Mok Gar
莫家拳One of the five great family styles of southern China. It fights at a range so close that it is said to be chest to chest, breath to breath.
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About Mok Gar
Mok Gar is one of the five great family styles of southern China, at home in Guangdong province. Tradition derives it from a Shaolin monk known as Mok Da Shi, said to have handed on the techniques of the southern Shaolin; the style only became famous three generations later, however, under the Qing dynasty, through Mok Gin Kiu. He defeated a series of well-known boxers, and after him the original name Nan Shaolin Quan became Mok Gar, "the school of the Mok family". This page therefore gives neither founder nor year — what can be documented is the pattern of transmission, not a date. The technical core is extremely short range. Mok Gar practitioners are said to fight chest to chest, cheek to cheek and breath to breath; from such closeness an attack has no run-up, and timing and body structure decide. What is distinctive, though, is the kicking: despite the close range the style carries a rich set of kicks with names of their own — the Pass the Gate kick, the Direct Side kick, the Hurling kick and the Absorbing kick. Weapons work and the style's own stances belong to the syllabus as well. Mok Gar is often mentioned in connection with Hung Gar, because its elements found their way into that school. This is also the source of a frequent confusion of names: Mok Kwai-lan, the fourth wife of Wong Fei-hung, was a carrier of Hung Gar after his death and ran his school and clinic — but she has nothing to do with the founding of Mok Gar.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.