Sissy Slap Fighting – NOT!
The first thing that I thought when I saw the above clip an hour ago was “Who are these nerds?“, followed by “Please tell me he’s not slap-fighting?” and “Close your fist and call it boxing!“. Then I started to notice the body movement and how relaxed slapping nerd #1 was and thought “This guy isn’t too bad. It looks pretty fluid and powerful!” …
This was my very awesome visual introduction to Ba Gua.
Ba Gua Zhang is recognized as one of the three orthodox “internal” styles of Chinese martial art (the other two being Xing Yi Quan and Tai Ji Quan). Ba Gua literally translates to Eight trigrams. Zhang means palm and designates Ba Gua Zhang as a style of martial art, which emphasizes the use of the open hand in preference to the closed fist. Ba Gua Zhang, as a martial art, is based on the theory of continuously changing in response to the situation at hand in order to overcome an opponent with skill rather than brute force.
After I watched a few more of these YouTube videos from walkthetalk I realised I’d forgotten how graceful and fluid most martial arts can be. After feeling a little betrayed by how ineffective I believed Hapkido was I turned to a steady diet of Boxing and Brazillian Ju-Jitsu 18 months ago. Both these sports felt far from graceful and after a while it just became normal to feel so rigid and hard. Boxing with it’s strict ring rules and “down to business” attitude made me narrow my field of vision for both attack and defense. BJJ also pulls me in another direction where I’m finding myself not throwing an elbow to the back of the head or crushing testicles simply because … Well, it’s a sport with rules.
These Ba Gua videos and their fluid and powerful movements have inspired me to reflect on how I can improve my overall MMA skills by not just thinking in a two dimensional Boxing or BJJ fight mode. I probably need to re-integrate the fluidity of my long lost Hapkido faith with the rigidity of my current sports to understand how I should be moving instead of just blind repetition and drills through my coach.
Oh, and I’ll be wary of nerdy looking dudes in the park who can bitch slap me silly … :-p
