without having read the wiki article, my understanding is that the whole "idea" behind yiquan was that Wang Xiangzhai was of the opinion that a) practicing forms was an artifact and a waste of time (
) and b) that because of the emphasis on forms practice as opposed to live drilling, TCMA had lost its capacity for practical application (
); and this from a man whose base system was
xingyi, mind you, hardly a system known for "flowery" hands!
the foundational practice of the style is standing and Wang supposedly would have students do standing, in front of him, for 8 hours straight as a "test" of their mastery (this is based on, AFAIK, 3rd hand report, I believe); after standing practice there is some solo movement practice, but much of the style is dedicated to live partner work: close quarter bridging work that looks like a hybrid of push hands and chi sao; then they do a lot of non-contact sparring work as well;
in regards to the standing, Wang's purpose for this was to create fluidity in movement; personally, I can attest to how practicing standing worked for me in this regard; whether it makes me a better fighter, I don't know, but qualitatively my taiji movement has continued to be less disjointed over the years; I attribute this to standing because I have experimented by not practicing taiji for periods of time and focusing on standing alone, and then doing taiji and seeing the differences, as well as having it verified by my teacher watching me; just a subjective perspective, of course, I am unable to generalize this phenomenon;
the interesting thing is that when u see yiquan guys fight, it looks more like boxing / kickboxing than it does TCMA "fighting" (whatever that really may be); suggesting that, if Wang was looking for a "natural" stye of fighting, that us silly, external westerners might actually be onto something!
rumor has it that no one cared to fu(k w/Wang, and he supposedly had a running add in a Beijing newspaper inviting all comers, and despite many challengers, was undefeated; of course, I have no proof of this, so it's hard to say for certain;