jonathan on a path: quarterly summary

time again for the quarterly summary. this should be taken relative to last quarter (reference: quarterly summary - Q3, 2007).

original goals

following the "objectives for the future" given in the previous quarterly summary, the objectives for this quarter were:

continue attending class
continue practicing during the week outside of class
continue 2-person and multi-person drills and sparring (to improve combat application of techniques and concepts)
learn the more fundamental components of the curriculum
improve qi-gong
begin learning long fist (beginning by finishing tantui)
consider other styles to learn for the future

summary of events

with respect to the curriculum, this is what has been covered (in no particular order):

pao quan (about halfway, opening & closing)
Yang tai chi (short form)
Chen tai chi (long form)
two-person drills (stationary & moving)
64 palms: palm changes 1-8 (side A), 1-8 (side B)
64 palms: A v B, palm changes 1-8
tai chi qi-gong
kuen wu jian shu
reference materials (Yang course hand-outs)

other things that have been covered that were not necessarily within the curriculum:

Chinese martial arts history--ancient, traditional, modern
traditional Asian medicine--i've gotten more about bagua qi-gong, as well as awareness that there are other forms of qi-gong
combat theory--LOTS of theory. Art mentioned to me that this was because Sifu has been writing a book on Yang tai chi with him, as well as a book on jian shu with John Eagles. this has forced Sifu to really go back through all this theory and then assemble and organize it. the result has been that he's been presenting this to class as we've gone along...i don't mind. in fact, i'm perfectly happy. i'd like even more. i'm starting to believe that it's very difficult to understand how to apply the techniques we're learning in a full-speed full-contact combat environment (much less a random self-defense situation on the street) without a firm grasp of fighting theory and accompanying practice using the theory--in short, application is theory, theory is application, and you can't really have one without the other; any attempt to do so means incomplete (and hence, less effective) operation of the martial art.

evaluation

i think i've managed to reach most of the goals for this quarter:

continue attending class: pretty solid here, i only missed a handful of classes
continue practicing during the week outside of class: this i managed to do, although things suffered a little around the time of my dissertation defense
continue 2-person and multi-person drills and sparring (to improve combat application of techniques and concepts): we did a lot more of this, and in a way that involved drills that i could see followed a gradually increasing difficulty level towards full-contact work. this is really good, because it's allowing me to really see and comprehend things without getting banged up--meaning less time in recovery and more time learning
learn the more fundamental components of the curriculum: the Yang tai chi class was probably one of the best things i've done. it allowed me to follow a curriculum all the way from the beginning, and get a better feel for the way training is structured in terms of philosophy and purpose
improve qi-gong: again, the Yang tai chi class was instrumental here. i found this much more responsive than the bagua qi-gong we've done in the weekend class, even though the advanced students keep telling me the bagua qi-gong is more powerful. but i suspect that this is because 1) bagua qi-gong is better suited to practitioners with more experience in qi-gong, while tai chi qi-gong is better suited to new students, and 2) my sports training is sucking out so much energy from me that it doesn't leave me with much to work with for qi-gong (especially qi-gong is about cultivating energy, and i'm not really being left with much to cultivate).
begin learning long fist (beginning by finishing tantui): progress here. i got through tantui, and started on the next stage of tantui training, which involves incorporation of power. i've also been studying pao quan, which is the intermediate form in long fist. i'm about halfway through that.
consider other styles to learn for the future: this is sort of being taken care of. with the Yang tai chi and the Chen tai chi, i've got a fair amount of material to learn. add the kuen wu jian, and my plate is pretty full.

so much stuff got covered this past quarter that it's sort of a blur. part of it was the extra Yang tai chi class during the week, another part of it was the extra weekend class every other Sunday for Chen tai chi and kuen wu jian. but i also think an additional factor was that the amount of information being relayed in the weekend classes became more concentrated.

this was good. i learned more this past quarter than i learned in the previous time i've been learning kung fu. and for all this, it was clear--if anything, even more clear than before, since it was taught in a way that was much less esoteric and much more hands-on concrete logical and used concepts that i could relate to my own cultural and educational background. that, and it was done with a no-nonsense approach that was very elucidating.

although, i should point out, that the previous year of instruction was necessary to really understand this past quarter. if i hadn't devoted so much effort over the previous year to trying understand things, i probably wouldn't have made anywhere near the progress i made...it's typical of the learning curve: no matter how steep, there's an initial slow phase that every person has to make before they can start following the curve up. and the curve this past quarter was exponential for awhile.

we'll see how things go this coming quarter.

observations

my comments can probably be summarized as follows:

theory and application: i'm going to repeat this here, because i really think this has been the main revelation this past quarter...application is theory, theory is application, and you can't have one without the other; any attempt to do so means incomplete (and hence, less effective) operation of the martial art. all the applications we were learning before were good, but i felt like it was ingredients without a recipe--you have the components of a dish, but in order to make a fine meal, you still have to know how to combine the ingredients, and know what each ingredient does to the combination. theory shows you how the applications combine together, and what each application does to your fight.
practice: the theory we've been getting has altered the way i've been practicing. i'm starting to feel a better (albeit still gathering) understanding of just how a martial art is a "martial art" (as opposed to just "brawling"). it's helping me see how a trained or skilled fighter can recognize an opponent, break down their strengths and weaknesses, and then manipulate both to generate a desired outcome (hopefully victory). it's also helping me see just how the new stuff we're learning fits in with everything else we've learned before--i mean, it's one thing to have other people tell me this, but it's another thing entirely to understand it, and the latter is more the sense i'm getting now.

objectives for the future

ditto from before: