Giant Roc, what purpose?

It is always interesting to see how different people explain basic training practices. I would be curious to see how folks on this board would answer this question. Let us say you are teaching the eight basic palms (i.e. the ones where you circle holding one of eight static arm positions: fierce tiger leaves the mountain, giant roc, white ape presents peach and the rest) and the student asks you:

Why are we learning this? How does it improve my pakua?
Your answer would be?

And let me make the question more specific: a student is being taught for example Giant Roc Spreads Wings and he says to you:
What exactly am I supposed to be learning or practicing from this?
Why this particular hand/arm formation, what is it teaching me?

I am talking about this posture:




Now I realize there are stock/general answers such as:
You are learning to maintain correct body alignment while moving.
You are learning to be able to stay focused while moving.
You are strengthening your arms by holding them in static positions while circling
You are doing qigong


Or, on a cynical note, (which an instructor would never say out loud but still might be a reason) "you are learning this so I can drag out the program and increase the amount of time it takes to learn my system; which also increases my income. Basically it is a way to slow you down and kill class time".

What do folks think?
Take care,
Brian

My Bagua is pretty limited, but I have done the exercise you are describing. It was called Eight Mother Palms when I learned it, however my Instructor never taught application just movement...so this will just be my interpretation.

“	What exactly am I supposed to be learning or practicing from this? Why this particular hand/arm formation, what is it teaching me?	”

This is teaching multi-limb coordination by moving all limbs at once in a specific fashion. It is also teaching proprioception by forcing limbs not in line-of-sight to be in specific locations that only your mind's eye can perceive (thus relying on "feeling" like your back arm is in the correct position). Combat wise you would likely not extend the back arm in a mirrored fashion, but by doing so now forces the torso to twist correctly into the right position, reinforcing this position for beginners.

The last portion of the question is open to interpration. I would suggest that the arm position facilitates a good parry/deflecting of an incoming attack while the footwork creates new angles of attack that can open up targets for a counterstrike.


One of the other things that I can compare the Eight Mother Palms to is the Baji practice of its movements. The difference is the execution of the movements, but both will hold the posture for a number of breaths to develop internal strength. With the Baji, for example, during the breathing the time is used to correct posture and make sure everything is aligned so that during the next explosive movement everything will move into the correct alignment without as much adjustment as before.

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Lifting/carrying for application use. I don't remember much of the bagua I learned.

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Good Morning WraithAlcon, CLFSean;
Thanks for the ideas. I do see uses for it but what prompted my question is, some pakua guys go nuts and claim you should do these "mother palms" for hours a day. That seems like it would get to a point of diminished returns quite quickly. (now in fact I doubt seriously if many people ever really do these "for hours"; a lot of that kind of talk is b.s.)

But it is interesting to see what people have to say.
take care and thanks,
Brian

To me this is heaven palm in Jiulong Baguazhang, The most Yang of all the 8 palms. teaching one how to attach and uplift toward the heavens like a dragon taking flight from a field.

Also teaching how to take pressure down through the arm structure and learn to feed it through the structure of the body and into the ground.

Also you can poke someone in the throat as well as other soft places with such concepts as well.

Love the Shuai Jiao jacket....

Be well, train hard and heal quickly

Dale

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“	Originally Posted By: brianlkennedy Good Morning WraithAlcon, CLFSean; Thanks for the ideas. I do see uses for it but what prompted my question is, some pakua guys go nuts and claim you should do these "mother palms" for hours a day. That seems like it would get to a point of diminished returns quite quickly. (now in fact I doubt seriously if many people ever really do these "for hours"; a lot of that kind of talk is b.s.)	”

Yeah, time wise I think training something like this "for hours" might be focusing on something less martial. I believe internal training is a key component, but not at the expense of actual martial practice. When we did this we would hold each posture for 8 breaths, and it took awhile to get through. But like I said, we never practiced application with these...so in essence it was more of a qigong exercise than anything else.

I know for time purposes, a lot of things that I hear to hold for 8 breaths I actually just shorten to 3 (except a handful of qigong exercises). I do this mainly because of time constraints.

