Oh please, the only thing you guys discuss on this forum more than how to beat other styles is which lineage is more pure. Who is closer to the source. Wing Chun party line is so well known because it’s debated so publically
Other than my initial response, this is the most correct statement on this thread so far 
Count,
I was using “circular” in terms of the trajectory of techniques and the use of angular momentum, rather than the continuous nature or otherwise of the styles. And also, as you alluded before, to the turning and revolving nature of the techniques and footwork, your 360 degree centreline if you will.
Circular trajectories and use of angular momentum are not unique to Bagua or absent from WC or say, Xingyi, but they are popularly seen as a mainstay of the system.
A legendary mainstay of Xingyi and Bagua is the fight between a master of each system, the previously unbeaten Xingyi master challenged by one of the progenitors of Bagua. The match went on for three hours or days or some such, after which thgey called a draw, the two became busom buddies and made a pact that the two styles would be taught together from then on, hence the close relationship between the two. The complementary nature of the “straight line” Xingyi and the “circular” Bagua was something remarked on by Robert W Smith way back when and by many other commentators since.
This is a popular view of Bagua, espoused by many supposedly knowledgeable Bagua practitioners, so I would encourage you not to heap scorn on the ignorant, rather to educate them.
The use of straight punches and straight kicks and the mechanical efficiency of “a straight line is the shortest line between two points” are commonly touted as key advantages of WC, be that right or wrong. The WC marketing has it that anyone attacking us with circular techs is taking a longer path and leaving their centreline open, therefore we will always win.
If only it were so simple and easy.
Choy Li Fut, which is often portrayed as WC’s arch enemy, has techniques which follow circular and spiralling trajectories design to crash through or snake around the WC guard without allowing the WC guy to form a decent bridge from which to respond.
A lot of WC guys who do notihng other than chi sao and defending against other WC guys end up in trouble against stylists who use boxing short hooks and roundhouse kicks effectively, because they have been brainwashed into believing these techs are inefficient and this never practice seriously to overcome them.
While there is longtime rivalry in HK between the two styles, they are in fact highly complementary, maybe like Xingyi and Bagua though I agree that’s a bit of a stretch. My first instructor has been teaching a mix of WC, CLF and Bok Pai Sil Lum since 1969, very effectively.
As for your criticism of WC discussions, you’re right if somewhat uncharitable. Many Taiji and other neijia discussion forums are not that dissimilar, however.
Personally, my first instructor was an eclectic stylist and extremely proficient. He also tried very hard to foster sharing with other styles and schools in the area and encouraged his students to look outside. He ruined me as a stylistic purist from day one.
After several years with him, I moved cities and after several attempts to hook up with training partners which went nowhere, I took up Xingyi/Bagua with a guy in Sydney who was extremely knowledgeable (a China-qualified acupuncturist as well) but had some personality issues which made him a poor instructor. I nowattend a WC school and have done so for nearly 14 years, but in reality the curriculum includes boxing, kickboxing, modern weapons and a heavy emphasis on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as well.
I’m in 100% agreement that to learn to deal with other styles you have to go out and and work with them. There’s no substitute for experience.
Nice to see a fresh perspective on this forum.
Thank you all for the interesting discussion. I should visit here more often. A few questions for you Wing Chun guys/girls(?) who aren’t seeing my point yet, and than some exchange.
TjD, if most all techniques in Wing Chun take a straight path, than what is the the reason in chi sao(?) for arcing around a circle with your opponent? And what about throwing techniques?
And if power depends on the ground what does Number four in your signature mean? What do you do when you are on the ground for power?
KenWingJitsu, I don’t disagree with what you say but surely I made a few points that made sense to you? I would add that I totally agree with your initial statement, but you could be more forthcoming with some advice based on your own personal experience?
Yuanfen, isn’t the Dan Tien your physical center where power comes from? Don’t you focus on strengthening it and storing energy there in Wing Chun? Don’t your hits and kicks come from there?
