Qin Na (Chin Na)
擒拿A technical category in the Chinese arts: grips, locks and immobilisations in five groups defined by what is attacked.
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Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Qin Na (Chin Na)
Qin na, literally to seize and hold, is not a style in its own right but a technical category within the Chinese martial arts: the set of grips, locks and immobilisations by which an opponent's joint, muscle or tendon is controlled. There is no single unified system; every school has its own selection and ordering according to what its teacher considers essential, and the same grip may therefore carry a different name and a different execution from one line to another. The tradition divides qin na into five groups according to what is attacked. Fen jin, or zhua jin, targets muscles and tendons, which are torn or pressed against the bone. Cuo gu takes bones and joints out of their axis, that is the classic locking of the elbow, wrist or shoulder. Bi qi restricts the breath by pressure on the neck or the chest. Dian mai and dian xue work on blood vessels and on the points of Chinese medicine. The fifth group, rou dao, is the safe variant for paired practice, so that the techniques can be repeated without injury. Qin na appears across the Chinese styles, but some carry it as their centre of gravity: eagle claw, praying mantis, tiger claw, hung gar and shuai jiao wrestling; southern styles usually give it more room than northern ones. This page therefore gives no founder and no year of origin, since this is a layer of technique rather than a school with a lineage of its own.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.