The Iron Head Skill (鐵頭功, Tiě tóu gōng) is designed to allow the practitioner to resist attacks on his head. During training, the practitioner wraps layers of fabric around his head and rams his head into a hard surface repeatedly. Incrementally, layers of fabric are removed as he progresses. A famous practitioner named Hong Chan could easily break a stone tablet and he could walk quickly with a stone weighing 170 kg on his head when he was 80 years old.
Read more about this topic: List Of The 72 Shaolin Martial Arts
Famous quotes containing the words iron, head and/or skill:
“I was even more surprised at the power of the waves, exhibited on this shattered fragment, than I had been at the sight of the smaller fragments before. The largest timbers and iron braces were broken superfluously, and I saw that no material could withstand the power of the waves; that iron must go to pieces in such a case, and an iron vessel would be cracked up like an egg- shell on the rocks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the head is lost, all that perishes is the individual; if the balls are lost, all of human nature perishes.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest; but there is seldom one in which a man should tell all. Great skill is necessary to know how far to go, and where to stop.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)