Mantis Fist Kung Fu School

Three Bridges, Crawley

Real Old-Skool Kung Fu Built For The Real World.

Not sport
Not point fighting
Not a belt factory

Learn a traditional close-quarter fighting system built around short power, conditioning, hard chi gung and practical self-defence — taught in small adult classes of no more than nine students.

9 Maximum students
per class

Enter The Training Hall →

Beginners welcome • Max 9 students • 60 & 90 minute training • Monday–Sunday

Mantis Fist Kung Fu School poster — Sifu standing before the training hall doors in Three Bridges, Crawley — 南派螳螂拳 · Southern Praying Mantis

Why Mantis Is Different

The Difference Isn't The Style. It's What You're Made To Do.

Every school will tell you their kung fu is traditional. Ask a harder question: what does a student actually do in the hall on a Tuesday night?

Here is ours, in plain English, so you can hold it up against wherever you're training now. Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis is a close-quarter system — it is built for the range where a real confrontation happens, about an arm's length, where there is no room to dance.

Short Power
Inches, not swings

Power generated from the ground, through a connected body, over a few inches of travel. No wind-up, no telegraph. It's trained on the grinding arm, on the pads and into another human being, because power you've only ever thrown at fresh air is a guess.
Elsewhere: big showy technique, plenty of reach, all of it thrown at nothing.
Hard Chi Gung
Breath under load

Not candlelight and relaxation. Hard chi gung is breathing trained against tension and structure so the body can take a strike and keep working. It's slow, it's uncomfortable, and it's the reason old men in this system still hit like a door closing.
Elsewhere: a five-minute breathing exercise at the end of class, if at all.
Body Conditioning
Arms, hands, ribs

Heavy arm training, iron dragon claw work on the jars, hand conditioning on the bag, and dit da liniment afterwards to look after what you've just worked. Built up slowly, over years. You will be able to feel the difference in your own forearms inside a few months — which is a far more honest progress marker than a sash.
Elsewhere: nothing hardens, nothing changes, you leave the same body you arrived with.
Sensitivity & Two-Man Work
Contact reflex

Reflexes trained through contact with a partner rather than through drills in the air — reading pressure, feeling the opening, moving before you've had time to think about it. This is the part that can't be learned from video, and the part a big class can never give you enough of.
Elsewhere: partner work as a demonstration, with a compliant partner who knows what's coming.
Weapons
Traditional, and earned

The traditional weapons of the system are taught to students who've put the time in on the empty hand first. Weapons aren't there for self-defence — they're there because a weapon exposes every fault in your structure, footwork and power that you've been getting away with barehanded.
Elsewhere: a weapons form taught early because it looks impressive at a demo.
Dim Mak
Point striking

Striking at specific points and targets rather than swinging at whatever's in front of you — taught as accuracy, anatomy and timing. No mysticism, no death touch, no theatre. It's the searching hand looking for the gap, and it's taught to students with the control to train it responsibly.
Elsewhere: either never mentioned, or sold as a magic trick on a weekend course.
Nine In The Hall
Maximum, always

Nine students per class. That number isn't a marketing gimmick, it's the limit at which one teacher can put hands on every student, every session, and correct what they're actually doing. Past nine, someone is being watched from across the room — and that someone is usually you.
Elsewhere: thirty in a line, following the back of the head in front.
A Lineage You Can Check
Chow Gar Southern Mantis

Sifu Stephen Tansley trains under Master Paul Whitrod, the UK representative for Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis, and has passed both the Instructor and Sifu courses. You can look all of that up before you ever walk through the door — and you should, here and everywhere else you're considering.
Elsewhere: a certificate on the wall from an organisation that turns out to be the instructor.

And the rest of it

The ordinary week's work that everything above is built on:

Grinding arm
Heavy arms — doi jong
Iron dragon jars
Hand conditioning
Padwork
Footwork
Application drills
Forms — as the reference, not the goal
Searching insect hands
Swimming dragons
Sink and spit
Stretching
Dit da care

Training: £99 a month Twice a week, 60 and 90 minute classes, adults only.
Way in: £49 — three hours The First Chamber introduction. Compulsory for every new student, once a month.
Where: Three Bridges Crawley, West Sussex. Nine students maximum, every class.

None of this is for everybody, and it isn't meant to be. It's hard, it's slow in the places that matter, and nothing gets handed to you. But you will always know exactly where you stand — because someone will have watched you do it.

