day 23: circle walking - 5th & 6th palm change

concepts:

• sinking
• turning

forms:

• 5th palm change
• 6th palm change
• combat applications (golden rooster spreads its wings, unicorn spits out book of knowledge, black bear probes with its paw, white ape steals the peach)
  
• tournaments

things started a little slowly today. i showed up early to warm up, and ended up talking with Tommy (one of the new baji students) and Scott about the history of Sifu's kung fu school and the other kung fu styles taught in the Wutan curriculum. additional information came as other students arrived, particularly with Phunsak and Siwann-da (sp?).

one of the specific questions i posed to Scott was if any of Sifu's students had gone on to become sifus themselves. Scott said he knew of 1. i then asked if there had ever been any students who had managed to learn everything Jason knew. Scott said there were maybe 2 he knew of who had come close, but that they were no longer in the LA area. i asked if this was a case where the master tells the student "i taught you everything you know, but i didn't teach you everything i know." Scott laughed.

we ended up abbreviating the conversation when Art stated that the DVDs were finished. this is something that i've been waiting for, since there have been countless times each week where i would have liked to have had a reference to review forms outside of class. the sentiment seems shared with a number of other students: Ron, Scott, and Siwann-da all expressed some curiousity, and Ron actually offered cash to buy them immediately. unfortunately, Art only had 1 copy of the DVDs, and so Ron got them. Art promised to bring extra copies next week, and said there are 5 DVDs, with the total price for all 5 being $120.

5th palm change

while we had been talking about the DVDs, Sifu had arrived. he spoke to Phunsak for a few moments, then ordered us to review the 5th palm change under Phunsak's lead while he went to start the lesson plan with the baji students.

Laura noted that we now have more baji students than bagua, with 5 new baji students and the return of 3 older ones, which became 4 with Scott taking the day to work with them. Kieun and Art joked that the situation was starting to resemble a schoolyard, with kids breaking off into 2 groups to make fun of each other. this is somewhat ironic, seeing that we are holding class on an asphalt lot on a playground situated next to an elementary school, meaning that we really are in a schoolyard and probably really are just [big] kids breaking off into groups. our saving grace is that we're doing something [hopefully] more mature than what the [small] kids who are actually going to school at Casuda Canyon Elementary School are doing.

we started circle walking with the 5th palm change, but there quickly became so many questions that Phunsak stopped and gathered everyone he felt needed review. he ended up taking most of the time working to get everyone caught up so that we all had the same level of understanding in terms of doing the palm change.

6th palm change

Phunsak was still reviewing the 5th palm change with everyone by the time Sifu returned. Sifu stopped the review and ordered everyone to set up for the 6th palm change.

much like the other palm changes, i had snuck in some practice with this last week. i'd done it just to get a sense of orientation and spacing in the circle, but i knew that i would need some refinement of my technique, particularly since i'm still at a stage where i'm still forming a basis of reference.

we spent a few minutes performing the 6th palm change, with Sifu walking from student to student making corrections. eventually, he halted us again, and told us to do the form solo in front of the class like we had done last week.

Phunsak threw in a momentary bit of confusion by asking which version of the 6th palm change we were doing (hmmmm...there's more than 1?). there was a brief flurry of discussion between him, Art, Kieun (to a lesser degree), and Sifu. i guess in response to my quizzical look, Phunsak said that Jason had taught it a number of different ways, and not just in terms of a line, circle, diagonal, or square (diagonal and square?!?!), but in terms of the techniques as well. Art asked if we were sure we weren't doing the B side (uh, a B side?!?!?!?!). Sifu said he was sure, and that the B side is "the answer" to the A side (which i take is what we are learning).

given the sudden expansion in the quantity of material, i queried Phunsak just how long it takes to go through the entire bagua curriculum. he answered that they've never gone through the entire curriculum (case in point: evidently no one has ever picked up the fist or elbow form, and only several students have studied the leg form). noting my surprise, he tried to comfort me with the comment "but we have never gone this much into detail in 64 Palms, which is good." Kieun concurred with "oh yeah, when we did it before we never got this much correction."

while i pondered this, Sifu had me be the first to walk the circle doing the 6th palm change. watching me go through it for both and left sides, he pointed the following issues in my technique:

• black bear probes with its paws--the last time we had done the 6th palm change, we had focused on pointing the upraised foot in conjunction with a forward reach of one hand. this time, Sifu said that i needed to observe the other hand was supposed to pull back at the same time the other limbs are moving forward. the point was the off-hand is actually pulling backwards, and so i needed to imagine this as i did the technique.
  
