The most common elements of Baguazhang are it's ever continuous motions, circular footwork and techniques and 'fa-jin', which means to 'release power'.
As a combat martial art, the style of Baguazhang makes use of intelligent strategies to defeat an attacker.
By using footwork strategies, a skilled Baguazhang practitioner can utlise the strength against him to place the opponent into a vulnerable postion in order to then use quick counter attacks with hand, elbow, knee or foot strikes at high frequency.
Baguazhang instructors often talk of this style as having an advantage over more classical and traditional styles due to there being no root to any stances allowing much more flexibility for the change in potential counter attacks depending on the unpredictability of an attacker.
Ba Gua Zhang is recognized as one of the three orthodox "internal" styles of Chinese martial art (the other two being Xing Yi Quan and Tai Ji Quan).
Ba Gua literally translates to Eight trigrams. These trigrams are symbols which are used to represent all natural phenomena as described in the ancient Chinese text of divination, the book of changes (Yi Jing).
Zhang means palm and designates Ba Gua Zhang as a style of martial art, which emphasizes the use of the open hand in preference to the closed fist. Ba Gua Zhang, as a martial art, is based on the theory of continuously changing in response to the situation at hand in order to overcome an opponent with skill rather than brute force.
There are a number of variations of Ba Gua Zhang.
- Cheng Style: Cheng Tinghua 程廷華
- Fu Style: Fu Zhensong 傅振嵩
- Gao Style: Gao Yisheng 高義盛
- Gong Style: Gong Baotian 宫宝田
- Jiang Style: Jiang Rongqiao 姜容樵
- Liang Style: Liang Zhenpu 梁振蒲
- Liu Style: Liu Baozhen 劉寶珍
- Shi Style: Shi Jidong 史計棟
- Sun Style: Sun Lutang 孫祿堂
- Yin Style: Yin Fu 尹福
- Yin Yang Style (Tian Style): Tian Hui 田廻
