Do you guys do any kind of partner training, sparring or rou shou in your bagua lesson?
bagua
i personally havent trained rou shou wiz. we do a lot of two person drills and in advanced levels we spar. i have done some training we call ridge hand that builds sensetivity and helps develop real time technique for use of bagua in combat. it also helps toughen the arms a great deal.
Cheng style is usually more throw/grappling oriented because Cheng Ting Hwa was a Shuai Jiao practitioner. As the story goes, Dong Hai Chuan trained his disciples the Ba Gua principles according to their own martial experience.
cheng style
yep that is all true zen. cheng ting hwa was actually a master of sun lutang. you can also see the shuai jiao in sun style. sun is just more focused on the animal forms and simplicity in mind.
[QUOTE=Zenshiite;820329]Cheng style is usually more throw/grappling oriented because Cheng Ting Hwa was a Shuai Jiao practitioner. As the story goes, Dong Hai Chuan trained his disciples the Ba Gua principles according to their own martial experience.[/QUOTE]
what type of partner training/sparring do you do in your school.
ridge hand is two person training similiar in a way to the two person drills in wing chun, as its also used to strengthen your forearms. we are allowed to do light to mid contact sparring without gear in advanced levels. it’s possible my school does train rou shou I just personally haven’t.
bagua for combat
does anyone on here do a lot of real time drills for use of their baguazhang for self-defense?
[QUOTE=wiz cool c;820403]what type of partner training/sparring do you do in your school.[/QUOTE]
I don’t actually go to a school. I have a private instructor, also a good friend. Lives in Cali, I’m in PA. It’s not conducive to the kind of immersion I would like to get, but that may be remedied soon.
Most of the partner work I did at one time wasn’t specifically ba gua partner training, and I don’t think I’ve advanced that far yet. But I’ve done some push hands and sticking hands. A little bit of sparring type drills. Not too much on that front as my training partner/kung fu brother sort of disappeared from the map and stopped his training. 
I’m working on getting another one sorted out for my purposes, with hopes of getting him training with my Shrfu.
[QUOTE=shaolin_allan;820716]does anyone on here do a lot of real time drills for use of their baguazhang for self-defense?[/QUOTE]
This is how Bagua was traditionally practiced, and how many still practice it. My view is that the applications for every palm change should be understood, practiced repeatedly until they are internalized (in the sense of muscle-memory), and can be executed against a RESISTING partner, before one moves on to the next palm change.
Other than that, just walk the circle… a lot. Walk then walk on bricks, then bricks on their side, then dig out a little in the ground and fix the bricks straight up. Repetition of the fundamentals in Bagua is the core of what the art is about martially. In the early years they just had single and double palm changes; and double palm change was just two singles back to back.