly is at least one

The Shrinkage of Private Part--concious pulling up of the testicles into the abdominals filling the scrotum with air protecting the testicles from strikes

The Belly Kung--hitting the bely until it can take at least strong hits without the person being damaged (open mouth and close mouthed)

The Iron Bull Kung--training to make the belly absorbing but not penetatrable

The Paper Box--(Bamboo box) trains punching. punch a babboo box along a tablewith removable panels. removing one after the first when you can with one punch consistantly punch the box along the table,punch the box over the space and along the table consistantly. Then remove the third panel of the table (two have now been removed), punch box the length of the table. Eventually remove all but the first and last slat. The person who can punch the bamboo box from one end of the table to the other end with no slats in between would have a strong (powerful) punch

The Horse Saddle Rock--punching a rock until one day you can crack it with your punch (perhaps from horse-riding stance)

The Fairy Palm--strengthen ~ the fingertips, fingers together, palm shaped to where it eventually can penetrate stone (hard stone)

The Iron Broom--leg extended leg sweep with training against increasingly larger trees

The Waist Band--hugging a large jar bigger than a person is around as training to develop hugging strength. A trained bear-hug.

The Kuan Yen Palm
The Head Kung--training to invrease damage done by your forehead.

Ho Pan Palm-rubbing of the hands to where it could be used with fighting

The Lying Tiger--an elyptical push-up done first with toes and palms then fists then fingers (reducing to just the thumb)

Hercules's Elbow [Hercules, the famous Chinese Hero???] Probablly named for that character. Lay on your back. Push-up your wholeself on your elbows and heels

Jacking Up One Thousand Catties--arig witha a thousand cattie weight stone and standing under it and pushing it up (support ing it)

The Stone Post--Horse-riding stance withblocks of stone on your thighs eventually (first standing in sets of ten, then add weight then on posts; I think-ish)

The Bamboo Leaves--hitting a sack of bamboo leaves or chips/shavings I suppose or actual bamboo leaves with the palm, perhaps

The Turtle Back--rubbing of the sides a certain way and amount coupled with progression of striking of a big hammer (all over the back area first with rubber then wood then metal (before going on to the next material one must build up from gentle stiking to all out strking of the hammer to all parts of the back in a particular order)

The Stone Peach--pinching strength (thumb and index fingers) by using those fingers to grasp and lift a particularly shaped stone (one with perhaps a peach shaped bottom (most of the weight) and a narrow top

Softening the Bone--flexibility (three exercises of the legs~; two for the waist)

[Felipe Bido]

Stacey, thanks

A correction: The name of the authors are David Chow and Richard Spangler

[Souljah]

yea thats a good book, but it doesnt go into much detail about all the kung types, I've been searching for a more definitive explanation of the various types.....still with no success

[David Jamieson]

souljah-

you are unlikely to find highly descriptive regimens of how to develop kung for any particular area of your self.

you would find more from someone who's actually done the kungs, is doing the kungs, or is teaching the kungs or being taught the kungs.

the principles behind the kung exercises are the keys IE "hit softly 1000 times to make hard, hit intermediately 1000 times to make like stone, hit hard 1000 times to make like water". The doing of the exercises will develop the kung. The intellect plays the smallest part when it comes to developing a kung.

peace

[No_Know]

"The intellect plays the smallest part when it comes to developing a kung."


...except perhaps in understanding How to continue Doing the Kung?

Intellect...Doing--set-up then follow-through?


Perhaps

[David Jamieson]

maintenance exercises once you have developed a partcular skill are usually part and parcel to the learning of the techniques to develop the skill.

doing is the hard work part

peace

[Souljah]

kung lek, I didnt say anything about wanting to learn any types of kung soon....And when I do of course I'll find a practitioner.

I dont really reckon you can learn from a book on your own anyway (without sifu guiding you) unless the person is quite experianced and knows alittle about the techniques presented.

[TaoBoy]

Originally posted by Buddha's Hand
The Shrinkage of Private Part

One question: why?

[GeneChing]

Most of the Kungs suffer from really bad translations. Perhaps only Iron Palm sounds OK. Perhaps that's why it's the most popular. Chinese Kungfu lyrics really suffer sometimes. They are very poetic, but often translated by people who don't have a solid command of English, so they come out really funny. Just like bad Kungfu movies...

But still, many of those practices are valid. Don't judge a technique by a stupid translation.

And don't get me started on private part Kungs. You've probably already heard enough about the Iron Crotch truck pull at our Benefit Gala....

[Buddha's Hand]

BTW Gene, can you recommend a good book (written in English) that describes all 72 kungs in detail?

[GeneChing]

...72 Consumate Arts of Shaolin Temple....or something like that. My memory nowadays, tsk, tsk, way too many blows to the head by now. Anyway, we used to sell it at my former place of employ, but we pretty much sold it out and I haven't heard of them doing a reprint. It has really bad translations, but at least you got a list of 72. You might be able to find it used, but it's tough to do a book search on Chinese books. Good luck.