Yes, but I would wait politely until he’s finished doing something that you wouldn't want to mention on a family-friendly site.
All Schools are different and theres nothing wrong with heel-toe or toe-heel though my school considers both of them wrong heel and toe should touch the ground together it works better when you consider the lion and crane stepping.
Credible and realistic training. I believe it is around in the UK, but not in abundance. In my city (Edinburgh) there are a couple of folk who claim to teach Bagua, but I know it is tacked onto other systems, who have learned from other teachers who have tacked together other systms etc i.e. where is the credible lineage of transmission? In Glasgow there is one guy who teaches Gao style Bagua - so there aint a lot. I can say that i have been a tad dissapointed with Tai Chi Chuan in the UK, because too much time and effort is expended with the mass market desires of hippy-dippies, pensioners etc; to the somewhat detriment of martial application. Then there is the problem with Bagua most likely being distorted in the PRC during communism in the same way that TCC and many other arts were - and then re-invented for commercial purposes somewhere in the 80s/90s. We no longer have the presence of Fire-Quan (the OP) to argue the case for the PRC (from somewhere up north), who sometimes offered some plausible explanations mixed in with some completly irrational verbiage. TCC is not trivial to even take small meaningfull steps in, and there a lot of principles, body mechanics and other areas to work on - and then there is the blood, sweat and tears - sometimes I wish it were the other way round. I suspect that this is the same with Bagua. Bagua interests me, because it looks on the surface, to offer a lot of potential to operate very effectively and efficiently in tight space.
You will never learn anything from a real kung fu teacher if you hide when they ask you questions. For most kung fu instructors it is their way or the highway. You need to decide if you want to be your own man who does not play games with people, or if your need for kung fu is great enough that you can put your ego aside and do whatever you have to to learn real kung fu.
I am not hiding from rhetorical questions and Im quite happy to take the highway - life is short. Where there are REAL questions, then that is diferent. My ego is sitting at the dinner table, politely eating its meal of Kung Fu and in particular 'Serious Bagua'. I have provided sufficient explanation - just to be polite to the real Gung Fu teacher Anorhyme - who has been banned for trolldom.
I know this was discussed months ago, but as for the stepping, there's 3 main methods in traditional bagua zhang. Some schools will use all 3, while others will focus on one. You have heel to toe (rolling stepping), toe to heel (mud stepping), and flat footed - heel and toe at same time (crane stepping). Anyone who says one of those is not bagua, is simply undereducated about the bagua zhang family of martial arts overall.
My favourite exspresion of Bagua is Jiang rong Qiao style. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icwEuTHsDKM"]YouTube[/ame] How about you, what is your preference? cheers Griffin
