HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF
HAPPY BIRD HOPS UP BRANCH
Kungfu students in the past took many years before they could use kungfu patterns spontaneously for combat. When Grandmaster Wong first taught Shaolin Kungfu in the 1980s at Shaolin Wahnam Association in Sungai Petani, Malaysia, he helped students to shorten this training period by devising 12 combat sequences for them. You can view these original combat sequences here .
When Grandmaster Wong left the association because of policy difference and established Shaolin Wahnam Institute in the 1990s to offer intensive courses in Malaysia as well as taught overseas. To enable students attending the Intensive Shaolin Kungfu Course to be able to use Shaolin Kungfu spontaneously for combat, Grandmaster Wong improved the original 12 combat sequences to 20 combat sequences, which were more systematically devised, as follows:
- Sequences 1 to 4 -- Strikes using mainly the left mode
- Sequences 5 to 8 -- Strikes using mainly the right mode
- Sequences 9 to 12 -- Kicks
- Sequences 13 to 16 -- Felling techniques
- Sequences 17 to 20 -- Chin-na.
However at a time when learning from videos beforehand over the internet was unknown, early students of the Intensive Shaolin Kungfu Course managed to learn only up to Sequence 12, and with improvement in the teaching methodology later students managed to learn up to Sequence 16. As chin-na techniques are also found in Sequences 13 to 16, Grandmaster Wong decided to use Sequences 1 to 16 as the basic material to teach Shaolin combat application, leaving Sequences 17 to 20 for selective courses. To help students remember these sequences better, these combat sequences were linked together to form kungfu sets.
"Happy Bird Hops up Brancht" is formed from Sequences 9 to 12, using one of the kicking techniques to name the set. It covers four main types of kicks, namely side kick, thrust kick, organ-seeking kick and sweeping kick.
Happy Bird Hops up Branch in Pictures
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