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.
Read more about this topic: List Of The 72 Shaolin Martial Arts
Famous quotes containing the words hard, soft and/or skill:
“How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature!”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)
“Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;”
—Sidney Lanier (18421881)
“The cowboy ... is well on his way to becoming a figure of magnificent proportions. Bowlegged and gaunt, he stands as the apotheosis of manly perfection. Songs, novels, movies, magazines, and operettas have made the least inquiring of us well acquainted with his extraordinary courage, unfailing gallantry, and uncanny skill with gun or lariat. The farmer, meanwhile, sits stolidly on his tractor, bereft of romance and adventure.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)