Polishing the Bridge

128.5

I am astounded that yesterday's pasta/bread orgy didn't make my weight spike up. Coolness.

The rest of my body's not doing so hot, though. The persistantly painful spot in my upper back, where John insists I have a "vertebrae out" is killing me. My right shoulder, which pretty much hurts all the time these days, is particularly vocal this morning and is radiating misery up that side of my neck as well. Right elbow whimpering a bit too. I just took a couple of Excedrin, and am waffling right now about going to lunchtime class. Cindy cancelled class because she is camping in the waiting room at the knee doctor (poor Cindy), but there's still Gracie's (one of the nice things about training two schools). My heart yearns for the mat no matter how exhausted or pained my body feels. I don't want to feel like this on tournament morning, though.... I need to be careful to not overtrain.



Later............ decided to take the morning off.



Private with CC. I haven't seen him in forever. He mentioned that I look like I've lost weight. This was while I was wearing my bulky oversize Gracie Barra hoodie, with a thinner sweatshirt on under it, and my workout clothes under THAT- so it must be fairly noticable! Wow.

When he did the "what have you been working on" thing, I was ready for him with "What I *WANT* to work on is either Leopard At Dawn, which we never finished, or Touch Bridge, which we revisited to clean up and only got about 1/3 of the way through."

He wanted to see the Leopard first, and to my chagrin, I had a Blonde Moment. I restarted it three times, and still couldn't get through it. I was completely mortified. I should have gone through it before I came over- but it hasn't been THAT long, and God knows I've repped this form enough- I had no idea it was seeping out through the cracks in my mind like that already. I know that that's completely disrespectful to my teacher and a waste of both of our time, and all... the lecture he gave me was a MUCH milder version than the one I was mentally giving myself.

I know that I'm pissed with myself for not having my Poop In a Group, and looking for someone to blame... but heck. When I know I'm going to see SK twice a week come hell or high water; and I haven't seen CC in what- four months? And have no idea when (or even if) I'll ever see him again, there's definitely more of an incentive to spend my limited time and energy practicing SK's material as opposed to CC's material. I know that's no excuse- this is my fault- but here is where I come to whine and bitch and spew my socially-unacceptable emotions, so there you have it.

Anyway- we decided to bag that one for today and try Touch Bridge. Now of course I was having a gigantic Performance Anxiety Attack, and I was sooooooooooooo relived when I got through Touch Bridge without Phucking it up. We did have to review some of the corrections he'd made last time (FOUR MONTHS AGO, okay?? Still my fault, but, ya know...), to my embarrassment. He still wants me to focus carefully on visualizing opponents, as well as on the energy flows of a form. He did seem to be taking things in those respects to a slightly more advanced level tonight. He had a few new applications that he wanted me to use in place of some of the ones I had come up with as well as some of the ones he had given me when he first taught the form. I had to ask for further clarification on some of his energy flow explanations, but I did grasp them in the end. So I think the form must have looked fairly good, as we appeared to be building additional layers into it. Good- hope I redeemed myself a bit from the Leopard fiasco. If I'm going to mess something up royally in front of CC, better it be Leopard at Dawn (which he actually referred to as the form equivalent of a Twinkie) than Touch Bridge (which is the signature basic form of White Dragon, Dragon being CC's specialty style).

Notes for Touch Bridge:

Remember to turn only a quarter turn after the ridge hand- NOT all the way to the side. The right arm coming down at that point should end close to the body (thumb towards the body, the energy and momentum is going toward the RIGHT and not toward the front), and the left hand strike should hit at the SAME time.

The two hands should not cross over each other. Work on the timing of that.

The first kick is to the inside of the opponent's RIGHT knee.

Don't cross the Tiger claw hands during the strike to the ground.

After the takedown, don't turn further to the left for the circular strikes- it's the same opponent that you just took down (he's more resiliant than I thought), not some other new guy- so keep facing him.

He didn't pick at the breathing tonight- but try to remember to not be doing that Tigery huffing breathing during the Dragon material.

CC says that RS should be coming for a visit in late November. After too many disappointments, I'm not going to get worked up about this until the guy is actually standing corporeally in front of me. But CC wants me to make sure to have Hurricane Hands shipshape and ready to trot out. I don't know if this was him blowing smoke or not- and it's also going to be very dependant on how much of RS's time I wind up being able to monopolize- but CC led me to believe that RS may be interested in working on more evolved permutations of this form with me (this is assuming I can present the basic version to him in an acceptable state). That would be way too awesome for words to begin to express. Hurricane Hands is not Romper Room Shaolin- it is an intermediate level form even at its most basic version. Not a lot of people in the order- even people much more advanced than I- know this form. CC doesn't even know it. RS has not taught more advanced versions of this form to ANYONE (as SK has bemoaned to me, full of frustrated grief, on more than one occasion). To get an opportunity to work on specialized material of that level- to even DABBLE with it a bit for one afternoon- at the hands of the guy who knows more about this MA than anyone else- well, it would be like getting pulled out of your Five-string 101 class to be given a private guitar lesson from Carlos Santana on the topic of his secret signature techniques. SK's head is going to EXPLODE if this actually happens. I need to ask him to go over Hurricane Hands with me every Thursday between now and then and make it as perfect as possible. The thought of *ME* coming back from the exiled Grandmaster and teaching *SK* (the Snake Guy!) advanced apps from an intermediate Snake form is so insanely hilarious. But that's the only way he's ever going to get them. And I'd love to be able to repay SK for how much he's helped me, so this could be a way to do that a little.