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Mantis Fist — Page Heading (Starting Your Mantis Journey) — PREVIEW
Mantis Fist Kung Fu, Old Skool Kung Fu school emblem

Three Bridges · Crawley · West Sussex

Starting Your
Mantis Journey In Chow Gar Southern
Praying Mantis Kung Fu

Every master was once a beginner.

You do not arrive as a fighter. You walk in untrained, and the training is what changes you. This is where that starts.

Maximum 9 Students · No Belts · No Contracts
Three Doors of the Hall

Three Doors. One Hall.

Choose a door  ·  read what stands behind it

Discipline  ·  Tradition  ·  Brotherhood

The First Chamber — 3 Hour Seminar Running Order

Old Skool Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis  ·  Crawley, West Sussex

The 3 Hour Seminar — Every New Student Starts Here

The First Chamber

Twelve pieces of real training. One break. Three hours to find out who stays — and who goes.

Why The First Chamber Exists

This is not a taster class and it is not a sales pitch. The First Chamber is the training you will actually do here — the warm ups, the footwork, the padwork, the grinding arm, the jars, the conditioning, the chi gung — put in front of you in one three hour session, on day one.

Nothing is watered down for beginners. Everything is scaled to you. You do not need to be fit, young or tough to walk in — that is what the training is for.

It is also a test. By the end of the three hours you will know whether this is for you. And so will I.

Who Stays. Who Goes.

The Running Order — Twelve Trials

Two halves and a break, in this order. The first half teaches you how Mantis moves. The second half shows you how Mantis is built.

Part One · Before The Break

The Art

How a Southern Mantis fighter stands, moves, strikes and uses it on another person.

  1. Trial 01
    How To Warm Up Correctly

    Not star jumps and a jog round the room. Joints, tendons and spine opened up the traditional way — the same warm up that starts every class in the hall.

    Builds: Mobility · Readiness · Injury prevention

  2. Trial 02
    Footwork

    Stance, rooting and stepping. You learn to stay on your feet while somebody tries to move you — and then how to move them.

    Builds: Balance · Root · Leg strength

  3. Trial 03
    Hand & Leg Combinations

    Mantis strikes and low, practical kicks chained together — hands and legs working as one body, not two.

    Builds: Coordination · Flow · Timing

  4. Trial 04
    Application

    What the combinations are actually for. Worked with a partner at close range — controlled, progressive, but real.

    Builds: Distance · Timing · Understanding

  5. Trial 05
    Padwork

    Now you hit something. Properly. Most people have not struck anything hard in twenty years — you will still feel it in your hands the next morning.

    Builds: Impact · Accuracy · Confidence

  6. Trial 06
    Stretching

    The body eased back out before the break. Old skool training is hard — it is never careless.

    Builds: Flexibility · Recovery

The Break

Halfway. Water, a seat, and your legs telling you about the footwork. This is the first real moment of the test — nobody makes you walk back in for the second half. The ones who do are about to find out what old skool actually means.

Part Two · After The Break

The Power

The traditional methods that forge the body — the training most schools stopped doing a long time ago.

  1. Trial 07
    Warm Ups

    Back up to temperature. Cold arms do not meet the power training — the body is prepared again before the real work begins.

    Builds: Readiness · Safety

  2. Trial 08
    Power TrainingGrinding Arm

    Traditional Chow Gar bridge training. Pressure driven from the feet, through the body and into the arms — the beginning of the heavy arms the system is known for.

    Builds: Structure · Connection · Forearm strength

  3. Trial 09
    Power TrainingIron Dragon Jars

    Fingertips and thumb clamped around the rim, the jar lifted and held. Grip, tendons, wrists and forearms — the Mantis claw starts here.

    Builds: Grip · Finger strength · Endurance

  4. Trial 10
    Hand Conditioning

    Controlled, progressive, traditional. An honest first taste of how the hands become trained tools — enough to know it is real, not so much you can’t use them on Monday.

    Builds: Resilience · Confidence with contact

  5. Trial 11
    Hard Chi Gung

    Breathing, tension and structure under pressure. Serious physical and mental training — no mysticism, no floating about. You will feel it long after you have left.

    Builds: Breath · Body connection · Focus

  6. Trial 12
    Stretching

    The body put back together. Then you sit down, get your breath back — and you know.

    Builds: Recovery · Flexibility

Who Stays. Who Goes.

Three hours is long enough to be honest. When it is over, one of two things is true — and both of them are good outcomes.

Outcome OneYou Stay

You are tired, your forearms are humming and you want to come back next week. Your place in the Open Class is waiting — and the kit that is put in your hands on your first night is set out further down this page.

