The style of Lai Tung Pai is commonly placed as a Southern Shortfist style of Chinese Martial arts. Southern Chinese styles often push stability of the lower part of the body while also pushing speed with the upper part. This means that the stances are very low and most of the strikes are meant to be delivered from close range. However, our style also incorporates longfist motions that deliver a longer range more powerful attack. When put together, these two strategies can create an awesome combination of hand speed coupled with striking power. Also keeping in line with other Southern styles we keep our kicks very low and very quick. Usually kicking to the foot, ankle, knee, and occasionally groin.
To the layman our style may look similar to Wing Chun with some longfist mixed in. One must remember that all Sil Lum (Shao Lin) styles originated from the same place, our styles are not related to Wing Chun beyond the temple. However we do use Chi Sao (sticking hands) as one of our core exercises, although we commonly call it Lap Sao (rolling hands) as our style emphasizes a slightly different power control than the Wing Chun system. We have one form that is very similar to the Wing Chun forms, but with a slightly wider stance. After that all the similarities vanish, as all of our other hand forms involve the typical low horse, bow and arrow, cat, etc stances. Also our style incorporates the traditional spectrum of Chinese weapons, whereas Wing Chun chooses to specialize in the long pole and butterfly swords only.
For more information on what we do, please visit the Exercises page.