day 250: circles with the elbow

concepts:

• circle

lessons:

• bagua elbow form
• kyudo
  

we began class today with a discussion regarding seminars for the fall. Sifu wants to hold some seminars before the ones he's scheduled to give in January at the San Diego tournament. right now, his thinking is to have a 1-day seminar in early November dealing with training equipment--particularly those involving conditioning--and a 2-day seminar Thanksgiving weekend dealing with push hands, with the 1st day being for beginners and the 2nd day being for advanced students. these dates are tentative, and are subject to room availability.

bagua elbow form

today was a bit of an expansion in the elbow form. we ended up making a stab at the mirror image of the elbow form, as well as doing it in a circle. we began with the elbow basics, and then several run-throughs of the form itself.

Phunsak then led us through the mirror image of the form--essentially, the reverse of the form. the elbow form starts and moves in 1 direction, making it 1-sided. the mirror image reverses all the directions. with the 2 together, you get right-handed and left-handed versions that match each other, making the form symmetric.

Phunsak then introduced us to the circle. the elbow form can be done along a circle (i.e., circle walking), in both clockwise and counter-clockwise directions. Sifu noted that this to remind you that the techniques in the form can be done in any direction, and that you shouldn't get married to any particular orientation just because the linear version of the form does so. Sifu also pointed out that the other "addendum" forms (i.e., leg, arm, fist, etc.) can also theoretically be done along a circle, but it's just that most people never do so.

the mirror image version was largely do-able, with a few trouble areas. the circle, however, proved to be a little problematic, in that the footwork is a little tricky in a few areas. i think we're going to need to practice this a little longer before we can get it down in a decent manner.

kyudo

kyudo this evening was a little truncated in terms of shooting. this was the 2nd picture day, with this evening meant to try and get formal group shots for the dojo records. as a result, we had a much larger-than-usual turnout, with 21 (!!!) people showing up. we ended up spending a good portion of class getting the group photos, and had just enough time to accommodate 2 circuits of formal shooting for everyone.

i ended up doing only 1 circuit, since i acted as a retriever the 2nd time. this was just as well, since i had to leave early this evening to prepare for a long solo bike ride in the morning. if anything, i actually ended up staying a little longer than i should have, since the next day's ride turned out to be much more painful than i had wanted it to be.

but the evening itself went well, and everyone was in a very good mood. it made for a positive end to the week.