Chuojiao (Poking Foot)
戳腳A northern Chinese style built on kicks delivered from close range. Its documented line starts in 19th-century Hebei; the older pedigree is legend.
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What the style is built from
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About Chuojiao (Poking Foot)
Chuojiao is a northern Chinese style whose name means literally "poking foot". Tradition derives it from Deng Liang under the Song dynasty and then from the monk Zhou Tong and General Yue Fei; that pedigree is legendary and cannot be documented. Popular awareness of the art was reinforced by the novel Water Margin, in which Wu Song uses kicks of this kind, which is also where its nickname "the outlaw style" comes from. The documented line begins much later, with Zhao Canyi, a participant in the mid-nineteenth-century uprisings who took refuge in Raoyang county in Hebei and passed the method to local families there. Technically the art is built on low and middle kicks delivered from close range, often chained without returning to a stance between them. The leg does not swing in an arc but travels short and straight, as if stabbing, while the hands cover and open the line. Characteristic is the alternation of kick and punch within a single rhythm, which gives the opponent no time to recover his base. Training includes solo forms, leg-endurance work (classically with weights fastened to the calves) and partner drills. In northern China chuojiao is taught together with fanziquan as the wen-wu pair, chuojiao supplying the kicks and fanziquan the hand work. After Zhao Canyi the style split into family branches — Liu, Duan, Wang, Zhao and others — and today it survives mainly in central Hebei, in Beijing and in Liaoning.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.