way too many commas

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...

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...

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...

I’ve been feeling very disconnected from the team lately. And it’s entirely my fault.  It is always lovely to get to see everyone for our in person classes, and I’m excited to train more with everyone as we transition to more frequent in person Saturdays, but I have been absolutely failing at my online engagement requirement. I have never read so few blogs in a year and I am really starting to feel the isolation from everyone. I know I need to read them, I know I need to engage with them, I want to read them, but it always slips my mind and I don’t know how to make my brain remember. No matter how many times I try to resolve that I will catch up on old blogs, I will stay caught up from now on, I just don’t, and I have no idea why. I know where I am, I don’t know what I’m doing.  So time for a concrete plan. I’m going to add it to my numbers tracker and force myself to write down everyday I’m interacting, and every day I’m not. I can’t know what I’m doing if I have no data. ...