Outcome TwoYou Go

It is not for you — and you found that out in one session instead of six months of monthly fees. No contract, no hard sell, no awkward phone calls. A handshake, and you have had three hours of real training.

And I am watching too. How you train, how you treat your partner, whether you listen. There are only nine places in a class — the First Chamber is how I fill them.

Sifu Stephen Tansley

What The First Chamber Costs

I am not going to hide the price at the bottom of a form. Here is exactly what the three hours contains, what each part of it is worth, and what you pay.

Three hours of one to one instruction with me is [[ £150 ]]. That is my private rate and it does not move.

The First Chamber is the same three hours, in the same hall, taught by the same man — with a maximum of nine people on the floor.

What you getWhat it is worth
Three hours on the floor with a Sifu of forty years Karate from 1984. Southern Mantis from 1985. Trained at the JKA headquarters in Tokyo. Instructor under Paul Whitrod Sifu since 2005.
[[ £150 ]]
Nine places. Not a class of forty. You will be corrected by name, by hand, more than once. That does not happen in a leisure centre hall.
Not sold elsewhere
A training t-shirt, supplied on the day Yours to keep, whether you join or never come back.
[[ £20 ]]
The First Chamber Guide Sixteen pages. What Chow Gar is, the running order, the twelve trials, and what happens after.
[[ £12 ]]
An honest answer about whether this is for you At the end of three hours you will know. So will I. Nobody is chased, and nobody is sold to.
Priceless, and free
Total value on the day [[ £182 ]]

Your Price

£49

Paid up front, because a place that costs nothing gets treated like nothing. Nine places only, once a month, in Three Bridges, Crawley.

And If You Are Asked To Stay

Not everyone is. If you are, and you join the Open Class, your kit is put in your hands on your first night.

  • Full training uniform [[ £45 ]]
  • Bottle of dit da jow, the real thing [[ £25 ]]
  • Your own conditioning bag [[ £30 ]]

[[ £100 ]] of kit included when you join. Not a discount. You pay full price and you walk out carrying more than you came in with.

After That

£99 A Month Twice a week. Roughly £12 a session — and the sessions are not forty-five minutes of star jumps.

What £12 Buys Elsewhere

  • A personal trainer: [[ £40 ]] an hour, and you learn nothing you can use.
  • A belt factory: [[ £60 ]] a month plus grading fees, for a grade you bought by turning up.
  • A gym membership: cheaper — and you will have stopped going by March.

Nine places on the floor  ·  Once a month  ·  [[ X ]] places left for [[ Month ]]

  • The SeminarThe First Chamber — 3 hours
  • Class sizeMaximum 9 students
  • How oftenOnce a month
  • WhereThree Bridges, Crawley
  • What to bringNothing — t-shirt supplied
  • Experience neededNone
  • AgeAdults, 18 and over

Claim Your Place

Enter The First Chamber — £49

Nine places per seminar. Leave your details below and we will be in touch to confirm your place.

No joining fee · No contract · No hard sell

Every new student attends the First Chamber before joining a class — no exceptions. If Mantis is not for you, we will both know by the end of the three hours.

Every Master Was Once A Beginner. The First Chamber Is Where It Starts.

Old Skool Training For The Modern World · Maximum 9 Students · Crawley, West Sussex

If You Are Asked To Stay

The Hundred Days

Nobody trains here by the week. When I ask a man to stay, I ask him for one hundred days — because that is the shortest honest amount of time in which this art will do anything to you at all.

You will not be asked to sign a contract. There is no joining fee, no notice period and nothing to cancel.

You are asked for something older than that. One hundred days on the floor — twice a week, roughly twenty-six sessions. Three months, start to finish, from the night you walk in.

I ask for it because I have watched forty years of men come and go, and the ones who leave in week five all leave for the same reason: they stopped before anything had changed. Three weeks of conditioning hurts and shows you nothing. Thirteen weeks of it changes your hands. I would rather you gave me a hundred days than a hundred pounds.

What A Hundred Days Actually Does

No promises about who you will be. Just the three things that are different by day one hundred, in every student I have ever taught.

Your Hands

Thirteen weeks of bag work, jars and grinding arm. Forearms that stop flinching on contact. You will notice it first when someone shakes your hand.

Your Footwork

For the first month you will think about your feet. By the third you will stop thinking about them — which is the entire point, and it cannot be rushed.

Your Breath

Hard chi gung is not mysticism and it is not quick. A hundred days in, you breathe into the work instead of holding against it. Everything else rests on this.

What Is Put Into Your Hands

The training is £99 a month, twice a week. Twenty-six sessions across the hundred days — about £12 a night. Everything in this ledger is on top of it, and none of it is sold to you.

