Sparring

A man who knows that body and spirit are part of each other doesn’t need anyone to remind him that he is alive, nor does he have any reason to upset the ecological balance. Only the sky above his head and the earth under his feet. His body is the only home. It is the only thing that never abandons him, the only one that truly belongs to him. Such an individual is a threat to every form of established authority. A wolf that can’t be tamed. He is not under anyone’s orders and doesn’t accept dogmas because he already has within himself everything he needs to face life. When streams of power flow in the veins of your body, dependency on external factors is reduced to a minimum. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path


Today's Form Of the Day is the Tai Chi long open-hands form, yet again. I had prolly 96% of it by bedtime last night; I'm going to rep it again as soon as I finish this. Getting kinda tired of this one, so I hope I can get through the whole thing and feel decent enough about it to go on to something else. This is one long-ass form. Even doing it in "micro-fu" fashion, one rep takes an eon.

Spent all day today cleaning out the storage closet (no, I didn't get it all done- but I got a lot done). I was savagely attacked by a shelf. I caught it with my head, and then it knocked over its buddy which I caught with my shoulder. I didn't even get a counterstrike off. This is why you should just never do housework. It is too dangerous.

I should have taken a break before kung fu, because by the time I got there, I was tired and had a little headache and wasn't really in the mood to focus. Luckily I was able to suck it up and get down to business, and actually ended up having a very, very productive class.

It was just SK, JM and me. SK wanted to start with sparring, so we did a few rounds of BJJ, starting from standup no less. JM gave me quite a challenge, which is a little discouraging since she hasn't trained in a year- but I was able to tap her a couple times and she didn't tap me (came close with a ezekiel once). She has been doing pilates, and it is apparent in her core strength and also her legs (both of which very very muscular and strong to begin with, now moreso). Had a bitch of a time trying to get out of her closed guard (moreso because we weren't wearing gi's). I am down to 125.5, and it is making a noticable difference (not a good one).

I am vexed to still be getting tapped by SK, altho it wasn't what I would call a rout. He hasn't trained in six or eight months either, but I'm taking him back to Cindy's on Tuesday and am going to make a more concerted effort to try to drag him in there at least once in a while (even if I have to bribe him by paying his mat fee). As soon as he's back in practice, he'll be creaming me again, I'm sure. It's slightly comforting that most of the subs he's getting are kung fu joint locks instead of common BJJ locks (altho a lock is a lock, it can be argued). I'm not sure whether it's a good or bad thing that he chose to wristlock the OPPOSITE wrist from the one that Carlos jobbed last summer- now they both twinge.

They both managed to take me down once, but I resisted many many more attempts, and am reasonably pleased with my takedown defense tonight. I am less pleased with my own (pretty nonexistant) takedown efforts.


After BJJ, we worked on Spear Hand. Corrections for me:

Make sure that with the deep lunge, the arms are straight BEFORE you go down- left arm lower. Do not bend at the waist.

The parry as you come up is NOT with a straight arm. It must be bent at the elbow.

The knife hand is supposed to be a willow palm. Well, we are not exactly sure what it's supposed to be, but it's either a knife hand or a palm-heel... so if we're doing willow palm, that kinda covers all bases.

After the wrist release, the left arm covers the chest and fists under the right armpit- do not chamber. Then for the next movement, you can brush that left hand directly up the right arm and under the right wrist.

For the pull-apart immediately following that, the right elbow is bent and fist is at waist, not as low or as far back as I have been doing. The hammer fist immediately after that is not as large a motion as I have been using. The power is all in the hip twist, not the arm swing.

For the hop and upward-press-block with push, come straight into that without taking time to chamber the arms first. The power is in the hop forward, not the arm chambering.

Next piece: Arrrgh, this spastic Northern Mantis crap...

Circle rt fist in towards your own ribs and then roundhouse punch towards north at chest level. The elbow is bent.
At the same time, left hand hooks outward and the left arm circles out and them comes in to meet the right hand. Grab right lower arm with left hand (slap).

Left hand hooks downward and out in a large circular motion. Right hand circles upward and out in a large circular motion, with an uppercutting fist. They are both moving clockwise, opposite each other. They meet at chest level, right hand fisted (palm up), left hand grabs lower right arm (slap). (This arm motion is similar to the one near the end of Bung Bo Kuen) At the same time, violent hip-twist to east, land in hill-climbing stance with left foot forward.

(SK mentioned that I do not need to have my toe turned in quite as much as I was doing, and I responded to that by turning the toe in even more until the foot was almost pointing backward- just because I can, and it amuses me to see him cringe.)

Turn rt palm over, advance left hand a bit and turn palm up, as if you are locking an opponent's elbow. Pull both hands down toward your rt hip as you shovel kick forward with the right foot. Your torso is actually leaning a bit BACK as you do this.

Turn abruptly north into hill climbing stance (left foot fwd) as rt leg shoots out behind (do not chamber the leg first). Slap rt elbow very forcefully into left palm. You can be bent over a bit at the waist as you do this.


As if this wasn't enough to cause my brain Death By Mantis, we went on to rep the little Mantisy thing that we'd learned on Thursday. Corrections for me:

At the beginning, step back into horse with the left foot.

Make sure at the end to have the left elbow bent in front of chest and the right arm *NOT* too far thrown behind.

SK had me work this sequence against the heavy bag to practice using the hip shifts to power the strikes, and also to get the punch and kick in the second movement landing simultaneously.


By then it was a half hour to class end, and SK wanted to do *MORE* sparring. This time kung fu sparring (BJJ could also happen, but you had to remember that strikes/kicks/illegal moves were valid).

I am surprised and pleased that I was able to maintain such good focus through this class fulla hard work, and somehow carry that focus into what turned out to be one of my better sessions of sparring.

He tried to take me down about a zillion times, but I felt very solidly rooted to the floor and could feel my center of gravity well under his. He could barely budge me. I was doing fairly well at "soft-focussing" my vision at his chest area. I was able to step on and pin his foot several times without looking down. I did get sucked into chasing flurries of Snake strikes a few times, but as soon as I noticed this, I backed off and refocussed. He wholloped me with several of those even so... he likes to bitch-slap you upside the head and on the cheeks when he does this, and it's humiliating and infuriating... but I refrained from getting pissed off and thus more aggressive and sloppier.

He also nailed me repeatedly with big circular kicks- crescents and sweeps. It was obvious that his Adderall had worn off, and he was getting pretty spastically animated- throwing out all sorts of Capoeira moves and weird Monkey techniques. I was chiding myself for blocking kicks with my hands again- this is a terrible habit of mine.

I seemed to be doing fairly well at fighting on the centerline, keeping my guard up, and picking the right times to lunge in. I was stringing together some attack sequences to keep pressing in on him- not quite as well as I would have liked to be, but markedly better than I usually manage. Doing decent at parrying/blocking incoming strikes (yeah, I was eating some, but I successfully defended a much greater percentage).

He remarked that I'm "getting a lot better that this." Boo-yah.

Very productive class- lots of hard Mantis work bracketed by two heavily-sweaty sparring sessions. Very tired now.