This October He Jinbao is back in the states for the first time since Covid. He’s been working hard, putting together some great material involving the Li and Kan trigrams. This is the Fire and Water trigrams, or the Rooster and Snake animal systems.
Two six day workshops are being held in upstate Massachusetts, October 3-8 and the 11-16. The syllabus should be available on the official yinstylebaguazhang.com website. The short of it is the first week mainly focuses on rooster system. Rushing, dodging, extending, and rising attack methods. The last two days transition into snake with shoulder and elbow methods.
The second week runs through the remaining snake attack methods: knee, hip, shooting, holding, entrapping, and grasping.
I’m very excited to be attending the second week, although I wish I was able to attend the both weeks. Rooster is fast and aggressive, the lying step palm. Using quick hands and long deep footwork, rooster system is what we refer to as a miss matched trigram. Although it belongs to the yin trigrams it has a lot of elements that could be considered yang. The snake system is essentially the opposite, as it belongs to the group of yang trigram but utilizing techniques with more of a yin flavor. Snake, as the “moving with the force palm”, doesn’t use force on force but a yealding and following, or moving with the opponents force. Such is fitting for a system adeptly named the smooth palm.
There seems to be a strong focus on forms this time around which is a pivot from past workshops involving snake. Due to the technical nature of the snake system a foundation in the individual strike methods is especially needed. Training the individual strikes and short combos help one along this path greatly. I can’t wait to dive into the snake forms and as such I have decided to cover a form in preparation. Although the Rooster forms are available through hyperlinks on the syllabus Snake’s is not.
However, one can still study moving with forms from the other animals systems to get a feel for what’s to come.
The ‘moving with the force’ grasping form from the lion system has a strong snake flavor, so I have decided to break that form down. Look out for an upcoming post with this material, until then, train well and prepare well for the upcoming season.
Here I introduce the basic elements of the snake system. I will be putting together some of my favorite snake combos in the coming weeks. I’ll try to also upload some run throughs of the applications as I am able.
Here I discuss using the rear hand to directly attack and open the opponent as opposed to the first two methods that address a more responsive role, responding to the opponent by rushing or withdrawing. Here we will initiate an attack in order to cause and utilize the response. Soft and leaning strikes are introduced as well as the method of turning the back.
In this clip I explain how the withdrawing attack method specializes in stepping and how that can be utilized based on the forms and direction changes of the bear system. Drilling these short combos can be beneficial to those new to the art as a way to get familiar with the different systems and strategies. Drilling these combos can also benefit more seasoned practitioners by giving them an idea of how to apply the art in real life situations.
Yin style Bagua is first a combative art. Unlike many traditional arts these days we study strictly for combative use. YSB contains no watered down flamboyance as is found in many other traditional arts in current times. Training of Yin style Bagua is strictly for self defense and is taught as it has been handed down to us from the practitioners who came before us.
Dong Hai Chuan passed down the art of Bagua to Yin Fu, his greatest and longest studied student, to whom this branch of Bagua is named for. Yin Style Bagua differs from other styles of Bagua in many ways. Yin Fu passed his art on to Men Baozhen, who in turn taught Xie Peiqi. Dr Xie trained He Jinbao fully in the combative aspects of this art. All these practitioners hailed from Beijing, where He Jinbao resides to this day. He Jinbao teaches workshop across the United States and Europe annually. There are many study groups in the States that train regularly and come together to attend these workshops throughout the years. ...
Last class focused on snakes entrapping and grasping methods. Entrapping is said to be like a hand cuff, not too tight but still holding fast. So a light but strong grip. Seems counter intuitive but this is obtainable with finger strength. A strong grip with a lot of pressure on the opponent will cause them to react as if in danger. Where as a lighter grip may not cause a immediate reaction from the opponent, or might not trigger a “danger” response.
Grasping is paired with seizing in the Lion system, different than how it’s looked at here in snake system. Even in the sense that it’s not exactly “paired” here in the snake system. With Lion system seizing and grasping are often refers to different sides of the same coin. Meaning an attack to control and subdue the opponent would be a seize, but the same technique applied faster or with more explosive force, causing damage to the opponent, would be considered a grasping attack.
With the Snake system grasping attacks, damage is...
It’s hard to get anything posted between classes, birthdays, and the holidays. It is most important to keep up on your personal training at home. I have been working more on reviewing Lion, Dragon, and Bear recently.
The few classes we’ve had in the past month have worked with snake shooting and starting some holding. We continue reviewing the first four attack methods and their new forms. At this point we have three shooting forms that have been broken down and drilled extensively. The strikes themselves are of the utmost importance to train. It is not as important to remember all of the various forms. It is far more important to really drill one or two forms until your blue in the face so to say. This year HJB stressed we need to know a couple forms to the point that we will never forget them, “make them yours” he said.
I take this to mean knowing the forms inside out and backwards. Drill the form as a whole, in smaller combos, change up the combos based on differences between ...
