The petrie dish

A sensitive body gives back to life its natural intensity. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path



Thursday evening Kung fu. I am able to do hand strikes in the air now, including most of the centrifugal ones- although I still can't hit anything solid with my right hand.

We started with the build-a-form game. With two newbies- and some of us others seeming to be in a mild state of brain-freeze- we weren't doing very well at this game tonight. I felt that some of the others were picking techniques that were a little too complicated for our new people, so I kept picking basic front punches and other easy-peasy stuff.

Then we worked on the Tiger kick drill some more. SK made me come up front for the third technique. I sneaked back to the rear after that, and he didn't make me go back up there for the fourth. The new people now have all four pieces, so hopefully we will be able to put it together next week.

Next, apps from Five Animals. First the Northern Mantis parry and grab. SK put me with Marcie. She had a hard time catching on to this one. SK came over and gave her corrections a few times. When she mostly had the positions correct, but was being hesitant about it, I started throwing punches at her harder and faster. Immediately she got a lot more authoritative with the parry and pull-down (cuz she had to in order to not get bopped in the nose), and her technique improved about 200%. We were both chuckling a little at the way we were subconsciously circling around each other.

After being told by SK to drop her elbows more, she looked down at her breasts and said that that that was just not going to happen. I responded feelingly, "I understand."

After that one, we did the Snake parry, shifting to back stance, grab the throat, and shift back to cat. Since we'd just spent 20 min repping a technique that had us stepping into cat, Marcie and I both kept wanting to go back into cat stance immediately instead of shifting to back stance. Oops.

I don't think I was a very effectively helpful training partner tonight. I let her go first- I always let the other person go first, both to be polite and to get the show on the road immediately by pre-emptively quashing a discussion about who's going to go first. But I think it might be more helpful to her to have the experienced person go first so that she can study the app a little more before trying to do it. I will remember that next time. I did have us start switching back and forth a few times, after I realized that that would probably help. And it seemed to.

Another thing- I am consciously trying to give a bare minimum of- if any- corrections, because I think she's getting more than enough of that from other people. But she was having a lot of trouble with this sequence. She wasn't solid on the what-comes-next part, much less the apps. I felt like I should try to help her out, but I could tell (because I know the feeling well) that her brain was getting full and I didn't feel like the focus was there for an in-depth picking apart of the sequence. I wasn't quite sure how to handle the situation. Finally- since I could see that she was getting frustrated- I said, "Just focus on the first move- the Snake parries- and then just improvise a finishing counterstrike after that. Don't worry so much about doing exactly what's in the form." I wanted to take the pressure off by having her work one move (and maybe get it right) instead of trying to work a complex sequence of four (and not get *anything* right). I could tell she wasn't very happy with my solution, though. I'm not sure how I could have handled it differently. That solution would have helped me had I been in her shoes. I think she needed something different, though. My recent interest in learning methods and styles has me looking at her like a puzzle to be solved. I didn't find the correct method of helping her this time, so next time I should try a different tactic.

SK is trying to figure it out too... we were talking about it a little in the car on the way home. He said that he gets the sense that she's tired and brain-scattered before we even start, and I agreed. I know she's training someplace else as well, and maybe she's overtraining. I also suggested that since she's had previous MA training, she might be having trouble correlating stuff- sometimes it can be easier to start an MA as a blank slate as opposed to starting when you already have some skill in a different MA. I know I have those correlation/clash issues sometimes. SK said that she is falling into techniques and applications from karate and aikido, and they are not WRONG, so he's not sure how to gently steer her closer to what *WE* are doing without making it sound like her methods are WRONG or substandard. I opined that it might be helpful to stress the style we are working with- as in, "That works well; Mantis would do it more like THIS..." Although those concepts are going to be a little slippery for her to grasp for a while yet, until she gets a decent sense of the differences between the styles. Anyway, a puzzle. A puzzle that it didn't really occur to me to attempt to work on, since I'm not the teacher and I didn't really see it as my problem.... but I don't like feeling as if I'm an ineffective training partner to a new and frustrated student, so that makes me want to work on being a better partner. Also, the fact that SK specifically solicited my thoughts on the matter; that's flattering, and I wish I had better ideas to offer!

Hopefully Marcie won't get too frustrated/discouraged and will stick around long enough for us all to figure out how to help her learn best.

It's interesting to have her join the group around the same time as RM, who is picking up things pretty fast. The contrasts are a real petrie dish for me to watch how different people learn (and don't learn). Since it appears that Marcie's learning style doesn't match the learning style of the majority of this group, I'm thinking that if DD were still running the group, this would be one of those students that he would be completely confused by and just wouldn't know what to do with- and she'd end up dropping out. I'm hoping that with SK at least AWARE of the concept of different learning styles, and wanting to address that and meet the differing needs, that will not happen this time. He's not sure what to do with her yet, but he's AWARE that she needs something different, so that's a healthy start.


SK is going to be absent on Sunday, and he wanted me to teach BJJ 101 to the class. I said that I didn't feel comfortable doing that. So unless CN can fill in- which is a long shot- we will be classless again this Sunday. Sigh.

I miss BJJ. It's been a week and a half. I'm already feeling that whole-body sludginess setting it. It spreads to the brain, as well!