I’ve heard a couple of people, both bagua instructors, ask recently what the value of mud stepping is. “You would never use it in combat”, they say. Well, I don’t know; I can’t even do it consistently in practise, so I need to hold off making a judgement for quite some time. My teachers may know, but if they do I don’t know if they’ve said anything about it because I don’t speak Chinese and neither of them speaks English. (I’m not counting Alex here, because I’ve only had the one workshop with him so far).
And yet: mud stepping is a fundamental part of baguazhang. Did Dong Hai Chuan practise it himself? I’m not sure, based on my reading. Yin Fu probably didn’t since, in my very limited understanding, it doesn’t feature strongly in the Yin Fu style. Cheng Ting Hua certainly did use mud stepping, and so we can be pretty certain that it was endorsed by Dong, bagua’s founder. So mud stepping has been a part of bagua since the lifetime of bagua’s founder, if not from the very, very beginning. Since Dong and Cheng can be understood to have known what they were doing in combat, we can also safely assume that it’s useful and functional, and anyone trying to dismiss it now must be lacking some kind of insight.
So, what’s it for? This will be the subject of years of experimentation and speculation for me, I guess, as I try to attend to exactly what my body is doing during circle-walking sessions. Here are some initial thoughts:
- Mud stepping, done properly, means that the sole of the foot is never exposed, and therefore isn’t vulnerable to attack. I heard this explanation in Beijing, but I’m not convinced by it.
- In circle walking, the ‘inner’ foot steps forward in a straight line; the ‘outer’ foot steps inward in a kou bu. Since mud stepping extends the front foot further forward than in a normal step, the back leg has to swing in a bigger arc as it comes forward. This stretches and opens the hips and the base of the spine.
- This same action encourages softness and ‘emptiness’ in the waist, and the tucking in of the coccyx; it’s much, much easier to walk the circle whilst mud stepping with these two postural habits (which are mentioned in the Cheng style’s Ten Important Points and Eight Methods). This helps to build up qi, as well as flexibility.
- Similarly, keeping the head upright and the back straight (also part of the Ten Important Points and Eight Methods. It’s much easier to get away with slouching or leaning back with normal stepping; very difficult with mud stepping.
- Mud stepping demands that the circle walker is able to drop his weight and centre of gravity to the lower dan tian. You just can’t do this step properly if your shoulders are all bunched up and your centre of gravity is high.
- As the forward foot slides forwards, the back leg is bearing the body’s whole weight, while that weight is sinking (the body has to come down as the foot goes forward), and then propels the weight forward. This strengthens the achilles tendon, the ankle, stretches the hamstring, and develops lots of muscles in the lower leg area. This develops explosive power, endurance, and flexibility.
- For the same reason, ie holding the entire body weight, mud stepping encourages the practioner to walk properly. We may think that we do anyway, but we often don’t. Many of us would just have to look at the soles of our everyday shoes to see that they are more worn in some places than others. That indicates bad habits in walking, where we load our weight badly. Mud stepping, to be done properly, needs the feet to land flat, and the weight to be transferred smoothly and evenly along the centre line of the foot. I know that day-to-day, I tend to put the weight more on one side than the other, so my feet roll as I walk. It’s a bad habit that mud stepping is correcting.
- Mud stepping unquestionably improves the practitioner’s sense of balance.
- Note that lots of these attributes may well be particularly valuable to a wrestler, which was Cheng’s background before he began to study with Dong.
These are a few points based on my observation so far during my practise. It still doesn’t mean that you would use mud stepping in combat. However, it’s pretty clear to me that you’ll be better in combat if you use mud stepping in training.
Feel free to add more in the comments, or to explain to me why I’m wrong. These are just observations from a novice; I’m aware that my ignorance is boundless.
Rambling from another novice :-
Point No. 1 – many ways to attack the foot; most of it is via timing so i’m not so sure this is a valid point
Point No. 2 – from what i have seen of your fellow student i’m not sure this is true either-if anything it made his walking more unnatural and slow instead of fast and nimble which is the characteristic of bagua walking-maybe he didn’t practice long enough though he insist that he was doing correctly
Point No. 3 – if that is true, then i have yet to see it in Singapore at least. I have only seen this flavor in a Beijing master once amongst the few that have put out VCDs. I have also not seen this in any youtube clips. Still keeping an eye out
Point No. 4 – this can also be true with crane stepping and in fact much more rigorous than in mud stepping because of the requirement to lift the foot up to knee height in crane stepping
Point No. 5 – this is a point! This is also true for crane stepping which requires dantian control in order to step fast, change fast and spiral / turn body quickly without losing balance
Point No. 6 – not sure about explosive power and flexibility especially explosive power. I have not seen any Cheng stylist with good explosive power. Power of the consolidated-gather momentum-linear ramming type yes but explosive power of the sudden release-sudden finish type no. Try looking at Tian bagua and you can really see the explosive flavor
Point No. 7 – good point
Point No. 8 – good point
Point No. 9 – quite true because many of the techniques in cheng bagua is modified from Chinese wrestling and mud walking facilitates the execution of wrestling techniques
You know me in real life? Be sure to say hi some time! Regarding points 2 & 3: I’m thinking a lot about the way Alex taught in the seminar, and some of the techniques he showed us to open up the joints, and so on. At this stage in my practice, I’m thinking about how bagua re-shapes, and re-moulds, the body and mind.
So, point 2 is just something that I observe personally; doing a wide swing during practice opens up the base of my spine and the top of my pelvis below the spine. If I do this regularly in practice, I’ll have a much wider range of movement. This would help make me ‘faster and nimbler’ when needed. Bruce Frantzis said something about this that I’ll try to dig up. Which of my fellow students were you talking to?
Point 3 is something you wouldn’t observe in my practice, but I’m working on it all the same! As I walk the circle, I’m looking inwards to try to detect which muscles are tense, and what happens as I relax them. A lot of muscles around me waist do tend to be stiff; as I focus my attention on them, they soften, and the circle walking becomes easier. It’s a more of a mental thing at the moment.
Thanks for your comments, anyway. Who are you studying bagua with?
hey emlyn – don’t know about alex’s stuff so can’t comment. but on mdm ge’s side if there is then those students i know aren’t practicing hard enough. i shouldn’t mention names since i don’t know whether they want to be dragged into this. from experience, its one thing to say practice A helps develop habit B which enables me to do technique C when required. but until you really try it out you can’t really say you can do technique C, can you?
i don’t do bagua anymore but i’ve meddled with sun, yin and tian. p.s. – i heard about you from one of your instructors in another style you are doing when we met one time
As far as I know, the tang ni bu improves greatly the fleetness of your feet. I remember that when I was doing a few hours of it a day while in Shanxi, my Xingyi rooster also became hellishly fast.
Also, the higher the foot is raised off the ground in combat, the more time there is for the opponent to catch you off-balance.
The last reason is historical: booby-trapped palace corridors. Slide your foot along and you’d be fine; step from on high and you’d end up missing toes from the spikes set in the flooring before too long.
damn! u brought up a good point! come to think of it – i always slide along the floor especially when walking in the dark to avoid kicking into walls
[...] explanation for mud stepping! I’ve wondered about this before. Master Zhou’s explanation is simple – it stops too much pressure being put on the [...]