"It was like sparring a different person."

I skipped Tuesday lunchtime BJJ... I was tired and feeling like I wouldn't be able to focus.


Tuesday evening kung fu. DD did not show up.

Warming up with a few forms. The couple of points of feedback is helpful.

Five Points Of the Star: No micro-fu.

White Crane Walking the Path: From the deep lunge, pull yourself toward your front foot instead of pulling the foot back under you. Also- do not forget to brace the right knee. There is no head bow with the left spear-hand strike.

Black Crane Three- let the foot abduct more during the reap.

Leopard Fist- clean stances. "Yes, it's Snake and it should be flowy. But if you should freeze at any point, it should still be a clean stance"

Kick drills in lines... mostly Black Crane type kicks, a couple of kick combos. Remember to rechamber each kick cleanly before setting the foot down. Whirlwind kicks- about 2/3 of the way down the floor, I started using the momentum of my upper body to drive the kick- and was startled to see the kicks suddenly get DRAMATICALLY higher and cleaner. I felt like I could touch the ceiling, and had a wealth of leisurely extra time as I rotated to make sure all my parts were in the proper positions. I don't know how PRACTICAL it is to do it this way- I can't really keep my eye on the opponent and keep my torso facing toward hir when I'm doing this extra wind-up motion- but these kicks aren't really something I'd use in a real fight anyway. More conditioning/balance practice. It sure made them a lot prettier, though!

After (a lot of sweaty, puffing) kick drills- forward and back rolls.

Then CN placed SK at one end of the gym on the mat, and himself at the other end, with two "pork chop" pads. We had to dive over a stacked mat, do a forward roll, and come up in a defensive position. At that point we would be confronted by SK, whom we had to get past (we didn't have to necessarily engage him, evasion was permissible). The we had to circle around to CN and strike both pork chop pads, which he held in different positions with each turn. We could strike them any way we wanted.

That was good practice, although pretty exhausting after several turns and no rest. By the last few, I could barely lurch to my feet after the roll, and I wasn't in very good shape to deal with whatever SK was throwing at me.

Then sparring- about 4 min apiece, against SK only, like we'd done last week. As soon as I stepped on the mat, SK looked at CN warily and said, "Okay.... what have you been teaching her....?" (All I'd told him about my private session with CN was that it was "remedial sparring help") So I was feeling a little unpleasant pressure from the beginning to pull off something spectacular, and it was difficult to try to relax.

I tried to keep the "combo" concept forefront in my mind, and not do the "one strike, back off... one strike, back off..." type thing. Trying to land strike #2 necessitated getting (and staying) in close. And once I was in there, what the hell, why not do more than two strikes. It resulted in me being more aggressive. Twice I drove SK backward right off the mat. I didn't really notice what he was doing tonight at all- I was doing very little defense.

I haven't had enough practice at this yet for my strike techniques to be instinctual, and things were moving too fast for me to think. It was also harder to watch for the openings. So I don't feel like I did very well. I didn't seem to be landing a whole lot, and what I did land wasn't solid, usually. I got one really good lion's mouth grip to his throat which took him a minute to get out of. I wasn't even getting those good solid low leg strikes that I had been getting last time... I wasn't seeing the openings, and I was specifically looking for openings for the follow-up as well as the initiatory kick. It's going to take a lot more practice.

Once again, though, I seemed to be doing fairly well defending takedown attempts and other attempts to uproot me. Once, we were actually wrapped up- and usually, once we get wrapped up, I know I'm going down (likely painfully). But this time I stayed on my feet and extricated myself- although I had to back off at that point.

SK poked me in the eye really hard once. We had to stop while I waited for the room to clear and waited to see if my contact was going to stay put or not.

After the sparring, we worked on the staff/dao material- first individually, and then the partnered staff vs dao sequence. I worked with JoE.

CN told us that the staff vs dao sequences are going to be filmed next week. I asked for and was granted dispensation to be excused from filming.

On the way home, I wanted to ask SK if he saw any difference in my sparring- but since it was a rather clumsy first attempt, and it's obviously going to take practice to integrate this new stuff to where it's actually working well for me, I decided to wait a while before looking for feedback. However, he did spontaneously volunteer that "Whatever CN was helping you with, it's working. Your sparring is different." "Different, or better?" Since those need not necessarily be the same thing! "Better. It was like sparring a different person." Wowee.