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[Mudryah]

Too busy helping people. Members already selected. Time to train.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Mudryah

[ChiDragon]

He seems to be having lots of practice. He had done the routine with finesse and very consistent. One would call it "the mind and the body are integrated as one." The movements of arms and legs are fully in coordination with the intent of the mind(yi, 意). Very good demo. Thanks.

[Mudryah]

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Edited April 10, 2014 by Mudryah

[kevin_wallbridge]

Its a good start yet if you watch just his feet you can see he frequently "grinds" his sole on the ground. This is because his external rotators are too tight (piriformis the most likely culprit). This makes it hard for him to commit to the 肟 kua and so his angular momentum is not drawn into a tight spiral into his hip and down his leg and so "dumps" laterally off to the side. This is an error to be corrected in the first year of training or it will either keep him from ever rooting into his supporting leg or it will transfer the lateral force into his knee. Swimming body is also not present at all, unfortunately.

[ChiDragon]

Maybe he should wear kung fu shoes in the first place. The soles are much flatter.

Edited October 22, 2013 by ChiDragon

[Mudryah]

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Edited April 10, 2014 by Mudryah

[Mudryah]

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Edited April 10, 2014 by Mudryah

[zerostao]

i wont comment on his stepping, i understand that he is just starting off and he is your student. but i look forward to the update a month from now and see how his stepping is then. i think this thread has great potential, thanks for starting the thread and thanks for sharing the videos.

[Mudryah]

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Edited April 10, 2014 by Mudryah

[ChiDragon]

Again, in this case, his heels are too high which will cause all his weights to lean forward. Thus that will make him very difficult to balance himself.

Edited October 23, 2013 by ChiDragon

[Mudryah]

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Edited April 10, 2014 by Mudryah

[Mudryah]

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Edited April 10, 2014 by Mudryah

[soaring crane]

Hi - is this a an open thread? I'm very interested in Bagua, but have no chance to learn locally. I'll be attending a weekend intensive Bagua workshop end of November, taught by Peter Schwarz from Austria.

To the videos I'd like to ask about the shoes, especially in the first one. I think huge, puffy heels like those must interfere terribly with one's footwork. I would have trouble maintaining posture doing much simpler Qigong if I had those things on my feet. Shouldn't students be in flat, thin-soled shoes?

Edited October 23, 2013 by soaring crane

[soaring crane]

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Edited October 23, 2013 by soaring crane

[zerostao]

combat wise, (baguazhang is a fighting art) you are going to have to be able to go with whatever you have on your feet at the time of conflict.

uno momento please, i need to take my shoes off before we go at it,,,,,

shouldnt one practice with the shoes that they normally wear?

[zerostao]

i think what helped my rooting is walking on bricks, first single bricks, then stacked bricks.

i also do qigong standing on bricks. i also feel that tree qigong and standing on exposed roots of the tree has helped with rooting.

and also lower posture walking

[ChiDragon]

Have you managed to root through your shoes?

 

That depends how good you are when the time comes from your prolong practice plus wearing the proper shoes.

[zerostao]

it also depends on if you can maintain your root while walking.

i reckon michael jordan did not have to wear air nike to soar thru the air and finish the dunk.

but i am going to step out of this thread and let mudryah keep the lead here.

(i was unaware that chidragon understood baguazhang stepping and the rooting associated with bagua)(learn something new everyday!)

and i look to learn from Mudryah

[ChiDragon]

(i was unaware that chidragon understood baguazhang stepping and the rooting associated with bagua)(learn something new everyday!)

LOL...Zerostao........

 

The stepping and rooting are the most fundamental achievement in all martial arts not just Bagua. BTW Tai Ji is where I came from(I am sure you know by now). Bagua and Tai Ji are belonging to the same family.

