Serious leg workout: Yin Style Baguazhang style

I seriously wonder if there is a leg workout out there more effective than the lying step?
Monday, at group training, we focused on lying step, building up to and showing the new guys (yea! new guys!) the lying step sweeping form. We did the form a few dozen times, and we took a bunch of drills out of it and some of the others to practice the lying step technique. A few days later, I'm still pretty well convinced (by the lingering soreness!) that the lying step might be the best way in the universe to get strong, fast legs.

Here are some lying step training ideas for you to work in:

1. Go the distance: find a long, relatively straight distance to cover (a driveway, a gymnasium, a hallway) and do a lying-step strike, kind of one-step method, turning either forward or backwards, all the way down (and back!). Do it several times and feel your legs shuddering for days! From the Lion System lying step forms, these kinds of steps could either be the ones in "moves 3 and 5" or in "move 1," which gives you two very different drills and very different ways of frying your legs;
2. Box it up: Do your lying step drills (like "moves 3 and 5") in the box-stepping method, one advancing, one retreating.
3. One-two-three: You guessed it! Try doing the lying step drills (like "moves 3 and 5") along a line in the three-step drilling method. We tend to step on "one" by drawing the leg back and then extending it before the weight shift, but you could just do a weight shift there. It depends on your training and use goals.
4. Lying-step squats: all the fun of regular squats except that you keep one leg straight out in the lying-step position and do all the work with the other leg. This isn't strictly martial, but it turns your legs to mush.

A goal for development and training can be to get deeper, lower, faster, and stronger lying steps. You can facilitate the first two of those goals using side lunging stretches (drop into a lying-step position and use it as a stretch with your hands on your knees or the floor for support and safety... add strengthening and balance when you're better at it and more confident by lifting your hands). Other wide-leg hamstring and leg adductor stretches are helpful too. To facilitate the last two goals, try doing a smaller number of each drill and really pushing hard, trying to get some explosiveness in the technique (i.e. make it pliometric).

Of course, the real point is to be able to use it as well as to do it, not just to get a workout in. Be sure to combine in your strikes (see the forms for ideas if you need them) and to do this a lot. For it to be usable, you have to have excellent balance and the ability to place your foot precisely in an instant. You also have to be strong enough and flexible enough to get your leg and body into the correct positions for use, so while you stretch, drill, and strengthen, think about the uses!

Armchair Training

Training in an armchair? What the hee-haw? Before anyone salivates like I'm about to throw out some crazy awesome secret tip for how you can achieve development without having to get out of your comfy lazy-boy recliner (such tips do not exist in real martial arts or development practices of any sort), let me point out to you my predicament and the reality of this. I'm injured in a way where standing and walking are kind of out for the moment, except for bare-minimum requirements. It's absolutely amazing how much pain and impediment a toe can cause you, let me just say that.

So I have this rule: never zero that I've talked about before. How can I hold myself to "never zero" if I can't really even move around? Standing postures? Nope, not with this injury, at least not in full. Standing with wide legs or toes digging into the earth (especially that second one) is blinding pain right now. That's out until I'm healed up.

Well, while development is considerably lower, there are modifications of lots of the exercises that can be done while sitting. I even trained the saber! Several of the isometric postures with the saber can be trained without having to get up if your feet, knees, or legs are in no shape to let you train properly. Please note: this is not a substitute for proper training, you hee-haw, this is making the most of a crappy situation. While holding your body in an active, upright posture, the saber can be held out in a variety of ways to strengthen various parts of the arm and hands. Here are a few examples:

• Hold the saber overhead as in "green dragon shoots to the sea;"
• Hold the saber out in front, as in "black bear carries the mountain on its back" or "rooster stomps into battle;"
• Hold the saber out in front or directly out to one side as if completing a chop or stab;
• Hold the saber in front vertically, as in "monkey king offers incense;"
• Slowly move the tip of the saber from horizontal to vertical by flexing only the wrist, usually done out in front;
• Slowly rotate the saber from pointing left to pointing right, and vice-versa, using primarily the forearm;
• Hold the saber extended and turn the blade over without moving the saber much, as if working a screwdriver, as far as it will go one way and then back the other, trying to keep the tip stationary.

