Nine-Section Ground Whip (九節地躺鞭) — Seven Star Mantis

九節地躺鞭 (Jiǔjié Dìtǎng Biān, "Nine-Section Ground-Rolling Whip") is the soft-weapon ground-fighting form of the Seven Star Praying Mantis weapons curriculum, in the canon of Wong Hon Fan (黃漢勛). It joins two demanding specialties: the 九節鞭 (nine-section whip) — a chain of nine linked metal rods, the hardest class of flexible weapon to control — and 地躺 / 滾膛 (ground-rolling), the tumbling, dropping, and floor-fighting method. It is the whip-wielding cousin of the branch's Drunken Groundwork Saber.

What it trains

• Flexible-weapon control — the nine-section whip has no rigid line; it is driven by circles, figure-eights, and body-wraps (金龍盤柱, "golden dragon coils the pillar"), and re-aimed by the whole body rather than the wrist

• Ground-rolling (地躺 / 滾膛) — the form deliberately drops, sprawls, and rolls (地膛輾腿, 滾膛鞭法), striking and sweeping from the floor — a rare skill set that turns a fall into an attack

• Whip-to-leg coordination — the whip's wraps are paired with crushing and grinding leg techniques (橫鞭軋腿, 地膛輾腿)

• Recovery and re-launch — tiger images (白虎跳澗 "white tiger leaps the ravine," 猛虎翻身 "fierce tiger turns its body") mark the explosive returns from ground to standing

Full posture script — 34 postures

The bare posture-name list from Wong Hon Fan's 九節地躺鞭, reproduced under fair-use citation; English are the wiki's own working glosses. The long runs of one name (金龍盤柱 ×6, 肘底藏花 ×6) are the repeated circling and wrapping counts characteristic of a flexible weapon.

Place in the curriculum

An advanced, late-curriculum specialty — the flexible weapon is taught only once the body method and rigid weapons are secure, and the ground-rolling demands the conditioning the empty-hand sets build. It pairs thematically with the 醉酒地躺單刀 (Drunken Groundwork Saber) as the branch's two 地躺 (ground-fighting) forms.

Open English translation

• Paul Brennan, "Nine-Section Whip" (2024) — full bilingual translation with the original photographs: brennantranslation.wordpress.com.

See also

七星螳螂 Seven Star Mantis — branch context

Mantis Forms — the script-and-video map of every form

醉酒地躺單刀 Drunken Groundwork Saber — the branch's other ground-fighting form

Mantis Canon — full Brennan index including all the weapons forms

Sources

[1] Wong Hon Fan, 九節地躺鞭 — the published manual; the posture script above is the bare form-name list reproduced under fair-use citation, with the wiki's own glosses.

[2] Paul Brennan (tr.), "Nine-Section Whip" / 九節地躺鞭 (2024) — open-access English: brennantranslation.wordpress.com. The 34-posture sequence follows Brennan's edition.