What Is Old School Kung Fu?

What Is Old School Kung Fu?

Old skool kung fu is traditional training that has not been softened to make it easier to sell.

Same drills, same conditioning, same slow pace as it was taught before martial arts became a leisure centre product. You train close, you make contact, and you earn progress rather than being given it on a schedule.

It is not hard for the sake of being hard. It is simply that the parts most modern classes have quietly dropped are the parts that make the system work.

Below is what that actually means on a Tuesday night in a training hall in Crawley, including the parts that put people off.

What does "old skool" actually mean in practice?

It is a phrase that gets used loosely, so it is worth being specific about what it looks like in a real class.

In an old skool school:

• Contact is normal from the first lesson, not something reserved for an advanced group

• Conditioning is part of the syllabus, not something you are told to do at home

• You learn a small amount of material and drill it for years, rather than collecting techniques

• Progress is judged by what your body can actually do, not by a certificate schedule

• The instructor trains with you and puts his arm on yours

• Nobody is sold a black belt timeline at the point of joining

That is the whole of it. No mystique, no secret scrolls. Just a method that has been kept intact instead of trimmed down to fit a modern timetable.

What does a session actually look like?

A typical night runs through warm ups, footwork, chi gung, pad work, bridging and contact drills, power training and conditioning.

What that feels like is harder to put on a website.

You spend a lot of the evening with your forearms against someone else's, learning to feel where their weight is going before you can see it. You work close, closer than most people are comfortable with at first. You will be corrected on the same small detail more than once, because in a system this compact the small details are the system.

The room is not loud. There is no music. Between rounds people talk, laugh and get on with it, and then it goes quiet again when the work starts.

Most people who come from a modern gym say the same thing afterwards: it was slower than they expected and more tiring than it looked.

What nobody tells you before you start

This is the part most schools leave off their websites, so here it is plainly.

Your forearms will be sore for the first few weeks.Conditioning is progressive and nobody is going to break your arm on day one, but contact training makes contact, and your body needs time to adapt to it. That soreness settles as you condition.

You will be bad at it for longer than you expect.Southern Mantis rewards patience. The power comes from a connected frame, and the frame takes months to build. There is no shortcut that gets you there in six weeks.

There is no grading every twelve weeks to keep you motivated.If you need a belt or a certificate to feel like you are progressing, you will find this frustrating.

Progress is invisible and then sudden.You feel like nothing is happening for a few months, and then one night a drill you have done a hundred times works properly and you understand why you have been doing it.

Some nights are repetitive.They are meant to be. That is what builds the thing you are trying to build.

Roughly half the people who try this style of training decide it is not for them. I would rather someone read that here and make an honest decision than sign up, feel out of place for three weeks and quietly stop coming.

What old skool kung fu is not

A lot of people arrive with an idea in their head that came from somewhere else entirely, so it is worth clearing a few of those up.

It is not a fitness class.You will get fitter, and most people lose a bit of weight without trying, but that is a side effect. The class is not built around your heart rate.

It is not a belt factory.There is no fixed timeline to a certificate and no upgrade you can buy. If a school is selling you a grading calendar before you have thrown a punch, that tells you what the business model is.

It is not MMA.Nothing against it, but it is a different sport with different rules and different goals. Southern Mantis was built for very close range with no referee and no weight class.

It is not mystical.Chi gung in this system is physical power training. You will feel it in your legs, your back and your breathing. Nothing about it requires belief.

It is not self-defence in a weekend.Anything that can be taught to you in a weekend can be taken off you in a second.

Who should not train this way?

An honest answer to this question saves everybody time.

You probably will not enjoy old skool training if:

• You want a workout you can switch off during

• You need visible progress markers like belts and gradings to stay motivated

• You are looking for somewhere to take out aggression on people

• You cannot realistically commit to twice a week for at least a year

• You want to be told you are doing well when you are not

None of that makes anyone a bad person. There are excellent schools that will suit you better, and I would rather point you at one than take your money for something you will not enjoy.