days 106 & 107: SLED, ball & bowl, and videos

concepts:

• SLED (slow, long, even, deep)
• ball & bowl
  

forms:

• Yang tai chi long form

things were a bit of a blur for this, since i was preparing to go to Ironman New Zealand during this week. quite frankly, i didn't pay that much attention to what was going on, particularly since we largely stopped at the midway point of the long form, with Sifu saying he was going to spend the remainder of the quarter on improving everybody's form.

i won't break things down into days for this post, but i can say that Sifu stressed the following points during the week, both of which we covered in last quarter's class on the Yang short form, meaning that they were largely review for me this time:

• SLED (slow, long, even, deep)--in tai chi, movements need to be done with these 4 factors in mind in order to maximize the purpose of the forms, which is to encourage muscle memory and neuro-muscular coordination for tai chi-specific movements
• ball & bowl--again, these are visualization guides that help adjust muscle memory and neuro-muscular coordination for better technique in tai chi-specific movements
  

apart from that, we began recording students performing the long form individually using a digital video camera, so that each student could see themselves doing the form and thereby recognize what they were doing. Sifu believes that this will help people better recognize what they need to change--since seeing their own mistakes and what they look like may be more educational than being told what those mistakes are.

that was it for this week...i promptly took a 2-week break off to go to Ironman New Zealand.