Tuesday night kung fu. Man, was I ever tired. I did get some sleep during the late morning/early afternoon, but not enough. As a result, I was a slug while waiting for class to begin, and didn't make much constructive use of the time. I did go slowly through a few Tiger drills. That was one of the things that I had planned for my aborted trip to the (non-MA) gym this weekend. Geez, it is dismaying how quickly the choreography starts to slip through the cracks if I don't keep up on the review. I only got through three of them (there are about ten or so) Luckily, I know I have good notes for these. Must find time soon to review them.
We began with a few reps apiece of Bung Bo Kuen, Little Red Dragon, and the Northern Mantis Bo form. I noticed contamination of Mantis energy in Little Red (Dragon form sandwiched between two Mantis forms). Must be mindful to switch gears. The flying kicks were lovely, though. JoE once again became frustrated with Bung Bo and dropped out. I need to make sure he is not standing near me next week, because I am not going to slow up and wait- I need to be focussed on flow. But I don't want to be messing him up.
I was expecting more dao and staff, but we were set to work on Wing Chun strike/parry drills. Partner up, both sun punch left, parry right. Then switch sides. 2nd drill: same thing, only sun punch to chest was replaced with backfist to the side of the head. Switch sides. 3rd drill: attacker knees at groin, alternating legs- defender does low press blocks. 4th drill: attacker punches, defender sidesteps, pak sau's, and punches to ribs. Switch sides. 5th drill: attacker punches, defender ton sau's with one hand and palm-heels to attacker's ribs while sidestepping. Switch sides. I worked the first three drills with SK and the final two with Nemesis.
I had to be practically at kissing distance in order to have striking range- so their contrastingly long arms and the fact that their heads were very high targets were causing some challenges. SK was nice enough to sink into low horse for me when I mentioned this, so that our heads were at the same height. He couldn't shrink his arms, though!
My shoulders got so tired and sore- especially the right one that got viciously shoulderlocked by that spazzy teen last night. We were all literally dripping in sweat. Then the platoons of hungry giant mosquitoes arrived! Ack! Nemesis and I kept halting the drill to slap mosquitoes off each other.
I was doing mostly okay with the drills, although at the end of each one when the attacker started switching up sides randomly, I continued to struggle a bit with making myself wait those extra two seconds to be sure which side the attack's coming in on. I always want to jump the gun. I did, however, notice that I was doing better with the "which hand do I parry with?" dithering. I didn't have to think about it too much... till the end when I was starting to lose my focus and my attention span was drifting away. The ton sau's were the weakest in that regard. But even they were better than they have been in the past.
The footwork could have been a bit cleaner as well. I was getting in close enough, and at the right angle, but it was challenging to try to not get so focussed on the hand techniques that I wasn't paying attention to where my balance was. We were supposed to finish in a cat stance, and sometimes I was finishing in a lunge. I did a little better when I added a follow-up knee to the groin to my sequence- then I had to have the weight up off the pertinant foot in order to bring up the knee! I'll be so happy when I get to the point where I can integrate the upper and lower halves of my body better, and make them support each other's efforts in harmony. This is a problem in BJJ as well: I can only seem to focus on one half at a time.
I'm not sure where this random choice of exercise came from. It might have just been because JaE was there tonight, and he almost never is, so someone would have had to walk him through all the staff/dao material. But I'm wondering if CK was talking to CN and/or SK about Nemesis and thinking that this sort of thing might be good control practice for him and JoE. It's funny, though- I had been bemused to notice how much Wing Chun was cropping up in my own technique while I'd been sparring with CK during her visit. I think I had more Wing Chun going on than Tiger, even. It seemed to be working fairly nicely for me, and I've gotten much better at keeping my techniques confined to the appropriate "box" instead of letting them go too wide (a major persistant problem for me in my early study of Wing Chun).
Then CN wanted us to show him the dao-vs-staff sequence that we've been working on, so I paired up with JoE for that part. CN wants to video this to show DD. I so do *not* want to be on video... I hope he will agree to leave me out of frame.
CN told us that he would not be at any classes at all during his first semester. (sigh) He didn't address Conditioning Boot Camp... I wonder if that will disappear as well.
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