How to Utilize the Hands for Basic Southern Shaolin Kung Fu Fighting Style

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Julio Anta from Anta’s Fitness & Self Defense in Miami, Florida. My website is www.antakungfu.com. A very important principle in southern kung fu or any style of Kung Fu is your hands, how to utilize it. We believe that our fingers are more powerful than our fist. So with that in mind, you got to know where to hit. The first thing I want to show you is what we call correct fist, how to make a fist. Anybody can close a fist but we call it an empty fist. A correct fist will go like this and then put the thumb over the first two fingers, if we punch it’s aligned, our elbow is down and we are using the first two knuckles. We don’t ever leave our punches out, that’s only informed for the instructor to look. Another thing, the difference between a tiger claw and a tiger mouth. Tiger claw is like this or like this. Tiger claw can take them down by the collarbone. Tiger claw I can stick them in the eyes quick. Tiger mouth looks like if I am holding a baseball. My hands are back, you could see imitating and feeling the spirit of the animal. Then what I do with this is I grab. I can grab his eyes, his face and squeeze tight and take him down or grab his arm, grab his shirt, anything. I’ll give you one more, its called the crane beak. Crane beak is to strike also vital points eyes and certain parts. It looks like this, three fingers here, one behind. You might have seen it a lot in Kill Bill."