• big serpent coils its body--this is the one that reminds me of vortices trailing a body in fluid dynamics. Sifu said i needed to exaggerate the movements and increase the turning of my waist, to the point that my entire spine and head were turning to face completely behind my body and my hands were sliding to points well behind my front. he said that i should turn to the point that i can visualize my shoulders aligning 180 degrees from the line of my knees (i.e., that i turn until my right shoulder is in the direction of my left knee and my left shoulder is in the direction of my right knee). he also pointed out that this is nothing more than an extension of one of the behind-the-back hand drill, wherein in hands slide along the back and reach out behind the body as the waist turns. when he said this it made things obvious as to how wide the technique is supposed to go, and very clear as to how constrained i'd been.
  
• white ape steals the peach--here, again, i was not exaggerating the movement enough going out of this technique into green dragon soars in the sky. Sifu noted that the hands should cross gracefully in front of the body as they spread out into green dragon, and that i needed to imagine the hands holding up fruits as they spread out. evidently, i have not been crossing the hands and had become a little careless in returning to green dragon.
  

combat applications

after everyone had taken the opportunity to perform in front of the class, Sifu took us through more combat applications with the 6th palm change.

we had done some combat application work with this previously (reference: day 13: 6th palm change). apparently, this had only covered some of the combat applications, and only for some of the techniques. before, we had really only covered combat applications for black bear probes with its paws (the forward pointed thrust of the leg and foot), black bear turns its body (the sinking movement into bear stance), and big serpent coils its body (the vortices motion with the hands). this time, we covered a number of additional combat applications:

• golden rooster spreads its wings--this was something i had discussed with Phunsak and Kieun 2 weeks ago (reference: day 21: review, 4th palm change, & the state of the world). now we actually got to practice this. Sifu had us initiate the move out of the unicorn stance, with the upraised hand making and maintaining contact with the forearm of the opponent's strike, then turning so that the palm faced the enemy's eyes to distract them. in addition, he reminded us that similar to black bear turns its body, golden rooster should be initiated by having the hand moving down towards the opponent first brush the rear shoulder. he also pointed out that golden rooster, unlike black bear, has a forward vector component as the practitioner sinks, so that the opponent falls down and away from the practitioner.
  
• unicorn spits out book of knowledge to black bear probes with its paw--the last time we had done this (reference: day 13: 6th palm change), we had done this with just black bear probes its paw, and as a kick-to-pointed toe to dispel an opponent who has stopped your kick by grabbing your foot. Sifu now showed us that the 2 techniques together could also be a strike or counter-strike. the upraised hand, similar to the unicorn from which we initiated golden rooster, serves to block an assailant's hand strike. the practitioner, by pointing the hand forward to the assailant's face extending into black bear probes with its paw, is then distracting them. the off-hand, which pulls back in the extension to black bear probes with its paw, is actually a grab of the opponent's striking arm. the upraised leg, which turns into a pointed toe, can be a kick. Sifu pointed out variations of unicorn spits out book of knowledge: 1) the kick can either go to the back of the opponent's leading leg or the back of the opponent's trailing leg, thereby either forcing them to fall backwards or (and i suspect the real intent in a combat setting) tearing their knee ligaments (i can already see it's the dreaded ACL, as well as the lesser known by equally dangerous MCL); or 2) the knee can be used to strike the opponent's forward hip or leg, which if it misses can then continue to a kick.
  
• white ape steals the peach--this had been covered in the class for the 7th palm change (reference: day 14: 7th palm change (shock the monkey!)), but then we had used the downward-moving arm to drive into the shoulder joint of the opponent to make them fall backwards. this time, Sifu showed us that the downward strike can be over the opponent's biceps. starting by facing the opponent's tiger gate, the technique can be initiated by using the leading hand to redirect an opponent's strike (using the twirling motion from the forward-facing hand drills...the one that i keep remembering as identical to the swim drills exploiting Bernoulli's principle to create forward thrust), except that the leading hand doesn't then go into a forward strike but instead slides along the outside elbow of the arm. it grabs and props the opponent's arm at or just above the underside of the elbow. the practitioner then turns into white ape steals the peach, bringing the other arm moving downwards over the opponent's bicep and into the ground. this drives the opponent's shoulder back and down, resulting in the opponent being forced in the same direction and falling backwards.

