concepts:- walking the square
- walking the circle
- 2-person drills (pushing moon out the door)
- multi-person sparring
- palm changes 1-5
people showed up a little late today, possibly as a result of the predicted storm. with nobody present on my arrival, i took it upon myself to go through stances. of course, by the time i had finished, several other people had shown up (Ching-Tszieh [sp?], Laura, Shatil [sp?], and a couple of others), which meant i got to go through stances a second time.
Sifu showed up with John and Phunsak near the end of the 2nd iteration of stances. as soon as we had finished, Jason led us all through the 1-person hand drills (single and double). i'm finding these to be a nice gentle warm-up. it also turns out that John was right, now that we've done them several times i'm starting to feel a slight rhythm to them, and even find them quite pleasant to do.
walking the square
immediately following the hand drills, Jason ordered everyone to walk squares. identical to last week, he would call out for inside or outside turns at various points, and observe us as we made changes. we ended up doing this for a good while, as Sifu had to answer his phone and consequently leave us to practice walking the square on our own.
one thing i am noticing about walking the square is that there is a progressive level of difficulty. in the beginning, it seems easy (and boring) enough to simply plod around the perimeter of an imaginary square, brushing the feet against each other and stepping flat-footed in the ready position. however, it becomes somewhat more difficult if you do it with eyes looking forward to an imaginary opponent, rather than glancing at the ground. the difficulty level escalates further if you do it with speed, as you would in actual combat--and i could tell that the more senior students in the class were applying distinctly greater speed than those of us new to bagua. beyond this, another order of difficulty arises if you attempt to incorporate breathing techniques in conjunction with the steps and the turns.
in a way, it reminds me a lot of swimming, which is superficially simple but mind-bogglingly complex in technique if a person expects to do it competitively. and the technique is maddeningly difficult to master, even as the exercise itself is maddeningly monotonous to perform. it doesn't help that you invariably do it solo, by yourself, with nothing available to occupy your mind. walking the square is exactly the same way.
walking the circle
after awhile, Sifu Jason had us move on to walking the circle. this is to me a bit of a relief, since there's more things of interest in interacting with other human beings, even if we are just moving around in circles. this is because you can observe your form relative to others, you can simulate circling an opponent, and you can learn to synchronize your actions with others.
i could feel myself markedly more comfortable relative to last week, even when Jason called out inside and outside turns. i suppose it should, given the practice i'd been putting in over last week. for all that, i could tell the exercise of walking the circle probably has several additional magnitudes of difficulty--just as much as walking the square, i can see that it can be affected by eye position, speed, and breathing, and can also further be influenced by posture, height, and number of participants.
just as we finished with walking, the rain started to come down. Jason pointed to where he wanted everyone to go--a sheltered picnic area on the opposite side of the school, easily within walking distance, even though most everyone ended up driving their cars and re-parking them (it's LA, go figure...).
2-person drills (pushing moon out the door)
when we reconvened, Sifu pointed out the size of the picnic area, which was distinctly smaller than the asphalt lot we'd been using. he commented that we should get used to this, since it was highly likely we'd encounter combat situations in confined spaces. he told us the story of a wing chun practitioner who managed to win a fight inside a closed elevator against a mugger. Sifu said we needed to learn how to feel comfortable fighting in these kinds of areas.
with that, he had us break off into pairs to perform the 2-person pushing moon out the door drill from last week (the one involving the pushing movement in the 1st palm change). i was working with Art this time. Art and i were a little discombobulated at first, since he wasn't sure as to what drill was being done and we had to check with the other pairs to confirm what we were supposed to be doing.
working with Art is a bit of an exercise in enlightenment. for someone who has gone through prostate cancer (and survived), and for someone who gets little aerobic conditioning, he manages to have a surprising amount of power. a lot of it is his understanding of technique. whatever it is, working with him always surprises me as to just how effective a practitioner he is, and constantly yields lessons in just how big a difference a slight change in technique can make. i notice that compared to some of the other students i pair up with in drills, Art forces me to pay much more attention to technique purely on the basis of the power i sense coming from his movements.
i would have liked to continue working on this drill with Art a little bit more, since i could tell i am having some inconsistencies with proper technique. but Sifu stopped everyone to proceed to what was apparently the focus of the day: multi-person sparring.
multi-person sparring
Jason introduced multi-person sparring by stating that there may be times when we encounter multiple opponents. while never a good thing and something to be avoided, he said that the general strategy if we are forced into such a situation is to face the nearest opponent first and then proceed to the others based on proximity.
the challenge, however, is to maneuver yourself in a way that doesn't expose you to the attacks of the other opponents. Jason said that this can be done by taking your first opponent and positioning the 2 of you in a way that the first opponent is between you and the other attackers. the challenge is to keep track of where everyone is while simultaneously engaging in combat with the person in front of you.