Enter The Training Hall →

Or call 07913 377775 to arrange an interview — places on the First Chamber are arranged by phone, not booked online.

Adults only • Max 9 students • 60 & 90 minute training • Monday–Sunday

螳螂

Forty Years On The Floor

Sifu Stephen Tansley — February 1984 to now

February 1984

It starts with a list on a sheet of paper

I wrote this out by hand not long ago, trying to get the order straight in my own head. Karate first. Then Southern Mantis. Then ninjutsu. Then everything after that, down to today.

A handwritten list of martial arts and the years they were started, beginning with karate in February 1984.

The list, in my own handwriting. Karate, about February 1984.

What the list says

Started karateabout Feb 1984
Southern Mantis1985
Ninjutsu1986
Karate, kickboxing, and the restto now

Forty years is a long time to keep turning up. Most people who started when I did stopped somewhere in the first five. I am not saying that to sound hard. I am saying it because turning up is the whole thing, and nobody tells you that at the start.

The JKA Honbu Dojo, Tokyo

My real training started in Japan

In the eighties there was a karate club in every hall in the country. Plenty of them were good. But I wanted to see the art where it came from, taught by the people who had it first, so I went to the headquarters dojo of the Japan Karate Association in Tokyo and trained on that floor.

Nobody there cared where I had come from or what I thought I knew. You were measured by what you could do that morning, and then you were measured again the next morning. Basics until they stopped being something you performed and became something you owned. No belts handed out for attendance. No fuss.

Large group photograph of karateka and instructors at the Japan Karate Association headquarters dojo in Tokyo.

Japan Karate Association headquarters dojo, Tokyo — the Kagami Biraki New Year opening. The caption on the print reads Shōwa 63, which is 1988.

That is where my real training started. Everything since has been measured against that floor.

Old black and white photograph of two karateka, one delivering a jumping kick to the other's high side kick.

[[ Tell me who is in this one and when it was taken — I will write the proper caption ]]

I came home with something I could not unlearn: a standard. Once you have trained somewhere that has no interest in flattering you, you can never quite take a soft class seriously again.

Then I met Master Paul Whitrod

The art that had no gaps in it

Paul Whitrod is the UK representative for Chow Gar Hakka Southern Praying Mantis. When I first put my hands on him I could not do anything. Not a single thing. He was not fast in the way a sport fighter is fast, and he was not big. He was simply already inside my arms with something behind it that I had no name for.

That is short power. Close range, no wind-up, nowhere to go. And the moment I felt it I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life on it, because I had just been shown a hole in everything I could already do.

A young Stephen Tansley in a white t-shirt and yellow sash, standing in front of the Chow Gar shrine with the grandmaster's portrait, hanging couplets and a rack of traditional weapons.

In front of the shrine, yellow sash, certificate in hand. The couplets either side read: learn benevolence, learn righteousness, learn kung fu — respect your parents, respect your teacher, follow the teaching.

Southern Mantis is not a pretty art and it was never meant to be watched. It was built by people who needed it to work in a space the size of a doorway. Hard chi gung, hand conditioning, two-man work until your arms stop being yours, iron jars, sinking, spitting. You do not get any of it from a video. You get it from a man who has it, standing close enough to correct you.

26th November 2005

Instructor level

Twenty-one years after that first karate class, and twenty years into the mantis, I was passed as an instructor by the Chow Gar Hakka Southern Praying Mantis Martial Arts Association of the United Kingdom.

Instructor level. London, 26th November 2005. Signed by Paul Whitrod Sifu.

A certificate is only ever worth the name at the bottom of it. Mine has his on it, and his lineage runs back through the Chow family to the men who built the art. That is the only reason it means anything at all, and it is the reason I will not hand one out lightly myself.

26th February 2012

Learning to mend people as well

The old schools never separated the fighting from the medicine. If you are going to condition hands and forearms for years, somebody in the room has to know how to look after the damage. So I trained in the orthopedic side too — dit da, the traditional Chinese bone-setting and trauma medicine that sits alongside the kung fu.

Framed Chows Family Praying Mantis Kung Fu certificate qualifying Steve Tansley as a tutor in Chinese kung fu and an orthopedist in the Chinese traditional method, dated 26th February 2012.

Chows Family Praying Mantis Kung Fu — qualified as tutor in kung fu and orthopedist in the Chinese traditional method.

