Wierd Version of Pi Quan

[xingyiman]

I was browsing the video section on the martialartsmart website and came across Yuanming Zhang's Hsin Yi video series. The site contains video clip previews of most of their videos, so I decided to view the preview clip of his Five Elements video. Let me just say that this is one of the WIERDEST demonstrations of Pi Quan I've ever seen! Check out the way he reels his hand back past his head before doing the downward splitting portion of Pi Quan. This seems totally wrong to me and could instill some very bad habits into a practitioner in regards to combat. Reeli ng the splitting hand back like that would leave the person extremely open, totally telegraph the move, and would make the technique slow as well. So what are your thoughts? Does anyone know his specific style or lineage on Xingyi (if it relates to his performing the Metal element this way)?

Here is where the clip is located:

http://store.yahoo.com/martialartsmart/tc-yz005c.html

Again, tell me your thoughts.

[MonkeySlap Too]

Well, I'll reserve judgement until I see the usage - I can think of a way that could work - but I'd like to see someone from that group describe it to see what they know.

The power generation seems very un-xing-yi like to me. I don't consider myself an expert on all things Xing-yi, but the kind of whipping force used here does nost seem to follow the open-close method of Xing-yi, at least as I understand it.
BUt then it is pretty low quality on that clip and I could be missing something.

[boy_analog]

Yes, I've got the vid: it was offered for free in Kung Fu magazine a couple of issues back. Mind you, after PAL conversion and international postage, it was no longer a trivial outlay!

The whole thing is very strange. I wasn't sure what to make of it: it sure didn't look like any xingyi that I'd seen. I was inclined to reserve judgement, but I wouldn't recommend this as a training video either.