day 179: ongoing refinement, and further into pao quan

concepts:

• forward

forms:

• 64 palms, side B
• pao quan
  

this post is going to be a little short, since i'm a little bogged down with work. but this past Saturday was largely a continuation of what we've been doing before, so there isn't too much to add other than just note some ongoing instructions.

64 palms, side B

we continued with our refinement of side B, following the same pattern as last week of Sifu reviewing our forms after some practice. Phunsak had apparently suffered an injury in judo, and so wasn't available to lead us. John Eagles took that duty, and we worked on palms 4-6, and then went on to review palms 7-8.

Sifu asked to see our side B, palms 1-4. with my rendition, he noted that i was doing the 2nd half of palm 2 the same way i was doing the 2nd half of palm 6, which is actually wrong. he said the techniques are different, with the 2nd half of palm 2 involving smaller circles in a slightly more vertical plane, while the 2nd half of palm 6 is much larger in motion and more on a horizontal plane.

pao quan

the pao quan lesson from Friday carried me about 80% of the way through the form. things went a little bit faster, since i was getting a better feel for the general nature of chang quan and could extend its flavor further. Sifu ended up spending more time going through the applications, explaining what each move was.

as an experiment, Sifu went into a pattern were he quizzed me on what i thought a particular technique's application was before he'd actually shown me. turns out i was wrong most of the time. Sifu noted that he could see the applications when first learned it, but that this was because he had come from a martial arts background and already had an understanding of what techniques, targets, and options were possible for certain kinds of movements. this gave him an intuitive sense to understand a martial arts style.

for someone like me without such a background, it's much harder to see the applications in the movements. it doesn't help that chang quan is a lot like bagua in that a lot of the techniques are hidden, and not meant to be easily determined just from viewing.

we could have finished the form Friday, but i think it was better to hold off on the remainder until next week.