Cotton Fist

Back in the day, George Xu told me a story about a Cotton Fist (Mianquan) master in Shanghai who was pretty tough. He used to carry a short 10 inch long staff, maybe two inches thick with metal at one end.  Whenever he was challenged or about to get in a fight he would pull the staff out of his belt loop and use it to hit himself very quickly all over the surface of his body.  His challengers always backed down, ran away or apologized.  No one ever believed they could hit him as hard as he had just hit himself!

Now my readers know that I'm not a big fan of conditioning, but heck, that's just cool.

I've never studied this system but my understanding is that they cultivate cotton on the outside, steel on the inside.  However, that doesn't really explain the incredible conditioning does it?