Other things you can do don't require the saber if you can't get on your feet but are otherwise healthy and able. For instances:

• Focus on other activities like strength training (using weights) or stretching (preferably both);
• Watch some YSB instructional videos and make notes. If you're training properly, this is an activity that is usually hard to make time for (if you're like me, you're more time-limited than anything else in terms of what limits your total training);
• Review your notes from previous training sessions, video viewings, seminars, or intensives. Reviewing them can mean compiling them as well, which is harder but very useful;
• Train your mind. Try to do techniques, particularly combos, forms, and applications vividly in your mind. Research shows that this kind of training is nearly essential for greatness in a skill. The mind should be central in your training anyway, so if your body is telling you that you can't train any other way, train this way;
• Do modified versions of exercises that accommodate your injury. For instance, standing normally isn't too bad for me now that I'm on the mend (but not fixed), so I can do isometric standing strengthening postures without putting any hard effort into my legs, and this practice isn't causing me pain. It is, however, giving me some development in my upper body and building skill in doing the exercises correctly on that half.

As I'm learning, letting yourself heal from an injury before pressing foward is critical or you'll lose more training time than you would by doing a bunch of halfed training sessions. I learned the hard way, when this injury was initially on the mend and got to "mostly feeling better but still injured" that doing a hard session too soon on an injury makes the injury worse. Instead of having to take another day of careful, controlled stuff like I mentioned above, I made things way worse and have lost nearly a week of good training time. One workout isn't worth losing six or seven (or more, depending on the injury)!

What is Yin Style Baguazhang

"What exactly is Yin Style Baguazhang?"

The following two links provide better information than I can, since they're from the source. You should definitely check them out and share them with all of your friends: About Yin Style Baguazhang and A Brief Introduction to Yin Style Baguazhang, both links courtesy of Yin Style Baguazhang International.

I get asked this question more frequently than I'd ever have expected, although I honestly wish I was asked it more often by more interested people. The answer, like the answer to so many questions in the world has various levels of depth, depending on who I'm talking to:

• "Yin Style Baguazhang is a martial art." [Obvious answer to people that are completely clueless about the martial arts].
• "Yin Style Baguazhang is a Chinese martial art." [Still obvious answer, usually to the same people, although sometimes the addition of "Chinese" is a conversation-ender, unfortunately -- thanks a lot, wushu competitions and kung-fu tards.]
• "Yin Style Baguazhang is an internal martial art from China." [The addition of the word "internal" usually comes when I know the person knows a bit about martial arts and that bit is "karate is martial arts and martial arts is karate." The word "internal" here has two effects: either it ends the conversation or it evokes another question: "You mean like Tai Chi?" More on this below.]
• "Yin Style Baguazhang is a deep and complex internal martial art from China that is relatively young, newly opened to the world, and focused primarily as a very effective fighting style." [That's what I say to people that know more about martial arts than "karate is martial arts and martial arts is karate" but less about martial arts than people that do a lot of martial arts.]

None of those answers is incorrect, but none of them is complete either. That, of course, isn't the same as saying they're wrong, but we can do better. Perhaps the best answer that I can give, given my current, rather low level of understanding of this deep and complex internal martial art from China, is something along the lines of

"Yin Style Baguazhang is a branch of baguazhang, which is the art of changing [oneself to accord to and to find and take advantage of a situation] with its theoretical underpinnings in the Yijing, the Book of Changes, and Yijing's "bagua," meaning its eight trigrams (which are symbolic representations of possibilities), in particular Yin Style Baguazhang is the branch of baguazhang that studies each of the eight trigrams individually as its own martial art as well as in a combined manner while adhering to the concept of a 'hard palm' approach."

I don't think many people would do well with that... which reminds me starkly of what it feels like when people ask me things like "What, in a nutshell, is your (doctoral) dissertation about?" If I try to give a satisfactory answer, I always end up getting that face, to which I have to pause and ask, "What? Did I lose you somewhere? We're almost done with Page 1."

So, after that face, usually one of the following long pauses and ensuing questions comes out, making that a good way to communicate what Yin Style Baguazhang is by comparing it with what it isn't:
...
...
...so, is it like "Tai Chi?"

The answer to this, of course, is "yes and no." Yes, it's internal, so yes, it talks about qi and the cultivation and practices thereof. Yes, it's a longevity art. Yes, it's sometimes all smooth and flowy. But...
No, it's not all soft. No, it's not always all smooth and flowy. No, it's difficult to kick someone's ass with what passes as taiji in most corners of the world today, but that's not the case at all with Yin Style Baguazhang, which is directly billed and trained as a fighting art. No, Yin Style training will make you sweat, a lot, often, and if you're not sore, then you're doing it wrong. To phrase it as my compatriot, B.A.M., once did (speaking to someone that would have been somewhat confused with "it's a Chinese martial art"),

"It's a bit like taiji... like taiji on steroids... with teeth." -B.A.M.

