Despite its name, the Southern Praying Mantis style of Chinese martial arts is unrelated to the Northern Praying Mantis style. Southern Praying Mantis is instead related most closely to fellow Hakka styles such as Dragon and more distantly to the Fujian family of styles that includes Fujian White Crane, Five Ancestors, and Wing Chun.

Southern Praying Mantis is a close range fighting system that places much emphasis on short power techniques and has aspects of both the soft and internal as well as the hard and external.

As in other southern styles, the arms are the main weapon, with kicks usually limited to the hip and under. Emphasis is placed on strengthening and lengthening the arms.

When an extended arm has strength, it allows the practitioner to move about faster since his arms don't need to recoil or move back for more strength, like in boxing or many other fighting systems.

Like Wing Chun and Xingyiquan—other styles created as pure fighting arts—Southern Praying Mantis has relatively no aesthetic value, unlike its northern counterpart and many other styles.

Southern Praying Mantis is informed by traditional Chinese medicine, in particular the concept of meridians, which it uses for dim mak and tui na.

Branches

The four main branches of Southern Praying Mantis are:

• Chow Gar (Chow family)
• Chu Gar (Chu family)
• Kwong Sai Jook Lum ( Jiangxi Bamboo Forest)
• Iron Ox 

A common antecedent can be surmised not only from their similarities but also from the fact that they all share a common routine, Sarm Bo Jin. However, the genealogies of these branches are not complete enough to trace them to a single common ancestor.