Tim,

I would like to pick your brain concerning your time in Taiwan under master Xu.

When you practiced fu hu gong: (first, what does it mean? can you provide characters?)
what was considered part of fu hu gong?

When I was first introduced to these exercises, I was given a list of things 13 in all, a mixture of stretches, pushups, and leg exercises. Later on, I was told by other people that it was far more expansive a list of exercises that included tumbling and animal exercises, and then later on that it was only the pushups.

Can you clarify at all?

The version I learned had a lot of exercises where you drag yOurself across the floor. Front, back, side pulls, shrimping, tiger push ups, hopping.

Here's a guy named Steve Cotter doing a few of them. Besides this I have only seen wrestling people do them. You can also look up judo conditioning on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT2sJtknMi0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Ya, I do all of the things Steve Cotter does, but with only a few exceptions, I learned them as animal exercises not fu hu gong. I am trying to define what Master Xu taught as fu hu gong. It is mainly a matter of how do I list and label what I have been taught.

You might be interested in this esoteric exercise only practiced in the forbidden city.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgRlD6gNi5M&feature=watch_response

Fu Hu Gong: "Lying Tiger Skills"

Fu Hu Gong is a set of basic conditioning exercises that included many variations of squats, push ups, mat core training exercises, rolling and falling exercises, and a number of mat crossing exercises as Timothy described above that originally come from Judo. Actually, according to my teacher, the bulk of the exercises were borrowed from basic Judo conditioning exercises (both Hong Yixiang and Xu Hongji studied Judo).

I learned all these exercises as Fu Hu Gong, there was never any mention of "animal exercises."

So they weren't originally a part of the hsing I curriculum? Interesting. Did your teacher practice other conditioning sets before learning the judo conditioning? I guess I'm wondering if hsing I had its own conditioning sets traditionally.

We also practiced basic exercises that were part of the original Internal systems, including various "Zhan Zhuang" postures, the "Tian Gan" from Gao style Baguazhang and stationary exercises based on XIngyiquan's "Five Elements."

Tim,

Do you by chance have a complete list of the Fu Hu Gong exercises you learned?

No, I never saw a list of the Fu Hu Gong actually written down.

When I trained in Xu Hongji's academy, there was little explanation of which exercises belong to which categories, beyond general descriptions.

Andrew,
Are you under the impressiOn that the fu hu gong are some how special? They are a bunch of body weight exercises. If you look in a few body weight exercise books and look up judo exercises you'll get what you're looking for.

Timber,

I highly doubt it. I already know how to do all of these exercises. I am simply doing historical research into the TST and attempting to explain the various different lists of exercises that bear the name Fu hu gong as learned from students of Xu Hong Ji.

Of they were taught to do handstands would you categorize that as fu hu gong as well? Is a fu hu gong push up different from a push up?

All questions I would like to answer...