...
...
...so, is it like karate?

The answer to this is also "yes and no," of course. It's harder, at least in its practice methods, than most of what folks in the West tend to think of as "internal," but, though hard, karate is external. Yin Style Baguazhang is not so hard on the body as karate, though the training can be more physically demanding. There's no free sparring that I know of, and if there is, it's not considered a central method of training. Yin Style Baguazhang's overall "shape" is more circular than karate. Importantly, there is no filler in Yin Style -- everything is for use. I might catch hell for saying it, but it's flatly true: There is filler in karate, stuff that either has no use beyond demonstration or that fills in gaps between useful techniques (i.e. stuff that no one can remember a use for or that hasn't been handed down, or both). Everyone that does karate, at least on this continent, knows that truth if they're honest with themselves. In fact, in all likelihood, many techniques in many kata in karate have been modified from useful techniques after the uses were forgotten (not passed down from teacher to student before it was too late, e.g., or purposefully withheld until that same time) in order to give them new, often fruitless "uses." Yin Style Baguazhang, then, is not like karate.
...
...
...so, is it like BJJ (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) or MMA (mixed martial arts)?
No, it isn't. BJJ is primarily a ground fighting style. BJJ has some stand-up stuff, particularly throws, sweeps, takedowns, joint manipulation, and some basic standing self-defense, but it's primarily a grappling/wrestling art. Yin Style Baguazhang has aspects of joint manipulating, taking-down, and throwing the opponent -- what martial art wouldn't?!? -- but it combines those seamlessly with striking, stepping, and moving. There's no distinction of "now is when you can strike" and "now is when you can throw," at least not in the sense of there being rules that dictate what is and isn't allowed. In many ways, though BJJ is a good art that produces or supplements a lot of good fighters, it is a lot narrower than Yin Style Baguazhang. Also, BJJ tends to focus on the sporting aspect of the art rather than on the fighting aspect, although most decent BJJ players would make rather formidable fighters in real-life self-defense situations.

MMA is a sport, not a martial art, so that question is moot. It's a bunch of arts combined into a fighting strategy to be used in a sporting competition worth a lot of money. It makes good, dangerous fighters that can take their "games" to the street if needed, but MMA itself isn't a cohesive art and can't really become one -- even its name indicates that. Yin Style Baguazhang, by contrast, is a single unified style with an underlying theory that just happens to be every bit as encompassing (if not more) than MMA. The Chinese bagua is supposed to represent all possibilities, so one could say that baguazhang is the art of all possibilities.
...
...
...so is it all... you know... kung-fu-ey?
No, no, no! It's solid. It's practical. It's attainable. It's realistic. It's pragmatic. It is not esoteric, mystical, or filled with hoo-doo. You're not going to stand around in pajamas (silk or otherwise) breathing softly for a period of time and then become invincible or able to fart lightning. Since Yin Style Baguazhang is a Chinese art, some of it looks like what you see in wushu competitions, but much of it doesn't.

So... what about all that cool martial-arts-kind of stuff, like black belts and stuff?
We tend to train Yin Style Baguazhang in (comfortable) street clothes, the kind you would feel okay working out and sweating in -- including shoes. We don't wear uniforms or fool with belt ranks. We don't do a lot of bowing or kowtowing or calling people by titles. You can wear a belt if you want to, but usually athletic-type pants have a drawstring that helps keep them on for you. We essentially just train as well as we can in a really cool art with a lot of depth and value in it.

So... what do you need to know to know about what Yin Style Baguazhang is, in plain language without all the "hard palm" and "trigrams" business?

You need to know that Yin Style Baguazhang is a great, effective martial art from China that can be fighting-centered or health-centered that martially practices changing a fighting situation into a winning fighting situation. It has tremendous depth and complexity, but the methods of practicing are direct and effective. It's not widely known or practiced despite its value and efficacy. It has practices that many Westerners would find strange (like turning the circle practice -- which could serve as another partial answer to the "what is it?" question, with answer "baguazhang is the art of turning the circle"), but then again, so does any activity originating in another culture.

That last bit reminds me of something I thought of the other day that really tickled me. Since we often get asked why we turn the circle, I often retort or think of retorting with "why do you run?" Is it any more ridiculous to adopt a strenuous posture and walk in a circle as a form of personal training than it is to run with neither the goal of escaping danger nor the goal of getting somewhere else? Nope. So I imagined, ironically as I was out running, asking a runner: "What exactly are you running from, anyway?" The answer I came up with tickled me to no end: "Obesity."