Stephen Tansley receiving his certificate from Paul Whitrod Sifu in the training hall, beneath hanging Chinese couplets and a photograph of the grandmaster.

Receiving it from Paul Whitrod Sifu, in the hall, under the couplets.

It is also why there is a dit da bench in my training hall and a bottle of dit da jow in every student's bag. You train hard, you get marked, you put the medicine on. That is how it has always been done and it is not optional.

Now

Three Bridges, Crawley

I teach Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis in Crawley, to adults, the same way it was given to me. Small numbers. Real contact. Conditioning that takes years and cannot be rushed. No gradings for turning up, no belts to collect, no cardio dressed up as kung fu.

I am not trying to teach everybody. I am trying to find the few who will still be here in ten years.

Everyone starts the same way: three hours in the hall, in one go, so you find out what the training actually feels like before you commit a penny a month to it — and so I find out whether you are someone I want to teach. Both of us get an honest answer in an afternoon.

If any of that sounds like what you have been looking for

The First Chamber is the three-hour introduction, once a month, adults only, in Three Bridges. Places are arranged by phone — we have a conversation first, then I decide.

Call 07913 377775

— Sifu Stephen Tansley
Mantis Fist Kung Fu School, Crawley

Inside The Hall

What You Will Actually Train Every Week You Come.

No mystery, no drip-feed, no "you'll find out when you get there." This is the work. It doesn't change much from month to month, and that is the point — depth comes from doing a small number of things properly for years, not from collecting new material every term.

01

Mantis Warm Ups
Every class

Not a jog and a few star jumps. The warm up is mantis training in its own right — waist, spine, shoulders, elbows and wrists opened in the shapes you're about to use, and the stance loaded before anyone throws anything.
By the time the warm up ends, your body already knows what range it's working at.
02

Footwork
The foundation

How you get in, how you stay there, and how you hold the close range once you've taken it. Southern Mantis lives at about an arm's length, and everything above collapses if your feet can't put you there and keep you there.
Most people who can't make their kung fu work have a footwork problem, not a hand problem.
03

Pad Work
Honest feedback

Power thrown into something solid, held by a person who can feel whether it landed. Pads don't flatter you and they don't lie — the shape of a strike either transmits or it doesn't, and you find out in the same second you throw it.
Air punching tells you nothing. This is where the guessing stops.
04

Application
With a partner

What the movement is actually for, trained against a live human being who is in your way. Entries, bridges, taking the opening, dealing with the arm that comes back at you. You learn what a technique is for before you're ever asked to look pretty doing it.
If a school can't show you the application, they don't know it either.
05

Hard Chi Gung
Breath under load

Breathing trained against tension and structure, so the body can take contact and keep working. It's quiet, it's slow, and it's the least glamorous thing in the room — it's also the training that's still paying you back thirty years from now.
This is the part that separates old skool kung fu from a fitness class in a uniform.
06

One Form
Not twenty

You will train one form, and you will train it for years. Everything in the system is in it — the structure, the power, the shapes your hands make under pressure. A club that gives you a new form every grading is giving you something to collect, not something to own.
The form is the reference book. The work above is how you learn to read it.
07

Power Training
Grinding arm · jars · bags

Grinding arm, heavy arm training on the doi jong, iron dragon claw work on the jars, hand conditioning on the bag. Short power built from the ground up, and a body that gets measurably harder as the months go by.
You'll feel this one in your forearms long before anyone comments on it.
08

Stretching
How you keep training

Class finishes the way it should — the body opened back out, the conditioning work looked after, dit da where it's needed. Train hard and recover badly and you'll be finished in two years. The aim here is to still be training in twenty.
Adults in their forties and fifties train here. This is why they can.

How it fits into the time

The 60 minute class

Warm up, footwork, then two or three of the above worked properly. Nothing is rushed to tick a box — if your footwork isn't right, that's what the hour is for.

The 90 minute class

Room for the whole running order: the hands, the application, the conditioning and power work, and the chi gung that needs time and quiet to be worth doing.

Eight things. Twice a week. For as long as you want to get good. Nine students in the hall, so every one of them gets looked at — and whatever you're weakest at is exactly what you'll be corrected on.

Enter The Training Hall →

Or call 07913 377775 to arrange an interview — every new student starts with the 3-hour First Chamber.

Adults only • Max 9 students • 60 & 90 minute training • Three Bridges, Crawley

The Training Hall

Step Through The Door And It's Before Belts Were Invented.

