day 169: rules changes & tournament prep

forms:

• tournament prep-sparring
• tournament prep-jian shu
  

we learned of a bit of a hiccup today. Jonathan Shen checked the sparring rules for the tournament, and found out they'd been changed to san shou rules, with 1-minute rounds for beginners and 2-minute rounds for advanced competitors. this means that there is now full-contact strikes and also throws. hearing this, Sifu said we needed to work on handling throws, both employing them and countering them, and had this be the focus of sparring work for the day.

tournament prep-sparring

we worked on throws in the grass area, with people breaking off into pairs, so that 1 partner was using only throws and the other partner was using only strikes. the general idea was that the "thrower" had to focus on entering and executing the throw against a non-cooperative "striker." the "striker" in turn, had to counter the throw by resisting it, breaking it, or escaping it.

Sifu had us focus on very basic throws today, with just 2-3 variations. he said there wasn't enough time to do any more, and that we should just focus on learning a handful well.

we worked on this for awhile, and then started working on sparring rounds. i did a no-punch round with Richard and then a light-contact round with Jay, trying to use the throws. i have to say this is going to need some more work, and i definitely want to continue with this next Sunday. although, whether or not there's going to be enough time to get comfortable is another question, since the tournament is the following Sunday.

whatever. it's a learning experience at this point, and that's just how i'm going to have to see it going into it.

tournament prep-jian shu

we continued with jian shu practice, doing the mock rounds with the goal of getting practice for both judges and competitors.

there's some concern at this point with the tournament, since Nick Skrima informed Alex that no one signed up for the jian shu tournament (which is even less than the 4 he told Sifu). this doesn't quite match what Phunsak and Alex have, since their estimate based on the confirmations they've received from other places is at least 10 competitors.

whatever. we'll see once we get to Vegas. at this point we'll work with whoever shows up.

we finished around 1 and everybody had to go to their various commitments, leaving me to go to lunch with Phunsak.