Wednesday, June 27, 2007

day 42: lei tai training (part 6 - 6/24/07)

concepts:

  • randomness
  • footwork
  • guard

agenda:

  • sparring
we had a more normal turnout this morning, with a total of 4 baji students and 3 bagua students. Kieun made an impromptu appearance, and joined the bagua group.

Sifu divided us, and told the bagua students to begin light sparring similar to last week, but with 1-minute rounds. he then worked with the baji students while Phunsak led the bagua students.

Phunsak, Richard, and Kieun had all brought their fighting equipment this morning, which included mouthguards, helmet, gloves, rib protectors, and punching shield. Richard and Phunsak each had multiple gloves and helmets, so we were able to share.

between the 4 of us, we did a round-robin session of light sparring. in the beginning, we went rounds of 1 minute, but after awhile we decided to go to 2 minutes to make things more strenuous. we kept going, so that each person had the chance to have multiple rounds against each of the other people.

following from last week, i made a concentrated effort this time to increase the randomness of my movements, with constant changes in stride length, direction, and speed, as well as changes in hand position, targeting, and speed. i also made sure that my footwork was more decisive, and also more reflective of bagua principles of setting me up at angles to the opponent (or behind them altogether). in addition, i made it a point to keep a guard hand up to protect my head so that it wasn't so exposed, as well as being mindful of attacks to my midsection.

things went a little better than last week, although i noticed that much of my time was spent on defensive moves, and that i wasn't able to sustain offensive attacks (or even launch them) as easily as i would have liked. i think that the experience of light sparring from last week was a help, since things didn't seem so fast or confused this time, and i was actually able to get a greater sense of dispassion from the context of the fight itself and spend more time observing my opponent--i found it possible this week to actually get a feel for their habits and patterns of attack and defense.

light sparring is not as intensive or as difficult as full-contact full-speed sparring, but i'm finding it a useful stage in training, since it's letting me get a feel for the rhythm of fighting and escalate my speed, reflexes, and sense of spacing in a way that is much more intuitive and relevant for facing opponents. in addition, it's helping get a better sense of just how the techniques we've been learning can be applied. i don't think i would be able to make the learning curve as easily if we had gone directly to full-contact work. with light sparring, at least i can adjust a little more quickly and get some orientation to the context of fighting without risking too much pain and suffering.

near the end of the session, Sifu called the groups together and had us spar each other, so that the students of each style could get a feel for facing students of a different style. only 2 of the baji students could spar, since 2 were injured. i ended up taking videos of the other 2 sparring, since i figured it would help them learn from the sparring sessions by letting them see themselves fighting. we ended up having some additional injuries (Richard got a black eye, and Charles--one of the baji students--got scratched on his eyeball).

apart from that, things went well, and i think it was pretty constructive. we finished the day after the final 2 light sparring sessions, with the baji students (Simon and Charles) each facing Phunsak, who treated them easily to help their training.

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