No mirrors. No music. No screen on the wall counting your calories. A room with jars, bags, poles, a bench, a bowl of dit da and the portrait of the man the system came down from — and nine people in it who are all being watched.

This is what a kung fu school looked like when what you could do mattered more than what you'd been awarded. Everything in here has been used. None of it is decoration.

Inside the Mantis Fist training hall in Three Bridges, Crawley — iron jars, wooden dummy, heavy bags, weapons rack, lineage banner and the master's portrait

Tap a number, or a name below, to look around the hall

And what you won't find in here

A wall of belts for sale
A grading calendar with a price list
Thirty people following the back of a head
Mirrors to watch yourself in
Trophies from point-fighting tournaments
Anybody under eighteen

You don't get shown this room in a video and left to imagine it. Every new student walks into it for three hours before they join anything — so you find out how it feels with your own hands on the jars.

Enter The Training Hall →

Or call 07913 377775 to arrange an interview — places on the First Chamber are arranged by phone, not booked online.

Adults only • Max 9 students • Three Bridges, Crawley • Monday–Sunday

The First Chamber · Three Hours

Three Hours In The Hall. Then You'll Know.

Nobody joins this school off a website. Every new student does the same three hours first — the same warm ups, the same footwork, the same jars and the same breathing as the people who have been here for years. It runs once a month, it costs £49, and there are nine places.

It isn't a taster session and it isn't a sales pitch with a uniform on. It's a working class, shortened into an afternoon, so that both of us can find out something: you find out whether this is the training you've been looking for, and I find out whether you're someone I want to teach.

Part One — The Art

First half

The hands, the feet and what they're for. By the end of this half you will have thrown something at a person holding a pad and felt the difference between a movement that looks right and one that lands.

Warm up correctly How a kung fu man prepares the body — waist, spine, joints and stance. Most people have never been taught this properly, and it's yours to keep whatever you decide afterwards.
Footwork How to close the distance and hold the close range once you're in it. This is the thing that makes everything else possible — and the thing most schools skip past.
Hand & leg combinations The core Southern Mantis shapes, worked together rather than in isolation, so the whole body is moving as one piece.
Application What those shapes are actually for, against a partner who's in your way. Entries, bridges and taking the opening — the answer to "but would that work?"
Padwork Your power, into something solid, held by a person who can feel whether it arrived. Honest feedback in the same second you throw it.
Stretching Opening the body back out before the second half, done the way it's done at the end of every class here.

The break

Water, a sit down, and the chance to ask anything you like. This is usually where the real questions come out.

Part Two — The Power

Second half

The old training. This is the half that separates Chow Gar from a martial arts class, and the half most people have never seen in their lives — let alone had their own hands on.

Warm ups Back into the body after the break, this time preparing for conditioning rather than for hands.
Power — grinding arm Where short power is built. Two people, constant pressure, and a structure that either holds or doesn't. You'll feel the difference in your own frame within minutes.
Power — iron dragon jars Gripping, lifting and carrying the jars. This is the training that builds the grip a Southern Mantis bridge is famous for — and you'll know about it the next morning.
Hand conditioning How hands are hardened properly and slowly, and just as importantly how they're looked after afterwards with dit da.
Hard chi gung Breathing trained against tension and structure so the body can take contact and keep working. Quiet, uncomfortable, and the reason old men in this system still hit like a door closing.
Stretching Finishing the way every class finishes — the body opened back out and the conditioning work looked after.

What you walk out with

A warm up you can use on your own, from tomorrow, forever.
Footwork and a hand combination you've actually applied on a person — not watched on a video.
The honest experience of hard conditioning: the jars, the arms, the breathing.
A straight answer from me about where you're starting from.
A training t-shirt, supplied on the day and yours to keep.
A decision you can make properly, because you'll have done the training rather than read about it.

Come if

You want traditional kung fu trained the hard way
You're an adult who'd rather be corrected than flattered
You've trained before and always suspected something was missing
You've never trained at all and want to start somewhere honest
You want to be one of nine, not one of thirty

Don't bother if

You're looking for a sash by Christmas
You want to spar on day one and prove something
You want fitness with a bit of martial arts flavour
You're coming to see whether you can take the teacher
You won't commit three hours before asking about the price

Cost: £49For the full three hours.
When: Once a monthOne date, nine places, adults 18+.
Where: Three BridgesCrawley, West Sussex.
After: £99 a monthTwice a week, if you're offered a place and you want it.

