way too many commas

 'Twas the night before the demo, and all through the kwoon... And I was left wondering if I would have enough room? Trying to add some last minute tweaks to my weapons form to accommodate this notorious hill I keep hearing feared whispers of from the other team members did throw a bit of a wrench into my confidence, but other than that I am surprisingly calm and even maybe a bit excited for the demo tomorrow. It has been a ridiculously long time since I last did anything kung fu related in front of the general public, and this is going to be my first time ever doing a demo, and performing a dragon dance.  All these first, and unknown variables, and less than ideal total practice time, but despite all those things I am not really all that nervous (which is extremely rare for me). As a rule I like not being nervous about things so I want to try to narrow down what it is about this time that is so different?  Maybe it's because I have more confidence in myself as a marital ...

 This past week I have been trying to focus on momentum.  Momentum in my techniques.  How an initial movement sets the stage for everything that comes afterwards. How micro movements up my arms and down my legs all start from my center (in chi sao). How even slight adjustments during transitions can alter the direction of the momentum (pivoting on my heel in lau gar). How this momentum can generate loads of power and speed as one motion builds on the previous, but also how not to let that momentum carry me away so that I am still in control and still able to make adjustments through the technique (in a spinning back kick).  Momentum in my training. How something as simple as, "I won't pick up my phone, I'll just sit on the floor doing nothing until I'm ready to start" can save my hours of wasted time. How repeating "get up, get up, get up, get up" in my mind until it carries over into physically moving my body and before I know it I'm training. How m...

 I am an artist. I wanted to make a piece about my kung fu journey. 3/30

 Gosh that title sounds pretentious and disproportionately epic to a short blog post , but I think it'll be appropriate so please excuse my expressions of grandeur.  Last week was relatively busier than usual, so naturally I was a little nervous about maintaining my training and keeping my numbers up, but surprisingly I feel like I had an easier time staying on track than I normally had. I work from home and my hours are extremely flexible, so as a result it's pretty rare that I think things like "when am I going to do my pushups?" "will I have enough time today to get my sit-ups done?" etc.  I mean, that's what you would expect me to say, but I think the lack of time pressure can become a different breed of problem, for me at least. It's not news that I continue to be locked in ever present, legendary, extraordinary, fantastic, multi-book-epic-novel-spanning level battle against my greatest nemesis, Procrastination. Since this is the case I often fi...

 I am thoughtful. In the sense that I am full of thoughts. During the warm ups, in the middle of techniques in class, when I'm training at home, when I'm staring into the middle distance during open training, I have been really thinking about my kung fu.  Not to say that before this year on the I Ho Chuan team I was never thinking about what I was doing, it was just a very different kind of thinking. Before my thought process was very focused on external facets of what I was doing: check you stance, watch your center is bobbing, need to rotate your wrists more, needs more rotational/downward energy, bring your guards back up, make sure your skeleton is aligned, don't leave your back foot trailing. Almost having a checklist of things I needed to be doing in order to properly/effectively execute a technique. The problem with this is for the most part I would try to keep all these things in mind, at the same time while   I was doing the technique. To dip into my metap...

Bear with me while I paint a brief metaphorical picture,  So there I was sitting on my wagon, polishing and tiding up some specific things I had in there, then next thing I know, my hands are empty, and my previously nearly clean objects are sitting 30 feet behind me caked in dust.  I have been trying to work on my kicks, namely technique, speed, and my own stamina when throwing them. And since I stated practicing à la the fitness test I have seen my numbers slowly but steadily climb, and I can feel my stamina increase alongside as well. And I can see the results of this practice through my improvement from the first fitness assessment back in February, to the one we did just recently. After the second fitness test happened, through one excuse or another (I'm still sore, I'm busy with friends tonight, I just did a huge physical assessment I deserve a break as a treat,) I stopped doing my kicks for 9 days. And it was obvious.  It really sucks that I'm not at the place...

 LOCAL BLACKBELT CANDIDATE SUCKS AT BLOGGING more at 11 I had 3 weeks at the beginning of the year when I blogged until school started to ramp up, and deadlines started to pop up more frequently, and work started to get busy, and, and, and  all these excuses to say I have missed a LOT of weekly blogs. I have been trying to get back into the habit of blogging, but even when I first started, I hadn't published any of my posts on kwoon talk. Now because of how behind I have fallen I have extra aversion to publishing them; because its not only facing "everyone on the team is going to see what you are writing" but also "AND they're going to see that you only have a handful of posts written and know that you are behind" BUT I KNOW LOGICALLY THAT SINCE I HAVENT BEEN POSTING EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS THAT I'M BEHIND SO IT SHOULDNT MATTER AT THIS POINT! (at least that's what I've been telling myself these past few weeks, but here we are and I still haven...