Archery!

So often I have witnessed things I would never have believed possible that I am more than willing to keep my mind open to the idea that our bodies are home to forces that we don’t fully comprehend. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path



Jeep still in shop, which is crippling my ability to get to class.

Friday's Form Of the Day was Touch Bridge. Saturday's was Hurricane Hands. Sunday's was Cannon Fist. Monday's was Kiu Two.Tuesday's was the Chen Dau form. Wednesday: Dance Of Life. Today, the Snake Dao fragment. I am now at the end of round one through the form list. This was a good idea.

Today I tried archery for the first time. My form and aim both need work, but I was mostly hitting the straw bale (if not always the target itself) instead of the trees, random fly-by birds, or my fellow sportspeople. Go me!

I was worried about using my arm muscles too much as opposed to the back muscles to draw, but my form did not seem too bad as long as I kept paying attention to it and didn't get sloppy. I had to be reminded a few times to not hunch. I was also worried about getting tired really fast, but I did okay there, although my aim definitely went downhill later in the session. My broken finger was hampering me a titch, but it was bearable. I have green dye from the fletching ground into the knuckle of my left index finger- at at one point I embedded a piece of the fake feather in the skin (ouch). There's a little leather thingie you can wear for that, which I wore for a while, but it was making it more difficult for me to aim, so I took it off again. I wonder if taping that knuckle would work.

The biggest challenge was trying to aim with my F'ed up binocular vision. I am very strongly left-eye dominant, to the point that I tend to tilt my head in that direction and not use my right eye much, especially for aiming things. I'd been told that it was bad form to close one eye, so I tried it with both eyes open. Fair results, but not as good as I wanted. So I closed my right eye (the weak one) and the aim got a lot worse. Huh??? I tried closing the left (strong) eye, and the aim got better. That made absolutely no sense to me until my teacher pointed out that it was my right eye that was in a position to be sighting right along the arrow. Duh.

Still having to make what seemed like a lot of adjustments and aim fairly high and to the right of my target... and still shooting a lot of "grounders" that ended up UNDER the straw bale, as well as a good deal of shooting the paper-target antelope in the ass instead of in the ribs where I was aiming... but I think with practice, I will learn how to compensate for my weird eyes and be able to aim better. It was fun, I definitely want to try some more!


Thursday kung fu. We started with JM in horse stance (feet "glued" to the floor) and me attacking. She could only parry and block, no counterstriking. Then we switched places. It was so hard to not counterstrike. On the other hand, it's nice to see how ingrained it is to do so. She was behind me- forcing me to work in deep 180 degree scissor stance- for a long time, and at one point I felt my left knee go "pop". Crap. But it seemed fine for the rest of the class, so I forgot about it.

Next, review of the first three Black Crane line drills: apps with partners. As usual, I had trouble with Nemesis, and I had to change one throat-strike-with-takedown into a groin-strike-with-takedown. I also had some issues with right versus left, which went away as soon as I quit worrying about it and just focussed on doing some app that worked instead of the "correct" app with the "correct" foot on the "correct" side.

Next, kick line drills. The jumping box kick, which I've always struggled with a bit, seemed mostly okay tonight (better if I could stay focussed on getting proper elevation before the second kick). The flying whirlwind kick- ugh. It got better- it gets better every time I work on it- but it still sucks! Improvement points- I need to make sure to spot my target FIRST, and turn more *before* I get in too much of a hurry to get my feet off the ground (which incidentally will help me spot my target). JM's flying whirlwind kicks are ***SICK***! Perfect form, scary power, jaw-dropping height. And of course when I told her this, all she could do was nitpick at some imaginary tiny flaw. I tried to talk her out of it, but no go.

Oh, I also made a point of telling her last week- when I was alone with her- that for what my opinion is worth, her Dragon energy is more powerful than ANYONE's except for CN. She seemed quite shocked. Well, it seems patently obvious to me that she is a Tiger/Dragon, just like me. The two styles are clearly connected. She may be teetering a bit closer to Dragon, with me teetering a bit closer to Tiger. She doesn't seem to see it. Yet.

A few more kicks.... roundhouse into hook kick... again, needing to spot the target more carefully (in this case, before the second kick). In both of these cases where I was sloppy with spotting the target, I was launching the kick prematurely, and even if I was flexible enough to get all the way around, the point of greatest power was being reached before I reached the actual target.


Five Animals form. Improvement opportunities for me- watch the hop back into White Crane pose, don't have the arms hyperextended, and make sure the elbows are dropped. Also, the White Ape Offers the Cup- I have been doing it with my wrists bent. No bent wrists. I argued that I was visualizing my target higher than was being demo'ed, but SK made me do the app on him until I had to admit that yup, you're right, I'm wrong. And that's why he's the teacher. (heh heh)

On the walk back to the car, my left knee siezed up in a gaspingly painful fashion. It had been fine all the way through class- doing spinning flying kicks! But it didn't want to walk back to the car. I had to hobble, agonizingly. Let's see what it's like in the morning.