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Student and Instructor

This weekend was our first Sanda class, and I knew going into it there were a few worries I had. I was nervous because I was not able to attend the first session offered last year so I was already starting off behind. I also have been trying to develop my sparring more this year, but I know my current ability is not where I would like it to be which means it’s much easier for my ego to rear its ugly head.  One of my biggest concerns was I knew there were going to be lots of students attending the seminar and I already started to think of myself divided. There is one part of me that wants to learn, and try, and fail and learn more because of it. I want to push myself so hard I end up flat on my face. There is another part of me that want to uphold the image I have in my head of myself as an Instructor, I don’t want the students to see the gaps in my knowledge where I am lacking skill. I know that it is valuable and reasonable for the students to see their instructors being students,...
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Discipline Vs Destruction

Two days ago I hurt my wrist. I have no idea what happened but one moment things were fine, and when I went to do my push ups there was a pressing ache in my left wrist.  I’m feeling incredibly conflicted. To explain why I need to go on a tangent. I haven’t wanted to talk about this in a blog because I tend to jinx myself when I point out things that are progressing well. For example, I write a blog saying my online engagement is going well, and now it’s barely there again. As soon as I process the progress, my brain takes that as a cue that I’ve “done” it, I’ve “succeeded” and it can relax. That’s all to say I’m very nervous to write about this, but I also recognize I need to understand what’s happening and I can only do that with the processing that happens when I write a blog. I have not done less than my daily goal for push-ups and sit-ups for 72 days straight. This brings me back to my wrist.  I cannot break my streak // I need to let myself rest.  I don’t know if I’...
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Front Back Side Kick

Last week during blackbelt class we were throwing some front-back-side kicks and I was really excited to see how I’ve been progressing with them. I really like this combination of kicks for its level of difficulty and how the challenge gives me a ton of insight into each of these kicks on their own, or in combination. Because I find this kick so valuable (but for some reason it slips my mind more often than not) I knew I wanted to put it in my Chimaera form (my hand form a created this year), and I have been trying to develop it. It’s starting to feel more stable but I still really struggle with getting power into the back kick.  Cut to last week’s class and Sifu prompts us to try to make the back kick the strongest out of the three. With my focus on it I was able to put a but more power but I knew I still had a massive gap in my knowledge because even with my focus on it, it still felt pretty weak. After some questions and discussions I figured out two things I could try to implem...
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Re-engage Progress

It has been lovely having some consistency reading the rest of the teams blogs and connecting more online. Reading everybody’s struggles makes me feel not so alone with the things I’ve been struggling with, reading people’s successes is motivating me to make progress of my own. Getting to ask people specific questions about what they’ve been doing in their training recently has allowed me to have deeper conversations than wouldn’t be possible if I was only reading blogs, or only asking people about their training; it’s something about how having both the context for the train-of-thought from their blog tying together with in-person-real-time thoughts that allows me a more nuanced understanding of what they’re working on.  Not that I have a ton of consistency to back me up yet but so far I have only missed 4 days of not reading someone’s blog and I’m proud of how I was able to change my mindset in terms of my online engagement. It is a bit strange how sometimes when I’m on the “othe...
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Why Does it Look Weird?

I’ve recently been focusing on a particular idea in my hand form and that’s what I’ve mainly been practicing… in other forms.  Yesterday other than my warm up rep of my chimaera form, I didn’t do it a single time after that (despite it being the focus of my practice). Instead I almost exclusively practiced the same idea, as it manifests in Lau Gar. I figured since I didn’t really know what I was trying to do, if I worked on it within a school form I may find more answers that I could then apply to my own form. I’m trying to work on the moment when I switch my feet under me (the jump that’s not a jump, the hop that’s not a hop). I took a video of my form the other day while working on something completely different and I noticed the jumps-that-are-not-jumps were looking really sloppy, so cue the aforementioned practice. It was a strange problem to tackle because unlike the majority of my practice it didn’t come from outside feedback, it did not it come from my eye for detail setting...
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