Thursday, June 18, 2009

Xingyiquan (形意拳) Competition Style

A video of the xingyiquan (形意拳) champion in Singapore's 2006 wushu competition.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What type of Hsing I routine is this?
There are so many styles of Hsing I.
Is there an official competition routine in China?
Do competitors make up their routines like gymnasts in their floor exercises?

Teck said...

I am not very sure, but this seems to be the standard competition routine for xingyiquan nowadays. Very different from tradition forms, if you ask me. It is a lot more flowery, but that is only to be expected since it is meant for competitions (and thus needs to look nice).

For wushu competitions, there are categories in which competitors are allowed to come up with their own routines (zixuan), but the routines need to meet certain rules, like have X number of jumps, X number of balancing stances, etc.

Anonymous said...

Indeed, there are many styles of XingYiQuan nowadays and this style is very flowery. It is mainly for competition purpose. Very different from traditional type...In fact, this routine starts to exist in Singapore since 1995. Now this person has stopped practicing this routine and has gone back to his traditional training.

Teck said...

I knew the person in the video from my school days, since we have the same wushu coach. Still keep in touch with my wushu coach even though I have switched my focus to taiji now. But I guess it is not what you practise that makes a difference, it is your attitude towards learning and training that counts. But I must say, the traditional forms can be applied, the competition forms less so. So to truly understand martial arts, sometimes we need to seek the traditional forms over what is the more popular, competition forms.