day 151: practice jian shu and movement drills

concepts:

• judging

forms:

• jian shu
• tournament prep

this Sunday was divided between jian shu and sparring training, with both devoted to tournament preparations. Alex showed up today to help with the jian shu, as did Ching-Chieh. this meant that Phunsak had conflicting demands on his time, and so he ended up agreeing to work with Ching-Chieh for the time she could stay (she had to leave early), and then turning to help Alex with the jian shu preparation.

jian shu

while Ching-Chieh was warming up, i asked Phunsak to take me through more of the jian shu basics before everyone arrived. we briefly reviewed the 5 i had learned before (reference: day 140), and he then led me through the 5 parries:

• schwan (sp?) : this involves slight circular motions, either clockwise or counter-clockwise, on a vertical plane perpendicular to the orientation of the sword-holderwith the tip of the blade in front of the body, basically circling the opponent's sword
• ya : this consists of arcs traced by the tip of the sword done in conjunction with the flipping of the sword blade, such that the blade goes from the ready position over to a flat position with the tip forward. this is meant to redirect an opponent's sword thrust off to the side and slight downward
• gua : this involves holding the sword more vertical, and having the tip move in circular patterns on a horizontal plane, so that the sword blade follows a cone, with the tip of the sword tracing the open end of the cone and the handle of the sword acting as the closed vertex of the cone
• bow : this is basically a horizontal movement of the sword, but in a way that is not meant to slash, but instead to use the flat part of the blade to parry
• ti : this has the tip of the blade move in a U-shape facing the opponent, and means moving your sword from one side to the other side of the opponent's sword
• shyo (sp?) : this just traces an X pattern in front of the sword-holder, with the downward-moving blade intercepting an opponent's attempt to strike upwards
• jia : this is similar to schwan, but is more abrupt and only traces a circle one time, and with more force, so as to force an opponent's sword off to one side
  

after this, Alex had us practice mock jian tournament matches, with people taking turns playing as fighters and as judges. Phunsak joined us after he finished practicing with Ching-Chieh. i ended up taking a turn as a participant, but focused on getting in practice as a judge.

i have to say that judging is an art, and not something that a person can be expected to do without prior practice. it's one thing to know jian shu techniques and to know the rules, but it's another thing entirely to apply them in a full-speed scenario. just as much as a participant has to adjust to full-speed, so does a judge. as a judge, you have to be able to see actions at full speed, and then also be able to make immediate, accurate, and definitive decisions as to possible points, penalties, or necessary stoppages in action. this can be difficult.

i mentioned to Alex that we're going to need to make sure that all judges are trained for the tournament, since it's definitely a challenge and not something that anybody can do without some prior practice. he seemed to agree, and seems to have already issued announcements to participating teams that they need to train their own judges for the tournament.

tournament prep

after finishing with jian practice, i went to do more sparring training with Kieun. today we built upon the free-form movement drills we'd started at the end of yesterday's practice.

Kieun had me work on drills focused on entering an opponent's gate, but instead of simply reacting to the opponent's actions, this time he wanted me to work on trying to entice the opponent into an action that i could use to position myself for a counter-attack. this was essentially the same as Sifu's concepts of progressing through ting, hwa, and na jing, particularly in terms of Sifu's comments about starting with ting jing by playing with opponent to sense their actions and play with the their minds so as to manipulate them into doing something that allows you to progress to hwa jing and then na jing.

this consumed the rest of practice, with things stopping at 12:30, at which point Kieun had to leave to get to his wedding preparations. Phunsak and Alex decided this was as good time to stop as well, and the 3 of us went to lunch.