The Deadly Triangle

Met CK at 9:30 am... we went to High Point Community Center, in West Seattle. I've never been there before. They've got an awesome room... high ceiling, mirrors, wood floor. (Greenlake Community Center is going to be very much unavailable for the foreseeable future due to budget cuts- their hours have been slashed.)

We only had about 45 min to work on tai chi before MM arrived. We worked on Catherine Dao- mostly the closing, which I continue to struggle with.

I declined to spar with them today. At all. I know that this is not a viable long-term solution, but when I contemplate sparring- even with CK, with whom I feel fairly safe- all I feel is anxiety and dread. It's not fun any more... it just makes me feel frustrated and inadequate.

CK and MM sparred, and when they got tired, CK worked with me on Catherine Dao and Cannon Fist. She wants me to use higher, narrower stances- which feels like regressing and wussing out to me, but she stresses that doing it RIGHT in high narrow stances is better than doing it WRONG in deep stances. I insisted that I *could* do the deep stances- yet every time I tried, she informed me that my form was unacceptable due to all the compensatory positions I was using in order to try to avoid bending my knees. I hadn't really seen/understood how bad it was until today. It took her pointing out all the various things I was doing- most of them on a completely subconscious level- for it to hit home. It was quite a disconcerting and dismaying discovery. This is certainly just as bad of an issue in my Shaolin.

"THE DEADLY TRIANGLE"- the point at which my stance becomes wide enough that I start to subconsciously avoid bending my knees. Actually, I guess I'm sort of ALWAYS subconsciously trying to avoid bending my knees.... but there is a definite point at which it starts to show up glaringly as crippling my formwork. "You can't just badass your way through everything" was a statement that was also made, which stung enough to have a ring of truth to it.

We worked some more on alignment issues- pelvis, head, hips. CK thinks that this is the single most important thing I ought to be focussing on for the next period in both tai chi and Shaolin- and that if I can clean up some of my alignment issues, it may actually ease my knee pain enough to go back to the deep stancework. The high stances are a little easier to take if I think that this isn't a *permanent* step backward.

Moving from the center was another big theme today. Hips continue to be tight and inflexible. Even after we'd been working for a while, I still felt like there was a stone column running from my tailbone to the base of my skull- that's how stiff my hips felt. CK made me stop, lie down on the floor, and do hip circles. She knows I can't stand hip circles... I do not have the patience to do hip circles. They appear to be a necessary evil, though!

I have a few specific notes on the two forms, which I am too tired to transcribe tonight, but I will get them down in the next few days. Not too many specific notes, though- it was mostly alignment and moving from the center on our radar today.

Tomorrow will be CK's last day here. I gladly put in a bid for her anticipated small block of time tomorrow between lunch and dinner. She already has an after-dinner class planned with SK and JM... and me, I was informed. I tried to gracefully sidestep the evening class three times- with three different perfectly reasonable excuses- but she knew I wasn't working that evening, and she just wasn't having it. She kept insisting that she really wants me there for the particular class material that she had in mind. She thinks that SK and I have similar major stumbling blocks when it comes to Chen, so she has some specific things planned to work on, that she wants SK and me to continue working on until her next visit. I finally had to put my foot down and state outright (which I was doubly reluctant to do with MM there) that I simply do not want to work in front of JM. It fills me with anxiety, and it would just not be productive for me. Again, avoidance not being a viable long-term solution for *that* problem either... yet it's a step forward for me to be self-aware enough and assertive enough to know that that situation is just not going to be worth the effort for me, and that it's a waste of my valuable time to go through the motions. As soon as I start getting corrections from JM in **CHEN**- in which she has had a grand total of about four lessons, and I have been studying for fifteen years, and yet I have no doubt she'll immediately be more proficient at than I am- I will truly have a nuclear meltdown. We are just not gonna go there, uh-uh, nope- not while my self-confidence is in the toilet to the extent that it currently is.

I did text SK and warn him that CK wants to work on the tai chi short form with him tomorrow evening, so he'd better do some reps beforehand!


Later............


Evening BJJ in Bellevue. I haven't been to BJJ since Christmas eve. I got to congratulate Doug on his black belt promotion, which was cool. Hostility Boy now has two stripes on his blue belt, which was markedly less cool. I also saw Jamie for the first time since the huge Promotion 0rgy in December, and congratulated him on his fresh purple. Luiz got *TWO* new stripes on his purple, Manuel got two new stripes on his white- and he has also dropped thirty-four pounds in four months. Wow. Irina now has a stripe on her white belt. I drilled with her tonight.

I was afraid I'd be feeling out of shape after my recent lax training schedule, but the warmup went fine- even though we spent a lot of time running, which is challenging for me with my breathing issues. After the running, I did four full fast, technically precise shrimping circuits, and didn't feel particularly weary.

We started with a standup drill- two cross-jabs to your partner's upraised palms, thrust kick to belly, step in and clinch. Irina- the karate artist- had some SERIOUS jabs and kicks- each kick knocked me back a step or two, and she was going light. So when it was my turn, I felt that I needed to serve back the same high standard- on my honor as a kung fu artist! I didn't knock her back with my kicks, but they were at LEAST as serious as hers... I exercised my skillful control and precision, and pulled them at exactly the right point. I can tell she knows enough to recognize a Serious Kick when she feels one!
;-)

Another thing I like about drilling with Irina is that she is all brisk business- no futzing around, so we get maximum reps in. We got two circuits in the time it took everyone else to do one.

Spinning armbar. I can do this, although the fine details still need a little work. In particular, I need to pay attention to snuggling my ankle tight against the opponent's neck and pinning hir head in place with it. We were also grabbing the pants at the knee with the free hand, which I had to keep reminding myself to not let go of.

Escape from scarf/headlock- the one where you clasp your arms around the opponent's body and roll hir first toward hir head and then overtop of your own body to get on top.

Then a little positional training from scarf/headlock, and from north-south.

(pic- Andrew and Renzo)