__________________
"You must eat bitter before you can taste sweet"- Iron & Silk
"I see no virtue where I smell no sweat"
"Arm yourself because no one else here will save you" - Chris Cornell

this posture is part of the ding shr ba zhang, or steady posture eight palms set, and as others have indicated it is 'pure yang' and corresponds to energy of the 'heaven' trigram. in our style, the purpose of this and the other seven postures is to (a) get beginners to circle walk without worrying about moving their hands, (b) developing posture and moving root so that the weight of the arms is transferred through the body (rather than causing fatigue), and (c) begin to physically manifest the energies of the 8 trigrams.

a very improtant foundational exercise for cheng style bagua.

pete

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visit us on the web: Silk Wind Studio Huntington Long Island Tai Chi Yoga Martial Arts

Thanks much for the additional information. I appreciate people taking the time to write.

take care,
Brian

My teacher, grand-teacher, and many of my fellow students walk the circle for 1-2 hours per day (so it is not BS, although I unfortunately am too much of a wimp to do this ). There are concrete reasons why this is a useful (and, for baguazhang, the most essential) practice, both internal and otherwise. Obviously, trying to do all 8 palms (or more, as some styles actually have more than that) an hour each (or whatever) will take far more time than any of us have, though (so I personally only practice 4-5 of the palms for the most part).

Incidentally, nice photo, Brian! Looking good, there.

Also, nice post, very interesting subject to talk about.

Ed

Hi Ed,
Great to hear from you. Hope all is well, thanks for the good words on the photo. I appreciate that too.

take care,
Brian

It's both a generic thing training the use of arms in that long position, strengthening the arms and connection, and a mild practice leading into using that on either side when wrapping, heads, etc. I prefer viewing such generic stuff and "applications" separately, as the dynamics of applications is not exactly visible in such moves that train your body. If all you need would be "technique", you wouldn't have any exercises. Just whacking at some volunteer.

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Incidentally, in Zhang Jie's new book "Liu Bin's Zhuang Gong Bagua Zhang Vol. 1" he details a set of 24 methods of 8 animals, which seems to be a set of 24 stationary palms walking the circle (with short forms to change direction). 8 is a lot, but 24 is even more...

But yeah, things are okay I guess, always nice talking to you.

I would suggest doing all the static palms filling the 2 hours or whatever you want to spend, as long as each of them gets a couple of minutes. Only when you would lower the time to only seconds each, I would split it and do them alternating over a week.

__________________
"Fawning, but proud!" - (at least sometimes, in rare cases)
"Killing them all didn't make it any better..." - "Are you a freak or something ???" - Max Payne
"Theft is a crime, even in Iraq." - Me.

Learn how to stand (bu = stance)
Learn how to move (bu = step)

In no particular order here are some thoughts on giant roc:

# need correct alignment through the scapula - very easy to carry tension here rather than engaging through lats. etc
# also need to maintain expansion - very easy to carry tension in the inter-costals and collapse everything inwards (which then makes breathing hard)
# therefore requires you to actively engage stabilising muscles - prime movers quickly tire
# use mental image of carrying a heavy log (lies across your biceps in front of your chest) - weight of log pushes down helping you sink, you push up to hold the log keeping proper alignment of the spine
# in order to help you with that, keep intention throughout the arms - extended right to the finger tips (think aikido unbendable arm)
# maintaining that while stepping requires very firm step, good transition of weight, and all alignments maintained - else you drop the log

there are probably other things, but it is those that spring to mind at the moment.

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Heaven Palm -
This Gua form is the most simple to teach and use. It is totally Yang in nature and is a good starting place for most people if they are attacked. The single photo is perhaps a little misleading because you cannot visualize the actual motion. You might hold that "specific" posture while walking the circle in its simplest interpretation.

Martially -
If you were standing in a "void" posture and some one attacked by putting a hand on your shoulder from behind - you might turn into that person while the posture is taken, uplifting their arm and spinning them off and away. From a frontal attack the heaven palm moves up "infront of you" only widening to the side if you are turning or it could reverse and push down after taking the attacker's root. The force is out and up or out and down as you expand into the attack.

It is really a great response to a first strike attack in most instances.

Dale - see you in October brother - I missed getting to the Gompa last weekend, new job, having to work too much!
Ron B.