day 268: continuing chen pao quan

concepts:

• power
• explosion

lessons:

• chen tai chi pao quan

i missed class Saturday, March 6 for both kung fu and kyudo, since i was grading. as a result, this post applies to Sunday, March 7, which i managed to make. this is going to be a very brief post, since i'm trying to catch up after several weeks of overwhelming work.

chen tai chi pao quan

it was just Ching-chieh, Phunsak, and me today. Sifu had us work on the chen pao quan form. it's been some time since Ching-chieh had been learning this, so we back-tracked to the beginning and focused on reviewing the form for today. we went a little bit further, but not much, just enough to reach the 3/4 mark of the form.

Sifu corrected my punches in the form, saying that the punches needed to function as a rebound of the foot-pounding. in the form, there are several times when you pound both feet simultaneously into the ground. superficially, they appear to be a technique separate from the subsequent actions, and can function this way as their own application.

Sifu, however, noted that for the times they are followed by the punch that they serve to as an initial act of power generation, with force going into the ground and then immediately coming back through the feet, which we then need to exploit to assist the power of the punch. this means that punch has to be applying power rebounding from the foot-stomps.

Sifu also reminded me that the punch does not go straight out, but actually is supposed to have a slight curvature down. in effect, the punches are not just punches, but extensions of the body meant to drive a person down.

we worked on this for the remainder of class, and concluded with that for the day.