Emphasizing toughness and aggression, Gangrou-quan is a Chinese form of martial arts with a long, colorful history behind it. While you don’t need to know a complete history of this self-defense art form to appreciate what it is capable of in the present, a brief overview of Gangrou-quan will at least serve to illustrate why it is such a highly respected form of defense and offense.
It will provide a foundation to the essential teachings that must be committed to physical and mental memory by those who wish to study.
Simply put, this art combines hard and soft techniques. It brings together the rou, which focuses on relaxed techniques with optimal flexibility, with the gang, which focuses on harder techniques. The combination of these two things creates a formidable branch of the fighting arts.
Gangrou-quan History And Background
The history of Gangrou-quan can actually be traced all the way back to the seventeenth century. The entire story of this martial arts style arguably begins with monks who lived in a Southern Shaolin temple, which was located in the Fujian Province. The roots of Gangrou-quan can be found in the secret societies and organizations that were formed in this time period. Some were designed to overthrow governments. Others were simply in place to pass on the essential techniques of the self-defense arts that were practiced in a particular region.
Through the years and decades, the southern and northern regions began exchanging techniques and principles. This measure of cooperation would serve to create many of the fighting styles that are still employed to this day, including Gangrou-quan.
At the dawn of the 20th century, the style that is considered Gangrou-quan began to take on the shape that it currently enjoys today. This was because Chen Bu-Gao and Chen Lan-Ching began to assemble various components of Zhejiang martial arts into a more unified approach to offense and defense.
With Gangrou-quan, the stance is everything. You want something that emphasizes steadiness and stability. You want movements that are seemingly simplistic to the naked eye, but are actually going to be delivered with strength and firmness. The teachings of this style can be divided into the internal and external. The internal focuses on breathing and chi.
The external part focuses on toughening up the skin, the body, the bones, and everything else.
The Bottom Line
Through the years, this art has kept its reputation for being a martial arts style that is designed to give the student practical fighting skills.