we did each of these combat applications in a line. the class split off into 2 separate lines, with Art, Lee, Eric, and Laura (the shorter one) in one line and me, Kieun, Phunsak, Ronald, and Laura (the taller one) in the other. this seemed to go much faster than a single line, although i recalled that Art had said the disadvantage of this is that it reduces the variety of body types each of us gets to practice against.

something i noticed during the combat applications is that 2 areas i'm really going to have to work on to perform the 6th palm change correctly is sinking and turning. for golden rooster (as well as bear), it seems imperative to sink into the stance, since this helps generate a downward force into the opponent. not sinking just results in this stance being a downward reach, which only serves to open up your reaching arm and your head to capture. for big serpent coils its body, i can see that the turning motions have to be wide and deep, since this makes a big contribution to the power of the technique in capturing and throwing the opponent (reference: day 13: 6th palm change). for some reason, with this palm change i'm finding the sinking and turning sensations a little difficult to realize, and rather elusive in terms of being natural. the solution, of course, is practice...but practice doing them right, which is going to take some care and attention.

tournaments

Sifu finished the day by talking about tournaments. he announced the date of an annual tournament held by a colleague in Maryland (reference: http://www.usksf.org/). the tournament is a lei tai event, meaning it's full contact (with helmet and gloves) in a ring (actually, a square) with no ropes, with 3 rounds of 2 minutes each, and judges grading the victor. from Sifu's description, it seems a pretty big event, with competitors from all over the country. he also referenced its connections with traditional Taiwanese tournaments run through their kuo shu organizations. he added it was a good means of meeting other martial artists, as well as a mechanism to gauge our own skill levels.

Sifu stressed that it is good for all of us to get the experience of fighting against unknown opponents in order to truly develop our self-defense abilities, since it is only through real fighting situations that we can get a true understanding of the combat applications we study. he repeated his observations from previous classes that forms alone are not enough to truly learn a martial art, and that we have to know how to apply them for the purposes for which they were intended--and this knowledge can only be acquired by trying to use them in real fights, albeit in a controlled environment of a tournament.

Phunsak mentioned to me that the sifu certification requires participation in several full-contact tournaments. this makes sense, since i don't think anybody who wants to learn self-defense can ever accept the legitimacy of an instructor who has never actually used the methods they are teaching in a real self-defense situation. it's like being taught how to be a doctor from someone who isn't a doctor; you're just not going to be able to take anything they say seriously. if you're going to rely on martial arts to protect your life, then you want to learn from someone who actually has used martial arts to protect their life.

this brings up a story my first coach told me. he's an officer in the Marine Corps. he told me once that men in a combat unit will always welcome someone with combat experience--because while you can certainly go to war with nothing but green newbies (and most of the time you do), you're going to have just that much of an extra edge having someone with combat experience...and sometimes, that extra edge is the only thing that makes the difference between life and death.

later, over lunch, Phunsak asked me if i was interested in going to the tournament this year.

i had to say no. the timing this year is very bad. it's a matter of 1) i'm still technically on a collegiate athletic team, and my coach would have a conniption fit if he knew i was exposing myself to injury in something outside of my sport (don't even get me started), 2) i'm under the gun to finish my degree and graduate, both from the school and my parents, and this is absolutely, positively my last year (even schools have deadlines on PhDs), and 3) i have no money, with my credit card already straining to meet the travel expenses for several Ironman races in other countries next year.although, Sifu is right. it's not a martial art unless you can actually apply it effectively (key word: effectively) in a fight. otherwise it's just exercise and another way to dance.

if i'm really going to learn martial arts as martial arts, i'm going to have to get tested in a fight sooner or later, and it's better that it be done first in a controlled tournament setting surrounded by friends, rather than on a street in the darkness all alone facing 2 (or more) criminals. because 1 way you survive and learn for another day, while the other way you get to deal with life and death and no 2nd chances. although, having said this, i think i'd like to get in a good deal of sparring before i ever consider stepping into a ring...while i think i can make somebody suffer for hurting me, i think the point of learning self-defense is to not get hurt to begin with.