day 259: starting the arm form

concepts:

• stances

lessons:

• bagua arm form

i skipped kyudo this evening, since i was prepping for a long bike ride on Sunday and had to meet up w my riding buddies Saturday night. to be honest, the bike ride was on my mind most of the day, since it was a distance that i haven't done in awhile (90 miles), and it affected my concentration a bit.

Sifu gave us reminders about the seminar next weekend, and then had us warm up w the moving arm basics as well as stances.

bagua arm form

after spending some time reviewing the moving basics & stances, Sifu began teaching us the arm form. we went about 8 moves into the form, and then focused on correcting technique. since a lot of the arm form techniques involve power projection, and since power comes from the lower body, we took a fair amount of time making sure we had the correct match of stances and upper body postures. Sifu also showed us the applications, emphasizing where the power projection was.

from what i saw, the arm form movements are very close to the arm basics, and in some respects look like a serial connection of the arm basics with transitions tying each of the animal movements together. Eric also added that the arm form movements form the basis of the weapons forms for deer horn knives and tiger hook swords, demonstrating some of both weapons forms for the short section of the arm form we'd covered--and what he showed looked almost identical to the arm form.

by this time it was after 1pm, and we called class to an end.