Among practicing Hung Gar starting from Gung Gee Fuk Fu, we could easily found that the style is all about, Square.
Starting from the footwork, the Hung Gar practices steps in the form of square. The stance, Sei Ping Ma (Four Horizontal stance) is simulating a cubic wooden block that you can safely step on. In Hung Gar Lion Dance, performers frequently steps on other performer’s Sei Ping Ma. The arm movement are even more obvious for the Five Form as each of them represent two sides of a square or rectangle, either adjacent to each other or opposite to each other. Because of all these cubic movement, performer of Hung Gar is moving around his opponent in short distance during combat. Therefore, he may not have many chances to do straight punch as straight punch require enough distance to accelerate to become powerful. This is the reason why Hung Gar employed the techniques of Tiger Claw and Crane Kiss.
Tiger Claw is employed because Tiger Claw starts from zero distance. Imagine my fingers are on your face and then scratch out, or my palm catching your jaw and moving outward to put your jaw off joint. Crane Kiss is also essential in such close quarter battling although it requires a short distance to accelerate (F=ma, remember﹖)The distance Crane Kiss required is shorter than a straight punch as Crane Kiss concentrated the hitting area into the tips of five fingers thus the impact would be stronger than a punch in such distance.
Such Tiger Claw, Crane Kiss and Square arm techniques require very strong Biceps and Triceps to operate and thats why all performers of Hung Gar have strong Biceps, Triceps and chest. In the JONG of Hung Gar, the lower arm, from elbow to wrist are the most important weapon. Practitioners of Hung Gar shall put many effort in colliding his lower arm with other practitioners in either outer side, inner side and upper side to allow his bone tissue to grow tighter and tighter. Herbal liquid (Jut yeuk jau) are also used to accelerate the growth of the bone tissue.
With such weapon, Hung Gar stance is different to Muay Thai and JKD that most duty of blocking and defending are performed by arms. Fighting stance shall also be lowered into Sze Ping Ma (Four Horizontal Stance) in which the entire lower body is simulating a cubic wooden block. In this stance, the performer is standing strong (like a cubic wooden block in rest) while his arm is able to defend his knee which is in contrast to Muay Thai. Performers lowering of his body mass into a Sze Ping Ma reduced the area that his lower arms shall defend which makes defending easier. Both Hung Gar lower arms are like two iron sticks that all parts of these two sticks(two straight lines) could attack, unlike boxing that only two red dots attack (If your opponent is in a pair of red gloves). This is a very critical advantage that Hung Gar performer could take against boxer.