I do not discount my training. The price of the floor is the price of the floor. What I do instead is put more into a new student's hands in his first hundred days than the hundred days costs him — because a man who is properly equipped in month one is still here in year three.
What you are givenWhat it is worth
Your full training uniform Handed to you on your first night, not posted out three weeks later. Yours, whatever happens after.
[[ £45 ]]
A bottle of dit da jow — the real thing Proper Chinese liniment for conditioned forearms, not a supermarket rub. You will need it by week two.
[[ £25 ]]
Your own conditioning bag Goes home with you. The hundred days is twenty-six nights in the hall and ninety-odd mornings in your own kitchen.
[[ £30 ]]
The Hundred Day Log One page a session. Your counts, your corrections, what you could not do that night. On day one hundred you read week one back and understand what you have done.
[[ £12 ]]
One private hour with me, in your first month Just you and me on the floor. I fix the two things that would otherwise take you a year to notice. My private rate is [[ £50 ]] an hour and it does not move.
[[ £50 ]]Paid in full only
Your hundred day home programme Written for you, not printed off for everybody: what to do on the five nights a week you are not in the hall. The counts, the progressions, and when to stop. This is the difference between twenty-six sessions and a hundred days.
[[ £40 ]]Paid in full only
The third night — open floor, once a week Hundred Days students only. Jars, bags, the wooden frame, no instruction and no timetable. The hall, and as long as you want in it.
[[ £36 ]]Paid in full only
The students' wing — every drill, filmed Inside the Mantis Cyber Clan. Every drill in the syllabus on film, so that what you practise at home on a Tuesday is the same thing I taught you on the Monday.
[[ £24 ]]Paid in full only
Your assessment on day ninety — no fee You stand in front of me and show me the hundred days. Pass and the sash is yours. It is not for sale, it is not on a timetable, and nobody here buys a grade by turning up.
[[ £35 ]]Paid in full only
Weapons, from month three Nobody touches a weapon in week one. At a hundred days you have earned the right to be shown one. That is the order of things here.
Earned, not sold
Value on top of the training [[ £297 ]]

[[ £297 ]] of kit, film and one to one instruction — on top of the twenty-six sessions. That is the same as the hundred days costs. Not a discount, and nothing taken off the price of the floor. You simply walk out of your first night carrying a great deal more than you walked in with.

The Hundred Days, Paid In Full
£248 £297  less the £49 you already paid

Your First Chamber fee comes off it. You have already paid £49 for the three hours — I credit every penny of it against the hundred days if you take your place before you leave the hall. Everything in the ledger above is included.

The Thirty Day Word

A hundred days is a long look at something you have only had three hours of. So here is my word on it, and it is not written in small print.

Train the first thirty days. Turn up, do the work, use the bag at home. If at the end of that month you decide this is not your art, tell me to my face and I will refund every month you have not yet trained. No form, no notice period, no awkward conversation.

Keep the uniform. Keep the jow, the bag and the log. You gave me a month of your evenings; you are not walking out of here empty handed.

I can offer that because the First Chamber has already done the sorting. Three hours told us both the truth — so I am not gambling, and neither are you.

Sifu Stephen Tansley  ·  Mantis Fist Kung Fu School  ·  Three Bridges, Crawley
You Sign The Roll

There is no direct debit form to fill in on your phone in the car park.

If I ask you to stay, you put your name and the date on the school roll, in the hall, in front of the men you have just trained with. That is the whole ceremony — and in forty years I have watched a signed name honoured a great deal more often than a tick box.

The roll hangs on the wall by the lineage banner. Yours will be on it as long as the school stands.

The Order Of Things
  1. You book the First Chamber — three hours, £49, nine places.
  2. You train all three hours. Nobody is sold to.
  3. At the end, I say who I am asking to stay. Not everyone is asked.
  4. If you are asked, you take the place that day, in the hall — and sign the roll.
  5. Day one hundred: you stand in front of me and show me what the hundred days made.
And On Day One Hundred And One

The hundred days is a beginning, not a package. When it is done:

  • £99 a month, rolling. No contract, no notice, no fee to leave. By then you will not be deciding by the month anyway.
  • Roughly [[ 39 ]] of the 60 hours an Inner Chamber student must have behind him are already done. The hundred days puts you over halfway to the second door.
  • Or you stop, with my hand shaken. You will have trained a hundred days of real Chow Gar, and there are men who have paid a gym for five years and got less.
The Hundred Days is offered in the hall, on the day, to those asked to stay
Nine on the floor at the First Chamber  ·  [[ X ]] places in the Open Class  ·  next First Chamber [[ Date ]]
Start With The Three Hours — £49

You cannot join this school from a website, and I would not want you to. Book the First Chamber, train the three hours, and we will both know whether the hundred days is yours to take. Adults eighteen and over.