Edited October 23, 2013 by ChiDragon

[soaring crane]

What I learned before learning tai chi chuan is that it's best to practice with tai chi shoes or go barefoot/socks on. There's some students who have new balance on and have a deep root. But looking at the past masters of these arts, they didn't use the shoes we have nowadays. They had simple flat shoes. Last night, I heard a lady complaining about the arches in the shoes screwing up her knees.

 

I hope I don't detract too much from the original intent of the thread, especially being a complete outsider to the subject, but I do believe this is a significant issue. The foot is an integral part of the chain of human biomechanics, and it plays a crucial, central role. Cushioned shoes with built-up heels effectively remove the foot's arch and the Achilles' tendon from that chain; this has many very profound negative effects.

 

To the question of being prepared for battle, I also say it's a better idea not to wear that kind of shoe in the first place.

 

ChiDragon wrote this: "Again, in this case, his heels are too high which will cause all his weights to lean forward. Thus that will make him very difficult to balance himself." And I would ask, how can a person drop the heels to the ground if they're being propped up by 2cm of EVA foam?

[ChiDragon]

Just wear shoes with lower heels as long as the heel of the foot and toes are at the same level.

[kevin_wallbridge]

The shoes are not doing the first person any favours. Running shoes should not even be used for running, let alone Baguazhang. To my mind if you are not working on 趟泥步 mud wading step for the first three years you are wasting time with pre-existing habitual movement patterns you are still going to have to correct later on. With those shoes on, the heel strike first/rocking footwork he is doing is going to feel more natural, even though it is wrong. I encourages a stiffness in the foot and ankle and reduces the liveliness and sensitivity to the ground. He doesn't need to be sliding like in a silky Wushu demo, but he should be making some effort to glide the step with control over the plane of the foot (especially since he is on absolutely smooth ground!).

 

@malikshreds: What he needs to do is make the rotation of the hip around the fixed femur they way he enters the root on that leg. What he is doing doing is somewhat like shrugging in the hip of the forward leg, then swinging the back leg into place, allowing the kinetic energy to transfer across hips laterally. He avoids falling over or twisting his knee by then letting the angular momentum grind his foot on the ground, which again feels more correct by the nature of the stupid shoes he is wearing. He cannot leave the hip of the forward leg as steps into the koubu and ever get this correct. Instead of letting the swinging of the back leg become the power of the hook step, he needs to strengthen the internal rotators of his hip and close from the lesser tubercle of the femur to the pubic bone, muscles that are typically weak in people who sit in chairs or drive cars without doing specific corrective exercises to address them.

 

If he knew to keep track of where his tail-bone points he would be better off. Closing into koubu the tip of the coccyx points down to the arch of the foot of the supporting leg, that way the weight remains committed to the leg you are entering, hence the koubu is a hidden kick. Once the weight from the hip spirals down that leg the tail-bone can simply point into the other foot and the weight becomes distributed (unevenly) between the feet. This way you can quickly grab your weight into the front leg and root to the next leg without allowing the angular momentum to carry your weight laterally. This lack of control of lateral forces is exactly what I am grabbing and manipulating when I toss people around. If you try to do hide-flowers with that foot grinding going on against someone who can feel lateral energies you are going to get launched into low-earth orbit. It impractical and simply not Bagua.

 

I see this all of the time in Bagua and it is just half-assed transmission without the necessary focus on jibengong and fuzhu gongfa. Unfortunately he doesn't understand his body enough to even learn the form. He needs more basics. Like this:

 

 

No offence intended to anyone but knowing Taijiquan in no way gives any insight into the details of Bagua footwork any more than knowing Shakespearean sonnets helps you read sonnets in the Portuguese, they are different worlds. Related by underlying philosophies but they cannot be understood in each other's term and methods. Understanding Taijiquan can tell you some things about Bagua in terms of energetics, but not in terms of structures.

Edited October 23, 2013 by kevin_wallbridge

[Mudryah]

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Edited April 10, 2014 by Mudryah

[Mudryah]

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[Mudryah]

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Edited April 10, 2014 by Mudryah