MANTIS: Another '2-Phase' Blaster

Q: I loved the 2 Mantis drills in the book, are there more where those came from?

A: Bare Metal Minimality introduces two Mantis-based neigong (internal energy work) drills - drawn from a much larger inventory. I covered seven of those in my older Mantis Neigong video, now delisted on a technicality by Vimeo, and another 7 in a follow up video, now also delisted by them.

The two in the BMM book differ radically in their physical configurations. But they share the characteristic 2-phase structure of almost all of the Mantis neigong drills. Now for you paid subs (Full Metal Maximality section here), I’ll dish out one more from the original film. Note that in some ways Mantis neigong may feel more physical in its basic frame than most other internal arts like Tai Chi. It makes explicit use of oppositional tension. That’s just the nature of their game. But the result is pure 24K IP - like uncut, unstepped China White straight from the continent.

For best results, please first reread the two Mantis chapters in BMM. Or better yet, review the entire book. Because there you’ll see that I make much of the concept of “Gapping”. Gapping is worked slightly different in every drill where it’s a factor, but wherever it’s used, it expresses the same basic idea: opening and expanding a kind of circle in the center of your personal energetic shell space. Usually that’s done by setting up a dynamically widening circle consisting of a front/leading edge formed by your arms, and a rear circumference formed by your torso and hips. You can read more about it in BMM, as it applies to almost every chapter.

In this Mantis “Needle Kick” drill (also sometimes called 十字 Figure 10 kick), which I’ll introduce below, Gapping is present, but here it’s a fully engaged variation. Instead of only using your mind alone to create, maintain, and extend the “gap”, in this Mantis neigong variant, you’re going to physically link your arms and hands, in contact, to emphasize the effect.

Otherwise though the Needle Kick drill is similar to the other Mantis 2-phase drills: a more ‘active’ or intense ‘on’ or yang phase, following by a refractory, more static yin period. Each phase is maybe 10 seconds or less, done continuously in turn.

There are several ways of doing this.

1. Basic: One way is as in the cartoon illustration (below paywall below) from my other book Infusion. In this version, your hands hold the ankle of your kicking leg, but the ‘physical’ comes only from the leg extending toward the wall (Phase 1) and then relaxing that effort (Phase 2) to work with arms and torso as the active elements. Read all the directions in the cartoon panel below for this base version.

2. Single Active: Next more active mode is that while you extend your kick, trying to touch the wall with your kicking toe (the needle), you simultaneously attempt to retract that same extending kick leg with an active pulling grip on your ankle. In the ‘off’ phase, you relax the leg as in variant 1. above (keeping same static kick posture).

3. Double Active: Finally, you can intensify the ‘leg off’ phase of 2. (above) if you wish, by doing the opposite of the yang phase as it’s stated above. So in other words. where the ‘off phase’ directions for 1. and 2. above tell you to just engage your leg neutrally, in place, you can change the ‘off’ phase into the active opposite of the main phase in 2. by actively doing the opposite of 2, which would be: actively retract your kicking leg into your femoral joint (without changing the appearance of the posture), while with your arms you also do the opposite: actively attempt to resist the inward retraction of the leg and with your arms trying to extend the kick. Hope that’s intelligible. If not, just ask yourself what would be the opposite version of the active phase and try it out.

One addendum to the instructions given in the illustration below, and the text panel in the video below: There’s a mention of your legs and torso blasting with IP when you do your Quiet Standing at the end (same as you after every single BMM drill, right?), but you’ll also experience a very intense torrent of arms IP blast due to this drill.

OK here’s the cartoon panel and film clip with all the basic directions for the Mantis ‘Needle Kick’ neigong drill. Play with your own understanding of all the variations 1, 2 and 3 above.