day 43: 2-person drills, palm change 5

concepts:

• spacing

forms:

• 2-person drills, palm change 5
• sparring
  

i arrived a little late today, and found myself still going through my warm-up when Sifu and Phunsak arrived with the jian shu students.

Sifu began things promptly, having us go through a short review of palm change 5, sides A and B. we took a little extra time (i.e., we did the forms slow) to make sure everyone was caught up on the finer movements of the form, and i also suspect to make sure that no one was making mistakes in terms of maintaining balance in the palm change.

once we had done this, Sifu instructed Phunsak to get everyone started on continuing to learn the 2-person drill for the 5th palm change, and then went to start the baji students with their lessons.

2-person drills, palm change 5

last week we had done the first 4 steps in the 2-person set, and this week we proceeded with the next 4. while methodically straightforward in terms of continuing the palm change, today still proved to be a challenge.

as i said last week, palm change 5 is long, and made all the more complicated by the fact that side B involves 540-degree turns at 2 different points in the form. this poses a major issue in terms of spacing--not just distance-wise but also in terms of angles and positioning relative to the orientation of the partner.

we repeated the same formation as from before, with 2 lines facing each other and each line designated as side A or side B. this week we went from steps 1-4 to 4-8, and then 1-8 together. after repeating these a few times with 1 partner, we then rotated so as to face a new partner.

this allowed us to see the issue posed by spacing, as changes in height, reach, or even body type adjusted the spacing involved. in particular, i could see that there were major changes in footwork required to get the spacing right, particularly in terms of the 540-degree turns.

we ended up spending most of the class on this, with the final 4 steps reserved for next week.

sparring

we finished class with a series of sparring rounds for those students going to the lei tai tournament. Sifu said that the tournament was now only 3 weeks away, and so he wanted all the baji and bagua students sparring together to finish class to provide additional fighting practice beyond the Sunday lei tai classes. he especially wanted to get everyone used to fighting full-contact using the protective gear mandated by the tournament (gloves, helmet, athletic cup, and rib protector).

i elected to sit out the sparring today, since i was feeling a little beat up from the previous week and figured i was just inviting injury from full-contact rounds. but i made videos of those who were sparring to help them diagnose and study what they were doing (reference: http://www.youtube.com/user/jonathanonapath).

sparring went on for awhile, and ended when people started calling for a break from the heat, which by now was becoming quite warm (and the forecast is for warmer next week). Sifu called class to a close, and then said it was time to get out of the sun and go eat.