day 144: jian and chen (now and zen)

concepts:

• names
• rules
  

forms:

• chen long form
• kuen wu jian
  

this Sunday was a continuation of last Sunday, with Sifu telling Alex to continue working out the jian shu tournament rules so that they could be finalized and sent out during the week. the issue was that we had so few people we couldn't stage a simulation jian shu fight. luckily, Jonathan Shen showed up in time and that brought in enough people to hold some mock rounds.

Sifu began by making a number of announcements regarding the tournament:

• he wants to rent a bus, to not only take all the people who will be competing, but also all equipment and merchandise (the DVDs, uniforms, sparring equipment, and weapons--for jian shu tournament, in particular) that we want to sell. this will help people rest, as well as help transport all the equipment.
• the sparring rules have changed, to the open-handed gloves that allow grasping. no one knows which specific type, so Sifu said to wait on buying them.
• the sparring rules won't be kick-boxing rules, but we don't know what rules they will be yet
  

chen long form

we began with the chen long form, going through several iterations. Sifu apparently used this as an opportunity to test Joe and Ching-Chieh on their memory of the chinese terms for each posture in the form (he also hinted he was going to eventually expect the same from all of us). this took a number of minutes, giving enough time to warm up.

kuen wu jian

once we got through the chen long form as a group, Sifu broke us up into several groups, with him taking time to review Jonathan's mantis form (it seems he's been learning praying mantis separately from Sifu) as well as work with Joe, Ching-Chieh, and Viet on the chen long form.

for the rest of us, we followed the same pattern as last week, staging mock jian shu tournament rounds to test out different rules and think out various scenarios. we also took some to discuss just how we want to format the tournament; Alex is favoring a single-elimination tournament, with paired seedings, much like the NCAA basketball tournament or any tennis tournament. the issues are 1) we don't know how many competitors there will be--we just know there will be many, 2) we don't know how much time each fight will take, 3) there is only so much time that Tony Yang will allot to the jian shu tournament, and 4) there is only 1 ring for the jian shu tournament. in addition, there's a question of who will be serving as referee and judges.

these are questions that Alex decided to hold off on until he knows more, presumably closer to the tournament. for now, however, he asked me and Kieun to help out as judges, and possibly as referees.

this took the remainder of the day, and lasted until noon, when we finished and went to lunch to continue discussing the jian shu tournament setup.