Basic knife practice

129.5

I haven't lost my weekly pound this week! There's no way I'll be at 124 in time for the Oct 2 "Revolution Foreplay" tournament, and I'm starting to get seriously worried about making weight for the Revolution itself. I very much miss Real Food. The idea of decreasing portions of my chicken/eggs/tuna/carrots diet even more makes me feel weary and resentful.

Rory Miller is doing a workshop in Bothell next month. CK sent me his book, "Meditations On Violence"... I'd love to go to the "self-defense legalities" portion of the workshop, but I'm scheduled to work that day. I'm going to try to get someone to trade shifts with me.


Kung fu Thursday. No CN tonight.

A few rounds of hand strike drills. Emphasis on chambering with as much power as the striking hand. SK walked around and held up a forearm for us to Eagle-Claw. After two counts, I found the muscle/tendon furrows to dig my Eagle Claws into- ZAP! He made an approving-sounding noise, but didn't seem to want to stick around for additonal counts.

Then we worked on some basic knife attack and defense. JoE and I practiced slashing each other. DD came in halfway through the class, so we slashed at him too. Geez. He is so good. I mean, stunnningly, jaw-droppingly, did-he-really-just-do-that GOOD. When you attack him, you usually don't really know what happened- all you know is that a couple of blurry seconds have elapsed, and now your wrist and throat hurt really bad and that your hands are empty-rubber knife nowhere to be found.

Individual forms time. DD asked me what I wanted to work on. I suggested White Crane Walking the Path- but he didn't want to do that one, as he felt a little rusty on it. We just kinda looked at each other for a minute, at a loss. Then he asked what I had felt most insecure with regarding the sparring last Tuesday. I replied that it's difficult for me to eval my own sparring, because I haven't had enough practice- I feel generally clueless. Pressed, I said that defending kicks feels like a weak spot. Then he remembered all my snappy little knee and shin kicks that weren't helping me much because I wasn't following up with anything. So we worked a bit on attacking the opponent's kicking leg as it was chambering, and following up with a second kick. I hadn't even tried to attack the kicking leg; I assumed that once it was chambering, it was too late to do anything effective unless I could reach the support leg (which I never can on SK). Well, after recieving a number of relatively light kicks on my chambering leg which made me stagger, turned me halfway around, and otherwise disturbed me, I see differently.

He also mentioned that SK was coming in on his opponents with bridging arms a lot, and I had seemed to not be dealing with that as effectively as I might be. He bridged my arm and I practiced dropping that arm away and coming over with rolling Tiger claw press blocks to sieze the arm, drag it down and across his body, and go for his face with the other claws. Dropping that bridged arm and folding it inward is counter-intuitive to me; I could see how it was working, but I'll have to practice that before it will seem smooth.