Combat Application Sets of Dragon Form and Dragton-Tiger

Have you ever wondered how kungfu sets were composed?

Originally people fought haphazardly, not unlike untrained persons do today. Gradually those who fought frequently discovered that certain ways of fighting were advantageous. Over time these advantageous ways of fighting were stylized into kungfu patterns.

To remember these patterns and to pass them on to succeeding students, kungfu masters linked these patterns into sets. For convenience, we call these types of sets that are composed of individual patterns, “pattern-sets”. An example of a pattern-set is “Tiger-Crane”. Except for the starting and the concluding patterns, each of the 36 patterns in this set are different. Another example is “Dragon-Tiger”. While a few patterns are repeated, most of the patterns in this set are also different from one another.

Kungfu masters also discovered that if they linked certain patterns into a sequence and applied the sequence instead of individual patterns in combat, they would have various advantages. If they executed an attack using the pattern “Black Tiger Steals Heart”, for example, in theory their opponents could respond in countless, unpredictable ways. But in practice their responses were quite predictable, and would fall within a range of probable responses. Hence, masters could work out suitable combat sequences in anticipation of how their opponents would response.

When these combat sequences are linked together, they form a set. For convenience, we call it a combat sequence-set. “Black Tiger Steals Heart”, “Happy Bird Hops up Branch” and “Felling Tree with Roots” are combat sequence-sets.

It is pertinent to remember that these terms, “pattern sets” and “sequence-sets” are for convenience; they are not rigid definitions. It may not be easy, for example, to classify “Lohan Asks the Way” as a pattern-set or a sequence-set. We can call it a pattern-set because its basic unit is a pattern. A major purpose of the set is to enable us to know the four basic hand attacks and their four counters. It is different from “Black Tiger Steals Heart”, for instance, where the basic unit is a sequence, and a major purpose is to enable us to apply the sequences, rather than individual patterns, for combat.

However, if we use “Lohan Asks the Way” to practice breath-control, fluidity and speed, we would be using its four sequences rather than its 36 individual patterns. In this case, we may call it a sequence-set, but we could not call it a combat sequence set because the linking of the sequences is not for combat purposes.

At the Special Shaolin Kungfu Course of September 2005, course participants employed patterns form their specialized sets to work out suitable combat sequences based on various themes. After refining their patterns and sequences, the participants linked them together into combat sequence-sets. The video clips here show both their effort and result concerning the Dragon Form Set and the Dragon-Tiger Set.. Again for convenience, we call these two specialized sets, “mother sets”, whereas the combat sequence-sets composed by the course participants are called “children-sets”.

We should also give a name to each of the children-sets. Again this is for convenience. Instead of saying “the children-set of the mother-set Dragon-Tiger collectively composed by Simon, Mark and Christ while they attended the Special Shaolin Kungfu Course in April 2005 in Malaysia”, we just say “Dragon and Tiger at Play” or something appropriate and, hopefully, poetic. Suggestions are welcome. Preference of choice will course be given to the relevant composers.

The video clips here show both the effort as well as the result of course participants working on their combat sequences for the Dragon Form Set and the Dragon-Tiger Set. Those for the Shaolin Monkey Set, the Tiger-Crane Set and the Five-Animal Set are listed in another webpage accessible here