day 270: moving with the spear and reviewing chen pao quan

concepts:

• movement
• center

lessons:

• spear
• chen tai chi pao quan

i skipped kung fu and kyudo for Saturday, March 20. i made it for Sunday morning, March 21, so this post applies to that. it was just me and Chieng-Chieh, since Phunsak was at a seminar.

spear

Sifu had us spend time on spear moving basics. so far, the drills we've been doing have been from a stationary position, with the feet largely immobile. today, Sifu showed us some initial drills for spear with footwork.

the footwork was similar to others we've learned when training for sparring work: linear footwork, 1st with a shuffle-step with the front foot initiating, then with a shuffle-skip with the rear foot iniatiting; circular, following bagua stepping; and finally what Sifu translated as a "gangster" walk or Ching-Chieh labeled as a "duck waddle", with the body moving in a see-saw movement as the weight shifted with each footstep. with each step in each drill, you're supposed to time thrusts with the spear in a way that the footwork helps generate power into the spear thrust.

Sifu also noted that in the moving spear drills it's important to keep the center down, so that it moves parallel to the ground rather than up-and-down, and that we also work all spear movements from our center, so that the feet and the body serve to move the spear. this proved to be a total body workout, and quite a bit more strenuous than i'd expected--for all that, Sifu said it's better than simply relying on your arms, which get tired far more quickly than your legs or body.

chen tai chi pao quan

we had enough time to work on chen tai chi pao quan. Ching-Chieh is still catching up, so we spent the remainder of class working on review of what we've done to date--which is just as well, since i hadn't had any time to practice at all in the past 2 weeks, and i needed the review as much as anybody else. i think we're starting to get it better, but i really do need to start spending more time practicing. hopefully i'll get the time now, but i'll have to see.