Gang Da 耕手 (plough & hit)

Gang Da 耕手 – for blocking low hooks and low side-of-body shots

Gang Da 耕手 (plough & hit) is a low downwards-pointing ploughing arm cutting down and sweeping outwards from the inside gate – important for dealing with low punches, especially hooks to the kidneys or floating ribs.

Bruce Lee doing Gang Sau / Gaang Sau / Garn Sau
Bruce Lee doing Gang Sau (ploughing arm) with his low hand, and Jam Sau (sinking arm) with his high hand. If the high hand is used as a strike rather than just a block, then we can call the whole two-handed technique Gang Da (plough & hit). In some schools, the high hand is also called a Gang Sau so long as it’s also cutting laterally rather than driving straight into the opponent’s centre.

Why we rarely see this move in boxing

We don’t tend to see this move in gloved-up western boxing under Queensbury Rules. The main way to block low hooks in boxing is by sinking the elbow down to cover it. This is because the glove is so big & bulky that it’s hard to fit a punch in the gap between the elbow and the hip, to reach a kidney or floating rib. Also the gloves are cushioning the blow, so the fight is less likely to end from a single well placed shot – it’s more of a battle of attrition instead – a competition of endurance through an accumulation of punches over 12 rounds.

With the gloves off, in bareknuckle boxing, it’s different – punches slip through easier and carry much more bone-breaking one-punch power capable of ending the fight on the spot, so it’s worth having a definitive block that leaves no room for error. Enter the Gang Da.

We see the same issue with blocking high wide swinging hooks around the side of the head. Instead of using Biu Da as we would use in Kung Fu, boxers tend to simply place their glove over their ear, with elbow pointing forward, so their entire arm forms a shield to help cover the side of their head, and this is usually successful in blocking the punch. But the moment you take the gloves off, it’s much easier for punches to slip through, and much more dangerous when they do, so Biu Da (and sometimes Tan Da) is what we use for blocking high swinging wide hooks in Kung Fu.

All these bareknuckle principles are magnified when the opponent may potentially be holding a sharp weapon – something you have to always be ready for in the streets.


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