Your forehead- my heelprint.

Thursday evening kung fu:

Sooooooooooooooo tired, again.

Small class- just me, SK, and Nemesis (the diehards)… CN and JoE showed up a little later.

Nemesis and I each nominated a form for warm-up. He picked Tiger Versus Crane, I picked Lun Chi. It had rained during the day, so the grass was pretty wet- I was hoping to not fall on my hiney doing flying kicks on wet grass- but we were fine. Since there were only two of us doing forms, I asked, "Improvement points?" But SK said, "It's just warm-up." Is that why we're not getting feedback on warm-up forms? I'd like to get at least one improvement suggestion per form, as long as we're doing them. I'll ask him if that would be possible.

Then we did a few rounds of Snake Versus Five Animals. Oooo, I haven't done this one for a while. It unfortunately has an opening very similar to Three Step Arrow, which I have worked on a lot recently- so I had a few false starts that turned into Three Step Arrow. After we'd done it a couple of times, Nemesis and I were asked to do the form together (it's a two-person form). I again stumbled a bit, but finally we got it together. Until, that is, we got to the shoulder lock at the end. I have never been able to make that particular shoulder lock work on Nemesis, and I've tried on multiple occasions till I was just about spitting with frustration. Joint locks don't work well on him in general- he has rubber joints- and the height difference just makes this particular lead-in completely inffectual for me. We've tried to come up with all sorts of work-arounds, and it just will not fly. JoE had just walked in at that point, so I did the technique on him to prove that I really could do it- I just can't do it on Nemesis because he's a FREAK OF NATURE (as I loudly informed him, to his amusement).

Then more strike and parry practice….. Not so much drill form as we'd done on Tuesday, but more of a two-step and three-step sparring practice. High jab followed by low uppercut: parry and counter. Eventually we started to vary attacking sides and alternate the high jab with a high "haymaker" type strike. I was sighing inwardly because my available training partners consisted solely of the people who can't seem to stop injuring their classmates. I looked them both sternly in the eye before we started and said, "Be CAREFUL, and let's go slow." They still both thwapped me a few good ones, but nothing especially destructive. I do start to cower out of their range once they conk me a few times… I can't help myself, it's just self-preservation instinct. It's what separates me from the moles in the Whack-A-Mole Game.

For a while, I was working with CN- that's rare, and very wonderful, as I feel completely safe with him. As a result, I get braver, and close in, and think, "Wow, I can finally actually get some hits in and see what that feels like!" The dismaying part of this is that my *own* control occasionally starts to get a bit ragged and I sometimes hit him harder than I meant to. Nothing on the level of what Nemesis does- but hard enough to get an "ow". I feel so terrible when I do that.

I am not very happy with my performance in general with the parry-and-counter stuff we did. It took me a while to get into the groove, and even once I did get it smoothed out, I tended to rely on the same small arsenal of techniques. That's not necessarily a bad thing, in the big picture of practicality… but it would be good to be comfortable with a bigger toolbox.

One thing I was very pleased with was my hook kick. At one point CN asked wonderingly, "Can you hit me in the HEAD with that?" I tried it, and got to his clavicle easily. "Yes, I could reach your head, but it would not be clean and controlled if I did." Prolly couldn't reach Nemesis or SK, but anyone under 6 feet tall, I think I could hook kick in the head. At least with my right side. Left is slightly less flexible and smooth. It makes it easy if you're latched onto the opponent's arm to use for balance. I also like the way you can start a big swirly continuous physical and energetic flow with a hand technique (like the parry) and just feed it into the alternate-direction curlique with the hook kick. Very Dragony, and it can pick up an amazing amount of speed and power.

We didn't get any individual forms time tonight…. I had been hoping to work on Southern Mantis with JoE, or ask one of the teachers for help with another form. But I was pretty tired, and I'm not sure if I would have been able to muster up adequate focus for that anyway. Next time.

I talked a little with SK on the way home about the possibility of trying some sparring practice with padded helmets/vests and the like. The Powers That Be in this group are pretty opposed to using such things- the thought is that it encourages sloppiness. JoE uses pads in the hapkido group that he crosstrains with, and one theory is that this explains some of his control issues. SK said that one of the guys he had to spar for his black sash test in Portland is a Tae Kwon Do black belt who is used to using pads in that art- and he didn't seem to have ideal targeting or sparring control unpadded. So I said, "Well, maybe it would make things even worse, then… but we don't have much to lose by trying it." We're not getting anywhere fast with this issue. I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that you get sloppier with pads. You can delineate your ideal targets with X's of colored tape. SK seems to agree with me that it would be a good idea to experiment and see how it goes.