Can you describe how wing chun foootwork is different?
Anerlich, there are some myths and misconceptions in your post too, but you make a lot of sense. I appologize for my somewhat uncharitable attitude, you are not mistaken about lineage arguments in all styles. I try and avoid those lineage disputes and answer with truth from experience and not from some legend I heard or something I read in a book. But my intention is to be charitable and share some concepts from bagua that you might face in a fight.
What style of bagua was the teacher teaching you? Did he have fight training or was it mostly drills, forms and applications?
Originally posted by count
[B]Thank you all for the interesting discussion. I should visit here more often. A few questions for you Wing Chun guys/girls(?) who aren’t seeing my point yet, and than some exchange.
TjD, if most all techniques in Wing Chun take a straight path, than what is the the reason in chi sao(?) for arcing around a circle with your opponent? And what about throwing techniques?
And if power depends on the ground what does Number four in your signature mean? What do you do when you are on the ground for power?
KenWingJitsu, I don’t disagree with what you say but surely I made a few points that made sense to you? I would add that I totally agree with your initial statement, but you could be more forthcoming with some advice based on your own personal experience?
Yuanfen, isn’t the Dan Tien your physical center where power comes from? Don’t you focus on strengthening it and storing energy there in Wing Chun? Don’t your hits and kicks come from there?
Can you describe how wing chun foootwork is different?
Anerlich, there are some myths and misconceptions in your post too, but you make a lot of sense. I appologize for my somewhat uncharitable attitude, you are not mistaken about lineage arguments in all styles. I try and avoid those lineage disputes and answer with truth from experience and not from some legend I heard or something I read in a book. But my intention is to be charitable and share some concepts from bagua that you might face in a fight.
What style of bagua was the teacher teaching you? Did he have fight training or was it mostly drills, forms and applications? [/B]
When you say “most techniques take a straight path”… there’s some truth to those words; after all, WC proverb states “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”. But, taken literally, that becomes a misconception. WC techniques don’t “force” a straight path; they tend to look for it, but they take an “open” path. My sifu often compares WC with water - water doesn’t choose, it takes any opening it can find. And that’s the purpose of Chi Sao (the way I understand it, and I may be wrong) - it teaches you to FIND an opening and then use it, not to create one.
Count sez(answers in brackets):
Yuanfen, isn’t the Dan Tien your physical center
(yes for chi gung)
where power comes from?
((No- mechanics and other things are involved. The dan tien is important but it is not the only thing in my wing chun.The dan tien plays a differnt role in wc compared to taiji))
Don’t you focus on strengthening it and storing energy there in Wing Chun?
((Storing energy and the dynamics of power are related but are not the same))
Don’t your hits and kicks come from there?
((Again- the dan tien is NOT the only thing- so not exclusively))
Can you describe how wing chun foootwork is different?
((Different from what. The fundamental structure is an alive and vibrant yee gee kim yeung ma- footwork comes from
timed coordinated moving-adjusting the structure minimizing loss of stability))
PS I have visited sifu Tsou’s site before and have met some baqua masters. (didnt spar with them)
Count,
My Bagua instructor learned from the Hung family in Taiwan. One of my Sihings at that school even trained with Wang Shu-Chin, mentioned in Robert W Smith’s books. Wang made this guy do Xingyi dragon stepping exclusively for about three months, just to see if he could take it. For those who don’t know, dragon steps are sort of like one legged jumping squats, very taxing and hard on the knees.
Most of the training was drills and forms, not nearly enough applications, tactics, strategy and fighting. Mostly working the circle and palm changes. We started to learn some linear forms, but the instructor got ****ed off about something for no good reason one night and decided that we weren’t ready for that after all (as I said, he had some personality issues that made him a poor teacher, though his own skill and knowledge were outstanding).
