Yin Style Bagua – He Jinbao – Seizing and Grasping

Yin Style Bagua – He Jinbao – Seizing and Grasping

Bagua Master He Jinbao

Unlocking the secrets within the Bagua circle-walking forms can be a daunting task.
The spinning, coiling and stepping patterns are beautiful to watch and perform, but beginning practitioners can have difficulty understanding how to use the system in self-defense.
In this video, “Yin Style Bagua: Seizing and Grasping Attacks” Bagua master He Jinbao covers a multitude of locks, controls and throws from the Yin system. The production quality is generally good, with the video shot in full sun outside on a clear day. Master He Jinbao is an imposing figure, tall and thickly built, perfect for the grappling methods of Yin Bagua. The DVD suggests that “the video is intended for practitioners already familiar with the fourteen seizing and grasping forms of the Qian trigram lion system”. This may be the video’s only shortcoming, which I will explain later.
The video covers:
*Very close grappling, pre-clinch to clinch
*Using strikes to bridge the gap
*Wrapping and trapping both arms
*Throwing – by using leverage against joints, by pulling the opponent off balence by crossing his arm or arms across his centerline, and by seizing the waist
*Manipulating the head and neck
*Pressure point strikes
— What the video lacks:
While I have had classes in Yin and Sun style Bagua, I currently am practicing a version of the Cheng system. It would have been very helpful for the Master to have introduced more motion into the techniques. Many are shown from somewhat static postures, assuming the viewer has clear knowledge of the various Yin palms. It would be more easily understood by a wide variety of stylists if the techniques were introduced from the circle-walk or a more active attack-defend pattern. If anything, the video has too many techniques, rather than centering on a more complete presentation of fewer techniques. Despite these issues, I found a great deal of information and ideas to process that will directly translate into the stepping and coiling patterns I practice.
For Yin Style Bagua students, this video is a valuable training tool. For any internal arts stylist, this video will give ideas of locking and throwing that you may not have considered, and will add some unique techniques to your grappling toolbox.