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. ...
Tomorrow our group will be running the interlocking shooting form, from 2024, as well as introducing the new form Matt Bild just uploaded to the Facebook group page, the turning the back shooting form. Should be a blast. Finally have a temperate day here on the east coast for a change.
Slight departure from the snake content but this is what the group studied yesterday. The following post is from the group Facebook page:
Training Lion system yesterday in our study group. Focusing on the different uses of the waist to generate force in the strikes. Moving with the waist, moving against the waist, and expanding the waist.
-The rising sweeping strike was used to emphasize the waist moving with the strike.
-The inward sweeping strike was utilized to place emphasis on the method of the waist moving against the strike.
-And lastly the upright chopping strike was used to emphasize more of a dropping or expanding usage of the waist.
First we started with a stationary strike drilling method to work on the waist and the arm/strike coordination. We then added in a step, using the triangle stepping in place or an advancing-withdrawing type of one step drilling method.
This allowed us to add in hand-foot harmony to the already used hand-eyes and waist-strike coordination. Thus turning...
