day 209: mantis and kuen wu erlu

concepts:

• memory

lessons:

• mantis 7-star lien jian
• kuen wu erlu
  

today (sunday) was packed. we crammed a good amount of kuen wu erlu and mantis lien jian together. a good amount of it was review, but these are both proving quite challenging to remember for some reason (actually, i do know the reason, but it's more a personal failing than anything within the forms themselves...see below).

kuen wu erlu

we spent the 1st half reviewing both kuen wu yilu and kuen wu erlu. this is actually quite tricky, since they are so very similar in terms of sequences and rough movements, but yet very much different in that yilu movements are softer, quicker, and more finesse-based, whereas erlu movements are harder, more explosive, and more power-based. this tends to make it very easy (for me at least) to mix up the 2 forms while in the middle of performing them.

we managed to get through all of erlu, and i have to admit it is getting easier now that we've standardized it. but it's going to take some time to get things sorted out enough that i can do either yilu or erlu on command without suffering a mental short-circuit.

mantis 7-star lien jian

we also got farther into mantis lien jian. this is also proving hard to remember. i suspect because the nature of the movements (i.e., what Sifu partially means when he uses the term "flavor") is so different from the other things i've learned. i can understand the physics, but Sifu said that the physics in mantis are much more obvious to see than in other styles; what's proving elusive is the intuitive feel of movements linking smoothly from one to the other. as a result, the form is still a memorization of individual steps, as opposed to a free-flowing movement single progression. this means that i'm having to think things through as i go--which is not good in any form.

we finished a little after noon, by which time i was hungry enough to join everyone else for lunch.