day 262: more elbow and San Diego tournament

concepts:

• direction
• release
• light contact
• hanari
  

lessons:

• bagua arm form
• kyudo
  

i'm a little late posting this. this covers the Saturday before last--January 16--and not this past weekend. this past weekend we went to the San Diego tournament, and so skipped the usual Saturday session.

bagua arm form

the lesson was largely straightforward, with the time spent going further into the form. we did, however, spend a fair amount of class going through applications, either reviewing some applications from before or trying to understand some of the new ones. there continue to be nuances that are elusive, and while the techniques can work without them, the techniques definitely are a whole lot easier with them.

some general points from this Saturday:

• direction--the direction of the techniques is crucial. by direction, i'm referring to the force vectors where they are aimed. a subtle shift can make a major difference in terms of the result. i think this is because the force vectors have to be applied properly, with "proper" being anything that counters and utilizes the opponent's actions with minimal struggle by you. as a result, you have to understand the opponent well enough to know what they are doing and what they intend, and then respond with the appropriately placed force vectors.
• release--Sifu stressed this on a number of techniques. he said you can't continue to follow an entry with a continuous progression in power. this makes it too easy for the opponent to recognize your plans and respond with an effective counter-measure. he asserted that instead you have to sometimes employ a slight release sufficient to disrupt your force vector, but that does so without disrupting your power generation or opening avenues that leave you vulnerable. the release serves to break the opponent's tracking of your movements, and hence makes it harder for them to know what you are doing.
• light contact--Sifu added that we can't go in hard all the time. instead, it's sometimes important to go in soft, with a light touch in the entry, so that it helps disguise our intent and actions. he cautioned that what we do (hard or soft) depends on what the opponent is doing.
  

the latter part of class was devoted to reviewing the arm form, with everyone doing several iterations to help us remember the form.

kyudo

kyudo was a bit of an event this evening: i shot using my own dojo arrows. hooray! it felt a little different shooting without the dojo arrows. it sounds strange, but it lifted my spirits.

i am still learning the proper technique to shooting. today, Sensei told me to focus on hanari, which is the slight extension cross the chest/upper back that occurs when you reach out laterally. the effect is that it extends the shoulder and shoulder blade put, putting the body structure inside the bow--which is what you're supposed to do. i tried my best to work on this, but it's somewhat of a challenge given the context of drawing the bow.

Sensei told me it's not as complex as i'm making it out to be, and i should relax more. i figure this is something i'm just going to have to resolve through practice.