Air Avatars Know Nothing About Mud Stepping

Many Baguazhang Styles Avoid Mud-stepping—It’s Difficult

Mud-stepping is a peculiar method of gaining….[doh! the why and what-for of mud-stepping is for a different article].

How-To-Mud-Step seems simple—

• Slide your weightless front-foot forward,
• Quickly step onto it,
• Swishing the old back-foot past the new back foot,
• Never pick up your back-heel before your back-toes.

It’s not a sequential order because it all happens so fast!

It’s tough at first. There’s a nnnrrghhing sense of lifting the foot without lifting the heel first. How do I do it? You’ll wonder. Doesn’t it seem natural to push from the toes?! Then you’ll fake it, pretending to not-lift the heel before the toes, gently pressing from the toes.

Many (I bet most) Baguazhang styles and even more Baguazhang instructors never bother with mud-stepping. That’s fine; many versions of Dong Hai-Chuan’s Baguazhang exist, thrive, and produce martial artists. Tension, difficulty, and lack of understanding drive folks to avoid mud-stepping.

Others cheat. They’ll get the overt muddy-sliding sensations of the front foot, but they’ll pry themselves forward with their little back-foot lever: heel then toes pressing forward. The following video, while exciting and dramatic (it’s cool!) offers us a vision of mud-stepping errors. (I’ve been advised by advisors, for political purposes, to not post the following video in relationship to mistakes, errors, and bad-baguazhang; it’s Jet Li afterall! Who am I to criticize? I’m not one to pull punches palm-strikes, and again, take it as an element of stylistic differences, if you must. Just notice how the back heel lifts up on every mud-step.)

Average Avatar Mud-Step Mistakes

You Can Mud-Step Better

From a Baguazhang back-weighted stance, standing on your circle,

• Slide the front foot just a bit along the circle
• (Don’t lift the back heel; lift the whole back foot as a unit)
• Quickly step forward

Sounds simple and it is, in time. Start with the basic: coil your foot and pick up that coiled foot as one whole unit, and you engage your core (oh, no, is that a what-for?). Mud-stepping become quick and delightful (oh, shit shucks is that a why?)

Find a good mud-stepping teacher. (Like me.)

posted: 17 Oct 08
author: Steven Smith
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