day 195: a little bit of everything

concepts:

• speed
• aiming
• draw
• release
  

lessons:

• chang quan
• 7-star praying mantis
• kyudo
  

this was the last weekend of the year, so we were pretty much just wrapping things up before Sifu went home to Hawaii. for this Saturday, we were scheduled to have a joint class with the Long Beach Kung Fu Club (at Cal State Long Beach), and so we modified the material to match theirs, with the lesson plan being the an introduction to 7-star praying mantis.

chang quan

my chang quan lesson Friday was just a polishing of chao quan, and then a review of pao quan. we'd originally planned to record me doing both forms, just to create a place marker of where i am, but the sun set before we could get around to it. which was just as well, because there were a number of areas that i needed some refinement anyway.

7-star praying mantis

we'd gotten a little bit of mantis before on a recent Sunday, leaning the lian jian (sp?) form. Sifu decided we'd do the same thing today, and then go a little bit farther. he noted that mantis was easier to teach than the other TCMA styles he knows, since it doesn't have the same complexities in relation to internal actions.

we reviewed the form to the point we'd learned it last time, and then went a little bit farther. there was a few sequences--particularly a joint lock that led into a throw--that kind of eluded me, but made more sense once we saw the applications. Sifu noted that with mantis the emphasis is on speed, with not all movements necessarily being intended as strikes, but instead with a priority on overwhelming the opponent's sensory perceptions and the secondary priority on the option of applying force.

today's class ran about 90 minutes, since that was all that the club was scheduled for. we ended up having a surprise visitor in Alex, who managed to take a break from his baby duties to drive over. he was able to make it this time, since his house is apparently only about 15 minutes away. with class finished, we went for a joint lunch afterwards.

kyudo

kyudo today had a large class. not so much because of the number of students, which remained about the typical quantity, but because we had 4 guests observing the class. Sensei curtailed the introduction today, cutting out the chanting of the Heart Sutra. this freed up some more time to allow the regular students more chances at shooting, and allow Sensei to gather the newer students and guests for an extended lesson.

because of the guests, part of what Sensei discussed was a review of stuff i'd had before. but we also went quite a bit deeper, with him explaining a number of nuances:

the string--apparently, additional layers of string have to be placed in the area where the arrows are knocked, so as to make the string thicker. but this has to be done carefully since too much glue will cause the string to break.

• aiming--initially, aiming is done along the upper arm through the elbow, with practitioner able to sight the target above the front elbow. however, as the bow is drawn and the hands and arms extend, the aiming then slides along the forearm until the target is sighted over the hand and forefinger. at the point of release, the practitioner should be able to sight the target over the last knuckle (the knuckle at the juncture of finger and fist) of the forefinger, so that the practitioner should literally be able to point at the target by extending the forefinger.
• draw--this shouldn't be done as a function of muscles in the body, even though they are employed. instead, it should be perceived as a natural by-product of the skeleton expanding outwards. Sensei stressed that you should visualize yourself putting your skeleton inside the bow, so that the bow is drawn because your skeleton is replacing the volume inside the bow. he noted that the draw should be a function of structure, with the bones playing the major role of drawing the bow and the muscles only serving to supplement the bones. he observed that we know we're doing this because we won't struggle (i.e., shake or wobble) as we draw the bow into firing position, but instead everything will be smooth and stable.
• release--releasing the string isn't done with a snap of the fingers or a release. instead, it occurs naturally as a function of the hands and arms reaching their full extension. this is because the string is held in a notch on the glove thumb, and slides out once the glove reaches a certain position...which is reached when the arms and hands are fully extended.
  

we finished late tonight, around 10:30. even though the instruction ended with tea time around 8:30, i ended up staying to watch the informal shootaround and practice my form.