circle walking and standing

[wiz cool c]

I have been doing bagua zhang and tai chi for about 8 years now five of them in china along with hung gar and shuai jiao. I have done martial arts close to 30 years. out of the internal arts circle walking and standing seem to been at the core of bagua and tai chi, circle walking bagua,standing tai chi. out of the two exercises,i have felt tremendous benefits from one and very mild from the other.


In my personal experience standing post is one of the most important fundamental training mentods of kung fu period. I have noticed it benefits in the form of health and fighting, which i have tested out push hands competition style training with vigor. push hand comps. 4 in which i have competed in,and judo and shuai jiao training stand up grappling.


Circle walking on the other hand,i found to be good for a mild warm up and cool down. with mild health benefits and next to no fighting benefits. I would be curious to hear how other internal artist view this topic,and your experiences with these exercises. Both heath and martial.

[SPJ]

yes, standing in posture or zhuang/pole gong.

circle walking with fixed posture

is actually moving zhuang gong.

both are good for health, since it is balance and align your spine/back, centering your overall posture.

especially important for people sitting in office long hours

--

:)

[YouKnowWho]

I have been doing bagua zhang and ... shuai jiao.

I have never heard anybody who crosses train Shuai Jiao and Bagua before. Because 2 styles do have some basic conflict.

If you train Shuai Jiao, when you move in circle, you always move your "back" leg first. When you move your back leg 1 ft, you only move your front leg 3 inch. This will gurantee that your back leg, front leg, and your opponent are still in a straight line.

http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/8041/circlerunningr.jpg

If you train Bagua, when you move in circle, you always move your "front" leg first. You alwys have "cross leg" that your feet and your opponent are in 90 degree angle (we all know the danger of "cross legs" in combat).

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://pakuachangjournal.com/articles/circleWalk/Postures.jpg&imgrefurl=http://pakuachangjournal.com/circleWalk.php%3Fpage%3D5&usg=__Y4iHFwFdMxszP59bmFwfdsBXMVM=&h=818&w=1280&sz=119&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=hpvgW25UiwuCnM:&tbnh=143&tbnw=191&ei=kCgKTv6XNuHgiALCvZTeAQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dcircle%2Bwalking%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%2 6rlz%3D1T4PPST_enUS398US398%26biw%3D1680%26bih%3D7 77%26tbm%3Disch%26prmd%3Divns&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=520&page=1&ndsp=33&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0&tx=82&ty=77

There is nothing wrong to train for "health" only. If you care about "combat", after you get used to "cross legs", it will be hard to get ride of that "bad habit".

[wiz cool c]

this video is about 4 years old already. i stopped doing videos when they blocked the youtube here. but now i can use some software and get on again i want to start posting videos again but my camera is mad old. anyway here is a video of me in the blue sparring. there are a few small circles in there that helped get my opponent down. but mostly i used to use the bagua coiling to get around my opponents grips when sparring. I stop this a while back though because one of my coaches continually told me i'm not doing shuai jiao,eventually i understood he was right and started to practice a more aggressive approach to securing a grip quickly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6WRefA5u5I

[YouKnowWho]

Could you point out where on that clip that you used "bagua coiling"? It's very easy to see that neither you nor your opponent had any "leg crossing".

[wiz cool c]

basically every time i turned my arm over his. doesn't look like in the form but in my mind that action is coiling over the opponents arm to get inside his. my game as changed a lot since that video. i will try to get some new sparring up in the near future.