Roughly half the people who do these three hours join the school. The other half find out it isn't for them, and go home having had an afternoon of real training for £49. Both of those are a good result. What nobody does is sign up to something they've never felt.

Enter The Training Hall →

Or call 07913 377775 and speak to Sifu Stephen directly. Places aren't booked online — every student has a short conversation first, so we both know what you're walking into.

Adults 18+ • Max 9 places • Three hours • Three Bridges, Crawley

Mantis Fist — Straight Answers

Old Skool Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis · Three Bridges, Crawley

Nine Straight Answers

The questions people ask before they pick up the phone.

No sales patter. These are the same answers you’ll get from me on the phone — so you may as well have them now.

No. Most people who walk through this door are busy adults, over 40, with jobs and families, who haven’t trained seriously in a long time. Everything is scaled to where you are on the day.

“You don’t have to arrive as a fighter. You enter the training hall to become one.”

No experience is needed and none is expected. The First Chamber is built for complete beginners — you are taught from the floor up, starting with how to stand.

“Every master was once a beginner.”

Contact and conditioning are controlled and progressive. Nothing happens that you aren’t ready for. Tell me about any injuries or health issues before we start and the training is adjusted around them.

“Old skool training is hard. It is never careless.”

Not in the First Chamber. It isn’t a grading, a competition or a spar. There is partner work and real contact, all of it controlled, and nobody is thrown in with somebody trying to take their head off.

Practical. Forms are the container, not the point. You will do padwork, partner application, grinding arm, hand conditioning, the iron dragon jars and hard chi gung — the training that builds the attributes the techniques run on.

“Don’t collect techniques. Build attributes.”

Comfortable trousers you can move in, and a bottle of water. A training t-shirt is supplied on the day. There is no kit to buy before you start.

£49 for the full three hours, and nothing else to buy on the day. If you decide to carry on, regular training is £99 a month for twice a week — no contract, no grading fees, no belt factory.

And if it isn’t for you, you shake hands and go. No hard sell and no awkward phone calls.

No. Every new student goes through the First Chamber first — it is the one rule this school doesn’t bend. Three hours tells you what the training really is, and it tells me how you train.

“It is a test in both directions.”

Places aren’t booked online. Call 07913 377775 and we’ll arrange a short interview — a friendly phone call, no script, where you ask me anything and I find out what you’re after.

The First Chamber runs once a month, nine places. When they’re gone, the next one is a month away.

Still Wondering? Ask Me Yourself.

Anything not answered here, put it to me on the phone. You will get a straight answer, not a sales script.

Call 07913 377775 Nine places · Once a month

Maximum 9 Students · Three Bridges · Crawley · West Sussex

Are You Ready To Walk Through The Door?

Old Skool Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis · Three Bridges, Crawley

Are You Ready To Walk Through The Door?

Everything you have read about is on the other side of it.

Nine places. One door. It has never opened from the outside — somebody has to push it.

The hall is lit. Your place is on the other side of this next bit…

Every Master Was Once A Beginner. You Enter To Become One.

Maximum 9 Students · Three Bridges · Crawley · West Sussex

COMPANY

BLOG

Real Old-Skool Kung Fu Built For The Real World.

Most Kung Fu Clubs Are Hobby Clubs With A Belt Shop Attached.

Be honest with yourself for ten seconds

What a hobby club sells you

What a training hall asks of you

The Difference Isn't The Style. It's What You're Made To Do.

Short Power

Hard Chi Gung

Body Conditioning

Sensitivity & Two-Man Work

Weapons

Dim Mak

Nine In The Hall

A Lineage You Can Check

And the rest of it

It starts with a list on a sheet of paper

What the list says

My real training started in Japan

The art that had no gaps in it

Instructor level

Learning to mend people as well

Three Bridges, Crawley

If any of that sounds like what you have been looking for

What You Will Actually Train Every Week You Come.

Mantis Warm Ups

Footwork

Pad Work

Application

Hard Chi Gung

One Form

Power Training

Stretching

How it fits into the time

The 60 minute class

The 90 minute class

Step Through The Door And It's Before Belts Were Invented.

And what you won't find in here

Three Hours In The Hall. Then You'll Know.

Part One — The Art

Part Two — The Power

What you walk out with

Come if

Don't bother if

Nine Straight Answers

Are You Ready To Walk Through The Door?

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