Way back in the day, I had a high school teacher do numbers 5&6 as a parlor trick. You wouldn't believe the number of people (especially uncoordinated high school students) who can't simultaneously turn their hands in opposite sagittal direction circles.

I briefly tried training 8 combinations in the sagittal plane, but when Sifu told us that there were only 4 practical circles in sagittal, I quickly dropped that. Some of those combinations just don't come naturally to me. Training the circles beyond the basic 4 remind me of when I was a kid trying to rub my belly and pat my head at the same time. :p

You are probably right. I stopped playing with the extra circles as well. At least for the nearest 6-12 months.

Hi Qiang,

Yeah it's a little more fun than practical. Although I think the 'wheel' after you've turned to the left in the 21 form (move 2- 'holding ball left and right) has a moment of opposing saggital planes combined with the frontal. The spike that sikung mentions to stick the opponent, I think ? Though it could just be frontal, the saggital offers a tangent force to the center. I'm referring to the nos 7 & 8 in the list. So you're moving from right hand on top to left hand on top, holding the ball, like turning a steering wheel of a car.

Actually it just came to mind that we practice this movement with the 'concave/convex' in the saggital plane. The alternating one, where one arm finishes with the elbow forward and up and the other finishes with the fingers pointing down in the 'hook' position.