Fut Gar (Buddhist Family Boxing)
佛家拳A southern Chinese style from Guangdong that builds on the open palm rather than the fist. Its stances are higher and more mobile than in other southern schools.
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About Fut Gar (Buddhist Family Boxing)
Fut Gar, literally Buddhist family fist, is a southern Chinese style from Guangdong. Its hallmark is work with the open palm. Where most southern styles build on the fist and on a low rooted stance, Fut Gar uses mainly the palm, both for the direct strike and for pushing aside and cutting across. The stances are higher and more mobile than in Hung Gar, the steps shorter and more frequent, the kicks low and rather supplementary. Circular arm work is equally characteristic: an attack is not blocked against its force but led aside on an arc, and the answer travels back along the same path. The breathing is calm and without audible release, which sets the style apart from the tiger and crane lineages. Tradition derives Fut Gar from the Buddhist monks of the southern Shaolin temple, and that is where the name comes from. The documented history is younger and begins only in the nineteenth century with Cantonese masters. In Guangdong, Fut Gar was often trained alongside another family style, and one such combination produced a style of its own, Hung Fut, that is Hung plus Fut. This shows well how the southern styles worked: they were not closed schools but family bodies of material that complemented one another. Fut Gar is usually not counted among the five Cantonese family styles, namely Hung, Lau, Choy, Li and Mok, but stands beside them as a separate Buddhist line. Today it is practised chiefly in southern China, in Hong Kong and in Chinese communities overseas.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.