Training aids...

[blackmantis]

A friend of mine showed me a really cool training technique; you stand on a brick (upright not on its side) and stand on a single leg stance on the brick. Then you can train in kicking and stepping onto other bricks etc. (much like plum blossom poles).

Does anyone else know any other awesome training methods that use household objects?

S

[BeiTangLang]

Practice your mantis hands by tossing a tennis ball in the air & catching it with just the last three fingers;practice au lau choi on a broom-handle. too may things to list, but I don't know how awesome they are.

[EarthDragon]

I used to fold a towel around my basement pole and duct tape the whole thing to look like a arm, even balled up the end to resemble a fist. This works great for mantis grabs and hooks, you can alternate hands and grab forward and reverse as well

[steve7mantis]

as we know, strong forearms is vital within mantis. a good way of training these is to get two empty jam jars, keeping the lids. fill about a third of the jars with sand and put the lids back on. then sitting in (ma bu) horse stance hold your arms out to the sides with a jar in each hand, grabbing them by the lids with the fingers in a claw type of grab, so palm is resting on the lid, with the fingers grabbing. then raise and lower the jars just using the wrists, keeping the arms out straight. do as many as you can. once this is too easy put more and more sand in, until the jars are full. then you can start adding water to the sand. this exercise trains the stance, the shoulders, the forearms and mental strength to not give up. hope you enjoy it. train hard!