What does this clip have to do with kicking?

**Omar** · Posted On: 12/30/2005 6:56am

Thanks you for your comments Dale. I really appreciate your entrance on the thread. My better half is impatiently waiting for me to join her in the other room for a movie so I can't really respond right now but I will later. Besides, it would be nice to see if anyone else picks up on any of the things you mentioned.

Later.

**Mor Sao** · Posted On: 12/30/2005 7:02am

Brother O,

That kind of Gung Fu is the hardest and the most delicate to maintain, the dreaded and secret keeping the other half happy gung.

Enjoy the movie.

ZC, Usually when people are walking they are walking normally with the hips slightly tucked under like your sitting on a stool, with the legs in a hip width/natural gait for walking. Training it to be as you would be walking anywhere and anytime.

**Jekyll** · Posted On: 12/30/2005 7:44am

Originally Posted by Omar

l
There is one more valid problem with "crossing your feet" but it ain't mobility and it does require a specific context. I'm kind of waiting to see if anyone here at "strikestan" will see it. The blinders here are pretty subtle.

I'm thinking about this at the moment.

Crossing your feet is an transatory phase in a long step, and just like a normal step, if you're caught in the middle of it, you have limited options of where you can go.

You have to finish the step, you can't do something else, but what you can do is to modify it a little, bringing the step in short, or a little longer or a little more to the left or right.

At the same time it limits how you can throw a punch or take a blow.

Generally, I'd say it's to slow and limiting to use in the middle of a striking exchange, but it does have it's place as the other person closes the gap into striking range or in moving behind someone to take their back in stand up grappling.

Then again, I might just be talking out my arse.

**Omar** · Posted On: 12/30/2005 8:11am

We watched a bit of some Japanese comedy cartoon series she picked up but the DVD quality was so poor even here native Chinese ears had a trouble undestanding what they were saying. It was pretty funny but we got fed up with the shitty black market quality of the DVD and I am free to waste some more time on the internet. lol.

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So yeah. Mud stepping is how it was introduced to me. I've never trained any of the other kinds and in my mind they are all kind of non-standard or derivitives. I've never seen anything but mud stepping referenced in the old literature, only in the modern schools. Doesn't mean it isn't valid, just kind of auxilliary training. I've actually been slacking on it as of late as I kind of plateaud and got frustrated for a while and now recently I've started training Taijiquan proper so my stepping has gotten lain aside a bit of late. My standard practice for several years was to do an hour to an hour and a half of stepping each day in the moring mostly before sunrise.

Zombie,

I could answer your question by quoting Dale.

That outside leg could be applied in many different ways. You could use it to hook around the lead leg of someone who is coming at you in order to trip them, or slice their leg out from under them. You could raise the height of the hooking leg and kick the person in the thigh(that was mentioned earlier).

The round kick is really still just a step. It's not a Thai kick or a TKD kick or an anything kick. It's a hooking step. Just as Dale and I have both mentioned how by just raising the step a bit you can kick the person in the thigh, if you are closer, you can kneed them in the thigh. Time the steps quickly enough and toe-out behind someones lead leg as they jab and toe-in as they follow up with the cross and you have just taken their back. I've done it enough times to know it works. But you don't walk around them in a cirlce. You slice past them body to body as close as you could possibly be.

Apart from turning the corner with that step do you find that you are able to reliably walk the other direction before your patner can reorientate himself?

Have you considered that the "corner" may be represented by your opponents leg?

This is how I sometimes "turn the corner": http://media.putfile.com/kicking-drill

Get it? That's just one way. If putfile doesn't let you download it or has perhaps converted it into an .mpg try and download this clip from yousendit. I think the link should be still good:

The quicktime format makes it easier to slow it down or freez frame by dragging the timeline back and forth at whatever speed you want to view it at. That way you can see the footwork in the kick more clearly.

http://s22.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3...C1YISSE24NVM72

I'll prepare some vid caps in a moment to make my point.

pic attatched.

**Matt Bernius** · Posted On: 12/30/2005 8:26am

Originally Posted by omar

The round kick is really still just a step. It's not a Thai kick or a TKD kick or an anything kick. It's a hooking step. Just as Dale and I have both mentioned how by just raising the step a bit you can kick the person in the thigh, if you are closer, you can kneed them in the thigh. Time the steps quickly enough and toe-out behind someones lead leg as they jab and toe-in as they follow up with the cross and you have just taken their back. I've done it enough times to know it works. But you don't walk around them in a cirlce. You slice past them body to body as close as you could possibly be.

Thanks, this was the point I wasn't getting. This explanation immediately brings your use of Mudstepping into kicking into context. What had bugged me with the notion of the round house was the body dynamic to generate power. But utilizing a step as a kick makes sense.

Now I'll have to try it the next time I'm walking the circle and see if I can translate that head sense into body sense.

- Matt

**Locu5** · Posted On: 12/30/2005 8:28am

Originally Posted by Omar

Have you considered that the "corner" may be represented by your opponents leg?

I understand, the apex of any move or motion is just the point of a triangle that you are stepping around. I am curious, though if in addition to this you find you are able to swap leads before your partner can reorient himself while staying on the outside of the circle.

**Omar** · Posted On: 12/30/2005 8:29am

Check out the vid caps I just attatched. toe in - toe out - toe in. (with one the 3rd pic being a transitional pic added for context. )

**Omar** · Posted On: 12/30/2005 8:38am

Uh...that last post was aimed at Matt from the previous page.

For ZC I'd say that "outside" "inside" it's all irrelevant. To make any practical use of bagua you really have to rid yourself of any notions of walking circles per se. There is no imaginary circle or person that you are circling. There is just lots of curves. I may not even switch leads during the turn around. I may walk the circle backwards which is what amounts to a Shuai Jiao stealing step. The extreme toe in thing is not necessarily a change in direction along the circle. It could represent the entering footwork for a throw.

I wouldn't want to think in terms of swapping leads. That's just not how my brain processes the information. The feet have their responsability and the waist it's own and the hands their own. This kind of footwork allows the waist and the hands to do their thing more independantly of the feet yet still with the full support and power that they need. It's like acid jazz man. All kinds of **** riffing off each other on but still working together as a whole.

Here's something...look at just the first two vidcaps and play the video looking at only that part. Just pretend there's no kick comine after and what do you see? Like if I never showed the clip of the kick and only looped that lead up to the kick?

**Matt Bernius** · Posted On: 12/30/2005 8:53am

Originally Posted by Omar

Check out the vid caps I just attatched. toe in - toe out - toe in. (with one the 3rd pic being a transitional pic added for context. )

Agreed, that picture helps a lot. For some reason I was conceptualizing the turn to "copu" (sp?) and the direction shift as cutting off the kick rather than facilitating it. Must need more coffee or something.

- Matt

**The Crack Taoist** · Posted On: 12/30/2005 9:53am

Omar,
Good to see. The kick/kickstop drill is nice.

One of the points that nobody (except shooter) seemed
to get is the "what you train" vs. "what you can do" issue.

The other day I'm was talking to someone and fell into
a full front splits, cold, in jeans.

Do I train the splits? No. I sometimes do them.. but I don't
*train* them.
At 30+ yo and 6'3"/250#.
I can palm the floor flat-footed. I don't train that either.
It's just a byproduct/trick of apparently unrelated training :D

The flexibility comes from other training. Things like the circle
walking clip.