Ba Gua Training Tips #2: Walk the Walk

What’s up with the way these Ba Gua guys walk around in circles all the time? As our Xing Yi instructor likes to say, “those guys look like they know what they’re doing, they just don’t have any idea where they’re going.” Well, as usual, he’s half right . Ba Gua walking is a little strange at first, but don’t worry. There is a rhyme and a reason to it all. Read on…

In the interest of keeping this simple, we will examine one aspect of Ba Gua circle walking at a time. Let’s tackle the question WHY first. Not just why we walk in circles (because that’s not the only way we practice) but why we modify our walk from a normal human gait to the low and twisted gait of a Ba Gua player.

When a human being walks normally we are essentially falling forward.  It’s very efficient and our bodies are evolved to move in this fashion. But Ba Gua is designed, ultimately, to be used in self defense or body-guarding type situations that may involve multiple attackers or maneuvering through crowds. Therefore, we have to adjust our walk accordingly.

The first key to proper Ba Gua walking is to stop falling forward. The Ba Gua player will need to be able to change direction suddenly and stably, exert force in any direction, and be resistant to bumping, tripping, pushing, and pulling. Our normal forward falling walk must be pinned down and stabilized. By lowering the hips, bending the knees, keeping the ankle relaxed but firm, and the foot flat and close to the floor we begin to see the weight shift back over the support foot.

The object of all this adjustment is to maintain the center of balance over the supporting foot until the stepping foot touches down. At that point the stepping foot becomes the support foot and holds the center of balance 100% until the next successive step is taken. To illustrate, one of the “games” we play as we walk the circle is for the instructor to occasionally yell “red light!”—causing the students hold where ever they are in the midst of a step. Much of the time this leaves them with one foot up and one down, and if they freeze and don’t tip this lets them know they are walking correctly. Walking on bricks is also excellent practice, but more on that in another blog.

Walking in this fashion often feels awkward to the new student, but after sufficient time they will begin to feel comfortable and stable. The ability to “pin down” becomes almost subconscious. I have saved myself more than one twisted ankle (or embarrassing prat-fall) by automatically switching to a Ba Gua walk as I stepped off of an unexpectedly high curb or onto a patch of ice.

Once the basic method is learned it can be varied from very deeply bent knees and long steps to a fairly upright “baby step” staccato that is useful in dense crowds. Expansion on the basic walk also takes one from the circle to the bricks, to the figure eight, to the 9 stations, etc…The weight transfer remains the same—as close to 100% as possible on the support foot through the entire step. Once a Ba Gua player gets the walk up to speed you get an effect often called a continuous root, constantly moving while being constantly rooted at the same time. It takes a while to achieve this, and even longer to be able to keep it consistent, but developing this method is essential to proper Ba Gua tactics.

Next time we will address: the twist up top!

Thoughts?