day 155: tournament prep - leg drills & mock jian shu

concepts:

• footwork

forms:

• tournament prep

i'm writing a short post for this Sunday, since it was largely straightforward, with Sifu having us go through drills to prep for the tournament. we had a pretty sizable turnout today, since John Eagles was back, adding another participant for jian shu. this seemed to make a difference in terms of running the mock jian shu rounds, even though Alex was absent today.

Sifu broke us into different groups to warm up. he had Ching-Chieh and Phunsak do several repetitions of their 2-person 64 palms form, Simon repeat several baji routines, Jonathan go through his mantis work, and John Eagles, Richard, and me perform several iterations of the chen tai chi long form.

tournament prep

once we'd gone through the warm-up, Sifu had us spend the day focusing on footwork drills. he said this was the paramount element in fighting (not just for tournaments, but also for real-life self-defense), since it drives your ability to move and position yourself with respect to a hostile enemy, and also acts to generate power in your attacks.

for today, Sifu had us focus on the following drills:

• basic step forward and back, solo--this is just the basic step (front foot stepping forward, with rear foot following) in the ready stance, with the purpose being to move back and forth along a line while staying in the ready stance (so as to keep the gates closed and the body ready to act) and keeping the feet flat and light (so as to not provide an opening for the opponent to trip the feet). we went 10 steps forward and 10 steps back several times.
• basic shuffle forward and back, solo--this is the shuffle (rear foot moving forward close to front foot, with front foot then moving forward) in the ready stance, with the purpose again being to back and forth along the line while in the ready stance with flat feet. we went 10 steps forward and 10 steps back several times.
• basic step forward and back, partner--same as the solo drill, but facing a partner. the added goal is to maintain distance with the partner that is just close enough to be near to hand range, but still outside effective kick range. Sifu stressed that we focus on being to sense the partner's actions, and that we do so without fixating on a single point of the opponent (i.e., we maintain soft focus). we did this 16 steps forward and 16 steps back several times.
• basic shuffle forward and back, partner--same as the solo drill, but facing a partner. the distance is the same as above. we did this 16 steps forward and 16 steps back several times.
• random footwork drill, linear, partner--this is something Phunsak had learned from his fencing class, and it combines all of the above, with 2 partners facing each other, and 1 partner designated as the leader and the other partner being the follower. the leading partner can move forward or back in any combination of step or shuffle in any number. the other partner has to respond by staying with the leader (i.e., step when the leader steps, shuffle when the leader shuffles). we did this in several rounds of several minutes, doing it slow at first and then doing it faster.
  

after we finished going through the footwork drills, Sifu had us run through several mock jian shu rounds, so that 1) he could get a feel for the jian shu fighting, 2) he could see how the refereeing and rules worked, and 3) get in practice time for participants and referees. Sifu also wanted to take some time to figure out logistics, particularly in terms of who we could get to serve as referees, as well as lines-people, time-keepers, scorers, and administrative support. Richard, John, and Phunsak took turns as competitors, and i and Phunsak switched off being the referee. we discussed a number of different scenarios and their possible solutions, but we'll have to bring them up with Alex before finalizing things.

this consumed a fair amount of time, and we ended up going until about 1pm. we eventually wrapped things up, and everyone went to lunch--although i had to skip this because of some research i have to do.