We used to compete in tournaments, but didn’t do that well - which i feel was a fault not of Xingyi and Bagua but rather my instructor’s teaching methodology (if you can call it that) and emphasis (which was to a large degree self-aggrandizement and increasing the dependency of his students on him).
I don’t doubt I have some misconceptions about Bagua. After some of the strange “information” and scenarios I was subjected to, I would fully expect this to be the case. Indeed, I would hope it was, as my ultimate summation of my experiences at that school leave me well in the red.
My instructor closed up his school and stopped teaching publicly in the late 1980s. He still works in the healing professions, though these days more as a chiropractor than acupuncturist. I haven’t seen him since then, though if I ran into him in the street I’d certainly have a chat to him. He was a likeable rogue in many ways.
A strange period in my life. There you go.
Quiet Man, your water analogy is a good one, though it’s hardly confined to WC. The instructor at a BJJ seminar I attended said much the same thing about winning in BJJ.
<<For those who don’t know, dragon steps are sort of like one legged jumping squats, very taxing and hard on the knees.>>
How do you compare the dragon steps to the Biu Mah in WCK?
Originally posted by count
[B]TjD, if most all techniques in Wing Chun take a straight path, than what is the the reason in chi sao(?) for arcing around a circle with your opponent? And what about throwing techniques?
And if power depends on the ground what does Number four in your signature mean? What do you do when you are on the ground for power?
[/B]
from my experience, the rolling of chi sau - while looking circular - is straight. the arms move in a rotational fashion, but the power and structure goes in a straight line. one person punches straight, the other does a bong sau which is moves out straight, they meet and the punch goes off target. a person does a low palm strike which goes out straight, it is met with a pak sau which also goes out straight, and the palm strike goes off target.
as for throwing - my sifu hasn’t shown me (or anyone else in the school afaik) any throwing techniques yet, however they are techniques which will take your opponent down to the ground. these are more body manipulation and chin na as i see it (but sifu doesn’t call them that 
). however, since i dont know anything about throwing i wont comment on it and make myself look like a fool
as to #4 in my sig, you cant utilize your opponents power without the ground. your structure coupled with the centerline makes your opponents punch add to your power for hitting them wherever. when i meet a strike with a tan sau (wedging arm), the arms make contact, their strike gets thrown off line enough so i dont get hit (in an ideal world), and the rest of the energy of their strike propels my tan sau forward, adding to my own energy. (just one example)
if there is no ground, its not possible to have any structure, and this all becomes a sloppy mess.
as to fighting on the ground, well my standing wing chun needs improvement so i’ve done none of that. however i do have a pretty good idea of what my standup wing chun should feel like and when i get there i’ll experiment in different areas although this will probably be more along the lines of not being taken to the ground, and if im there how to get back up.
Where I train there is a strong enphasis on circles, especially in rolling. Circles can generate and especially take a lot of force.
When we do Chi Sao we imagine there is a ball in front of us, holding our structure together.
When I trained W.T however, they made almost no reference to cirlces at all.
So I guess we cant generalize W.C as this or that. It depends on you lineage/sifu/yourself.
I assume that holds true in bagua too.
In the 80s, I had gone to a major national kung fu gathering
in Houston. At one point all the bagaua folks went off toa corner
to discuss bagua- they sounded like a gathering of wing chun folks discussing common principles!
I find it amusing that whever one of these “style vs style” questions come up that all the wing chun people automatically tak eones aspect that is generalized about a style and say how wing chun can to this or this or this
we make straw men up. it’s always easy to defeat straw men…real men are different because they’re not as static.
unless we truly know about a certain style we’re usually wrong about what we assume about it. the same can be said of how other stylists see us. just a bunch of chi sau-ing chain punchers and head hunters with linear attacks and secondary footwork. doesn’t sound that true does it?
bagua also has much internal aspects in the higher levels and it would not do too well to just brush the style aside because they supposedly attack in a circle and have “not-as-efficient” hands
I used to look down on hung gar because what little I knew about the style didn’t impress me. The keyword being “little I knew”. Just because a system takes a long time to learn effectively and its practioners might seem lacking doesn’t mean when done properly it’s ineffective. There are many bad wing chun ppl out there who make out style look bad too.
