List of The 72 Shaolin Martial Arts - Hard and Soft Skill

The Hard and Soft Skill (剛柔法, Gāng róu fǎ) training process involves the practitioner performing blows at a bundle of spoiled paper repeatedly. Initially, a bundle of paper about 66 cm long is placed above a large wooden table with fixed outer boards and removable inner boards. The practitioner strikes the bundle of paper with his right hand while holding a cord with his left. He switches hands later. The bundle weighs about 10 kg initially and lead weights are added subsequently as he progresses, until the entire bundle weights about 50 kg. The inner boards are also removed in progressive stages until only the fixed outer boards remain. The practitioner is deemed to have mastered the skill once he can hit the bundle of paper over the large gap in the boards and return it with his other hand.

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