Sifu offers baguazhang to the keener beginner...
Approach cautiously.
Bagua is great fun but also terrifying and utterly confusing for the attacker.
Baguazhang involves a lot of shuai jiao and chin na; and both of these skills are extremely arduous on the body.
Shuai jiao allows you no time to prepare yourself or breakfall.
You just hit the floor.
Chin na involves joint manipulation, seizing and painful strikes to sensitive points.
Shuai jiao and chin na coupled with the weird angles and spiralling associated with bagua produce a pretty dangerous training regime.
Tensing-up only makes things worse.
There are some things that you simply cannot control. Bagua falls into this category.
Yes, train it early if you want to, but bear in mind that you need to complement this with a very serious qigong routine.
Look after your body.
Without strong progress through the mainstream syllabus, doing bagua is foolish.