Sifu then showed us the drill that is meant to develop our ability to learn such skills. using Phunsak and Lee, he posed himself as a defender and the other 2 as attackers. he instructed both of them to attack at the same time. Sifu engaged Phunsak first, since he was the nearest, and then fought him in a way that kept Phunsak moving so as to unintentionally impeded Lee's attempts to attack Sifu.
what Jason demonstrated was very reminiscent of aikido demonstrations i've seen, where a single defender faces off against multiple attackers, but then glides effortlessly through the assailants and with complete grace and ease engages them, so that they are thrown helplessly around into each other. the best image i can invoke to describe the scene is of a single person located serenely in the center of a whirlwind.
i should note that i've noticed a large number of similarities between bagua and aikido. this apparently is something that's been recognized in the martial arts community, since there seems to be a large number of writings devoted to it. the suspicion apparently is that the creator of modern aikido borrowed from (or was influenced by) bagua principles.
Jason made some points about the nature of the multi-person sparring drill and combat against multiple attackers:
- engage the nearest person first
- do not fixate on the person you are engaging. always keep track of everyone around you.
- as a corollary to the above, do not stay engaged with the person you are fighting. if necessary, if you can't dispose of them quickly, engage them and get them out of the way so that you can proceed to the other attackers, and then return to dispose of the first attacker
- do not remain stationary. you must move.
- move with purpose. move in a way that helps you win.
- make the person you are engaging move so that they obstruct the other attackers.
- do not expose yourself to attacks from multiple assailants or from multiple angles
- be quick, be efficient
- be in shape
the drill, if done properly, involves people by turn assuming the role of defender while the other members of the group assume the role of attackers. all attackers are supposed to attack simultaneously. the defender, in response, is supposed to engage the nearest attacker, but then constantly move so that attacker is made to move in a way that constantly obstructs the other attackers from approaching. all the while, all participants are supposed to be exercising the techniques that have been taught to them (and Jason emphasized the concepts of "opening" and "entering" the opponent's gates), and making sincere efforts of real attackers.
we didn't do the drill properly. from what i could tell, everyone had challenges in applying proper technique (really sloppy "opening" and really haphazard "entering"), footwork was all over the place, attacks weren't consistently simultaneous, and there was very little movement of opponents in ways they could obstruct fellow opponents.
i think a lot of it was that people were having to adjust to dealing with multiple opponents and multiple participants at the same time. it's a lot to keep track of--much more so than walking the circle, since here people aren't working in synchronization, but rather are working in the exact opposite: dissonance. as a result, our focus was thrown off, preventing awareness and ability to remember and to perform proper technique or to realize the intended strategy.
that, and it is really tiring to constantly deal with multiple opponents. really tiring. i can't imagine what happens in a real fight with several people all intent on hurting or killing you--especially if they're all skilled.
i think people are still trying to get used to the drill. it's just a lot to deal with. especially since we just started doing 2-person sparring only last week. multi-person sparring involves complexity, fluidity, transience. to borrow a popular Buddhist term, it exemplifies the state of impermanence. to me, it was pretty much chaos.
but that's what combat is, isn't it?
after some time observing, Jason called a halt and gathered everyone together. he shared with us a story of a similar drill he learned in shiu jiao [sp?]. there, he said students were sometimes broken into teams of 6. the drill would commence as we were doing it, but the instructor would count to 3, with the defending student expected to have disposed of an attacker within that count and moved on to the next opponent. once students had gotten good working in a group of 6, they would then proceed to challenge other teams of 6, and thereby get further practice against opponents they didn't know.
Sifu then told us that the reason he was inserting sparring sessions in between time learning 64 Palms was that he wanted to give greater emphasis on sparring and combat. Jason said that the last time he'd gone through the bagua curriculum that he'd given less time to actual sparring (he used the word "glossed over"). this time, he said, he wanted to really make sure we were learning the combat applications, and to make sure we were getting good sparring practice.
this is fine with me. as i've written in previous posts, one of the original reasons i wanted to learn a martial art was to learn self-defense. that, and as i've also written before, a "martial" art isn't really "martial" unless it's effective in combat, and a "martial artist" isn't really a "martial artists" until they can use a martial art effectively (and that's the key word: effectively) in combat.
palm changes 1-5
having introduced everyone to multi-person sparring, Sifu organized everyone to review the first 5 palm changes we'd learned. this was pretty much straightforward, and i could tell Jason was doing this to fine-tune people's form, as well as to give everyone a refresher before heading into the winter break.
Sifu reminded everyone that there would be no class for the next 2 weekends, and that we would resume January 6. he also said that at that time we'd discuss making up the 2 weekends.
with that, class was dismissed. there was a clinic this weekend that Sifu had first told us about last weekend, but since my schedule was already filled with things for my research and family commitments, i figured it was best i get on with the things i needed to do. that, and the seminar covered things (Chen tai chi) that i just don't know enough about to really get the full benefit from (even though Chen tai chi is something i definitely want to get to...maybe after i get a little more grounded with what i'm learning now).
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