MANTIS!

As you might have surmised from the title of my blog entry, I learned more of my Mantis form last night. Actually, I learned all of my Mantis form last night, so I can now go practice in my back yard and destroy more of my grass. But man, do I love my new Mantis form. It is, in and of itself, a more thorough workout than any single Karate kata(form) I can think of. Even Unsu, which I never had the pleasure of learning, can't compare to this simple Mantis form. Ok, when you include the tornado kick, dragon sweep, and general flow of this form, I guess you really can't call it simple, but it is hella cool and fun to do. Eventually I'll be able to actually perform the whole thing without once pausing to remind myself what actually comes next.

There is one move, however, in the middle, which I find very amusing. After performing a double tiger palm strike, you pull back into a cat stance. I was figuring on some kind of neat series of tiger moves in there, but no, I was mistaken. What you actually do essentially says to me, "Todays' form is brought to you by the letter T." You kick backwards, double palm strike forward, and try to get your body as level as possible. You look like a goddamn T. It's pretty silly, even as it is challenging and flows nicely into the next part. Hopefully that's the only letter of the alphabet I have to practice performing for a while.

You know, given my fourteen years of Karate, I have to say that I'm enjoying Kung Fu more right now. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to start some debate about how Karate is or is not better than Kung Fu. That's a stupid argument. But I will say that because Kung Fu is more showy, I'm enjoying doing it more because it's just more fun to show off with. Plus it actually works more of my body than your average kata, so that's a plus. I can't wait to see what's next. I'm hoping for Snake or Crane, but as I've enjoyed every Kung Fu animal style so far, I'm just impatiently waiting. I think I'm back in the swing of Fu now. Woot woot!