Great Internal Martial Arts Blog

Western practitioners are often out at a disadvantage when it comes to studying the roots and principals of Traditional Chinese Martial Arts. We are often left to "oral histories" from teachers and friends. Unfortunately this can lead to a sort of inbred opinion regarding other style within a particular branch of the same martial art.

The guy that runs this website is translating articles from Chinese into English and publishing them on his site. Go check him out. Great stuff.

http://wulinmingshi.wordpress.com/about/

Xing Yi Flavor

Here is a cool video showing some Xing Yi like body mechanics. They are from the Liu Dekuan lineage where the famous "Linear 64" set comes from. That set is practiced by just about every bagua zhang school and they are just a little bit different. But check out this guy.

Good Qigong Warm Up Set

This video made of Xuan Tongzi is a great warm up/neigong set to be done before a bagua zhang class.

Military history of hsing yi chuan

Famous practitioners of this art in China were almost always connected to some military organization or another. With that in mind, notice that it is possible to do all of the movements in Hsing yi chuan standing shoulder to shoulder with someone else. It would be easy for rows and rows of men to fight next to each other in an infantry situation. The moves are easily translated into a variety of infantry type weapons like the spear and sabre. The body mechanics required for the practice of hsing yi allow a person to put a tremendous amount of force into a weapon which would be necessary to fight someone with armor. Also the percussive strikes and drag down/takedowns would probably be useful. The percussive hits allow you to transfer force through armor. The drag downs, lateral throwing, and takedowns disrupt the men in front of you which would cause major diruption in the opposing armies ability to mount any sort of organized resistance.
After keeping this pet theory in my head for a few years I happen to come across a U.K. practitioner and teacher named Damon Smith. He confirmed my theories as his teacher taught him how to use all the animals and elements with weapons. Each animal has teachings of specific associated battlefield strategies. Hsing Yi practitioners interested in the historical origins of that art should definitely obtain a copy of his first book. It really gives a lot of history that many of the U.S.lineages just don't know about or have access to.

It is important to keep the historical application of your chosen art in mind.
Next I hope to talk about Sun Lu Tang's contribution to the development of the art.