Anyways its off topic but Hung Gar has respect from me now. It’s not the style that was bad but the way it’s generally taught. When done correctly it’s as effective as anything. They also have internal aspects that they can very much use in real fight situations…so to those who dismiss those aspects of styles do not know enough.
Anyways just my thoughts as I know personally that many wing chun people tend to look down on other styles such as TKD, taichi, karate and no style should be be dismissed so easily
Originally posted by anerlich
Quiet Man, your water analogy is a good one, though it’s hardly confined to WC. The instructor at a BJJ seminar I attended said much the same thing about winning in BJJ.
I never said it was confined to WC, but then again, there are many ways to compare something with water:
but I was talking about putting an obstacle into the stream - water goes immediately around it, it doesn’t stop to think and it doesn’t try to “force” its way through it just to maintain a straight path. I think WC techniques react to blocks in the same manner. And once again, this may apply to any other art of which I know nothing about (I’m just a WC man, now and for ever :)) and therefore don’t say anything about it. I respect everything but have eyes for WC only
Originally posted by EmptyCup
… and no style should be be dismissed so easily
Good post, EmptyCup.
How do you compare the dragon steps to the Biu Mah in WCK?
I am not familar with this terminology. Are Biu mah circling steps, arrow steps, or something else?
Xingyi dragon steps as I was taught them go something like this:
From the preparatory stance, turn the front toes outward, like a stomping kick, and squat butt-to-heel on the back leg. You are now in a low position balanced on the rear ball of the foot and the heel/outside edge of the front foot. Reverse the arms and strike vertically downward as you drop with a splitting/metal strike.
Shift the weight forward onto the front foot and leap explosively up and forward, bringing the front foot through and striking downward with splitting/metal as you drop into the same one-legged squat stance on the other side.
Repeat.
This will either build quads, glutes and knee ligaments of steel or give you the mother of all knee injuries. When we went through a period of intense drilling of the Xingyi animal forms, of which this is one, a lot of guys dropped out because their knees were not up to it. There’s no doubting the intensity of the exercise for blasting the legs, plus it’s good for balance, but it’s also pretty risky while you’re learning.
There are no real analogs to this in the TWC I practice. I do a lot of ROSS/Sambo squat and shinbox drills which work the knee joints and ligaments quite rigorously, mainly for groundfighting facility, but these are IMO are not as hard on the knees and as risky as the Xingyi form detailed above.
Well said EmptyCup.
I learned the 5 elements a long time ago and don’t practice them so well could be rusty but from recollection the Biu/Bik/Jin/Whatever Ma was closest to the Wood Punch steps, while the Water (and maybe even Earth) steps were closer to the WCK Yee Ma. Metal used a double linear step I’ve seen in WCK but don’t have a distinct name for.
The way I learned them had different mechanics, however, than WCK, almost more exagerated.
RR
Count, as you may have noticed, there are many different ways that WC is practiced. There are definitely circular attributes. Probably more than linear ones in truth, but it depends alot on strategies and implementation.
I can see similarities to bagua stepping (at least from Li Zi Ming’s description)as well as Hsing-I, but I imagine others read what’s in the forms, and especially their implementation of them very differently.
I know teazer, it’s true. You would think from some of these discriptions they are talking about bagua. The footwork sounds identical in some cases. The question is, the intention behind the stepping. I don’t hear anyone talking about using the steps to steal the center and set up the throws. I don’t hear anyone talking about trapping with the leg or secondary hits that come from the leg. The question is not how to step, but where do you step to and why? These are a few of the focuses that make bagua different. The only way to understand this is to feel it first hand. I have more but I don’t have much time this week. I’ll check in when I can.