The martial arts of bending: Part 3 - Earth

“Earth is the element of substance. The people of the Earth Kingdom are diverse and strong. They are persistent and enduring.” - Iroh

Disclaimer: This entire post is a Repost. @YellowSnowman originally posted this on April 28th of 2014. If you would like to balance out your Upvote, Here is a picture of Appa and Momo I specifically posted to catch the heat http://imgur.com/gallery/5jOL9. Downvote it if you want to

Part 1 - Air: http://imgur.com/gallery/PASRp
Part 2 - Water: http://imgur.com/gallery/7EA4G
Part 4 - Fire: http://imgur.com/gallery/5wTWu

The Earthbenders
The Earth Kingdom is the largest of the 4 nations. It has a well-established government, military, and significant ethnic and cultural diversity, due to the country's vast territorial expanse. The Earth Kingdom also has some of the most prominent cities and landscapes of the show, such as the capital city of Ba Sing Sei, the Si Wong Desert, Kyoshi Island, and the city of Omashu.

The first earthbenders, Oma and Shu, learned the art from badgermoles.

Earthbending

Earthbending differs from the other bending arts in that it maintains a distinct balance between offensive and defensive capabilities (though waterbending involves a more refined version by channeling defense into offense). Earthbending uses a balance of strength and defense to overwhelm opponents.

The key part of earthbending is utilizing neutral jing, which involves waiting and listening for the right moment to strike and, when that moment comes, acting decisively. In other words, earthbenders generally endure their enemies' attacks until the right opportunity to counterattack reveals itself.

Hung Ga
Earthbending and its subtypes, sandbending and metalbending, are a close second to being my favorite bending art to watch because the martial art it was based off of is very cool to watch. Except for Toph, almost all of the earthbending in ATLA and TLOK is based on a kung fu known as Hung Ga.

Most Hung Ga forms are based on a mix of the Tiger and Crane animal styles and have a focus on strong, balanced stances and powerful strikes. Hung Ga is one of the more external styles, with very little time spent practicing on internal movement. Emphasis is put on having firm, solid stances. A student of Hung Ga will traditionally spend anywhere from months to three years in stance training, often sitting in horse stance between a half-hour to several hours at one time, before learning any forms.

It may not look pretty, but here’s some examples of how traditional Hung Ga can be applied to a real life fight.

It’s brutal, fast and exists to either neutralize an opponent through a flurry of swift, powerful blows or to take away their balance and get the upper hand.

Neutral Jing/ Sticky Hands
The concept of neutral jing is also closely related to the philosophy of "sticky hands", a practice common to some southern Chinese martial arts such as Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis and Wing Chun. The purpose of sticky hands is to enable the practitioner to predict their opponent's next move. Similar to Toph detecting the movements of others through her connection with earth, a practitioner learns to detect their opponent's upcoming move by maintaining constant contact between their own arm and their foe's arm (may also be between their hands or wrists).

By practicing with a partner in this manner, a practitioner will learn to "read" the slight movements of their opponent's arms to detect their next attack and subsequently move accordingly to either strike before the attack is made or move in the same direction with the attack and effectively neutralize it. Concepts such as listening, reacting, balancing attacks and defense, and drawing power from a stable lower body are often referred to in the practice of sticky hands, again, closely relating to many primary concepts in earthbending.

Sandbending
Sandbenders are earthbenders who have adapted to life in the Si Wong Desert. They use a unique style of earthbending, which emphasizes the manipulation of sand. They move quickly in the desert on specialized wooden sailboats that are propelled by bending miniature, localized sandstorms behind their sails. Because sand is sediment which travels in flows, their style resembles air and waterbending more than earthbending.

It is implied that most, if not all, earthbenders are capable of easily bending sand, but because of the loose shifty nature of sand it is not an easy transition for the average earthbender. The sandbenders of the desert are especially proficient with it due to their particular habitat.

After the events at Si Wong Desert, Toph practiced her sandbending, achieving a mastery over it that allowed her to create an extremely detailed miniature sand version of Ba Sing Se.

Toph/ Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis
Earthbenders come in all different shapes and sizes. Most are large beefy alpha types, but there is always the exception. That would be Toph Bei Fong in this case. In the ATLA/TLOK universe, Toph is known as “the greatest earthbender that ever lived” for a lot of reasons. She was the long-time champion of underground pro-bending, under the alias of “The Blind Bandit”. She created metalbending, and in her later years, established a school to teach metalbending and became chief of Republic City’s metalbending police force. Mostly though, Toph is just a straight hardass.

Toph, being blind, uses a style based on Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis, which utilizes very precise stepping skills and footwork, which Toph uses to maintain constant contact with the ground in order to "see". Chow Gar places a heavy emphasis on close-range fighting. This system is known for its short power methods, and has aspects of both internal and external techniques.

In application, the emphasis is on hand and arm techniques, and a limited use of low kicks. The application of close combat methods, with an emphasis on hands and short kicking techniques, makes Chow Gar somewhat akin to what many would call "street fighting." The hands are the most readily available for attack and defense of the upper body, and protect the stylist by employing techniques designed to inflict serious injury. The legs are moved quickly into range through footwork to protect and defend the body, and kicks are kept low, short and quick so as to never leave the Chow Gar combatant off-balance and vulnerable.

Metalbending

Metalbending is a subtype of earthbending developed by Toph. Toph figuring out how to metalbend is definitely in my top 5 favorite scenes from both ATLA and TLOK. Most earthbenders are unable to affect processed metals, but because Toph is a blind little badass, she was able to see the trace fragments of earth in the metal and use them to bend it.

In the beginning, she was not able to bend metal with the same ability or ease seen in normal earthbending. Eventually, her skill with metalbending developed to the point where she could effectively defeat comet-enhanced firebenders during the Battle at Wulong Forest with the technique.

After the conclusion of the Hundred Year War, Toph founded a metalbending academy to teach the newly acquired skill to other earthbenders, and the technique eventually became the primary weapon of the Metalbending Police Force in Republic City.

Summary
Earth is the element of substance, making earthbenders and their people diverse, strong, persistent, and enduring.

Utilizing strong stances and concepts like neutral jing/sticky hands, earthbending has the strongest counteroffensive style, and is definitely the most stable of the bending arts.

BONUS!

Hung Ga form video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mme1Pe3PMUU
[This is a video of Grandmaster Chiu Chi Ling demonstrating the “Sticky Hands” form of Hung Ga.]

Chow Gar form video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq068bda6Sw
[After watching this video I was really impressed to see how spot on the creators of ATLA were when translating it to Toph’s style of earthbending.]

Earthbending comparison video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kKvWUgFZo

DISCLAIMER: I by no means claim to be an expert of martial arts forms. I am merely a fan that has too much time on his hands.