day 271: back into things

concepts:

• extension
• borrowing energy
• center
• vector (force & magnitude)
  
• earth & sky
• structure
• opening
  

lessons:

• bagua leg form
• kyudo
  

so i made it back to the regular class today for both kung fu and kyudo. i'd been swamped over the past few weeks with grading, prepping lecture, and training for Ironman Utah. but i got past the grading, managed to mostly finish prepping, and dropped out of Ironman Utah to make it to my brother's wedding. as a result, i now suddenly have more time, which hopefully translates into spending more time on other pursuits--like kung fu and kyudo.

bagua leg form

it appears that in the time i was gone the class finished off xiao kai men and proceeded to the bagua leg form. Kieun and Phunsak told me that the class had gone through the leg basics very quickly (1 day!), and they'd already had 1 class on the opening portion of the leg form. i'm guessing that this is a continuation of the curriculum for the newer students--although, it appears that some of them have missed parts of it. still, we had some returnees (Martin, who's coming back after several months, and Steven, who had to miss a few weekends) for whom this is new, and the timing is good for them in terms of learning the form from the relative beginning.

this is good actually, since while i can remember the leg form there are segments of it for which i'm uncertain regarding application. that, and the theory in the form is also something that's always worth reviewing.

Phunsak took us farther into the form while Sifu was helping the baji students, and then Sifu came back to lead us through the applications. he made the following comments regarding where we were:

• extension: a lot of the movements in the leg form are exaggerated to the actual application in a real fight. Sifu said the exaggeration is meant to show us the nature of the physics in the movements, and indicate the intent we need to be exercising in the actions in order to deploy the physics.
• borrowing energy: Sifu said that some of the movements appear to be brute force actions. but he said that this is a inaccuracy, and that they actually employ energy borrowed from the earth and sky. he demonstrated that we borrow energy from the ground by positioning our bodies to create a structure that utilizes and propagates reaction forces from the earth. he said we can also similarly do the same thing in terms of creating structure that appear to propagate forces from the sky--they don't literally do this, but by having the intent to do so it aligns the body in a structure that conveys more power. the idea, Sifu observed, behind both earth & sky is that the body structure is such that it aligns the center with the vector going from the source of force (reaction force or otherwise) to the opponent, and hence allows your body to become a clean line of transmission of the force vector.
• force vector: for the full force vector (remember: a vector is both magnitude and direction) to go into the opponent, you want the body to align with the vector direction so that it can carry the full magnitude of force--this means the power is not just the power made by your own muscle actions, but the power coming from the exploitation of basic Newtonian physics (note: improper alignment of body structure "breaks" the force vector--hence the term "broken energy"--and stops the Newtonian reaction forces from being carried through you, leaving only your muscular power as the remaining source of force).
  

we spent the remainder of class time working on these concepts, with varying degrees of success. i find it hard to grasp this, since sometimes i'm trying to feel out things that i've never felt before, which makes everything a process of trial-and-error.

we took a longer post-class lunch today, since it turned out to be Eric's birthday (a big one...but i'll spare him the publicity) and a homecoming of sorts for Martin (who apparently was gone involuntarily due to an injury).

kyudo

kyudo this evening was focused primarily on me preparing my yumi (bow). i hadn't had time to do it before, so i'd decided to devote attention to it tonight. it was a bit of a project, since the string had to be adjusted to the proper length, then the nocking section had to be reinforced with string and glue to fit my arrows, and i also had to let everything cure. this ended up consuming all of the free shoot for me.

i did manage to achieve some shooting. Sensei worked with me a bit, saying that i needed to open up more in my draw and release. he observed that i still wasn't getting extension, and that i had to expand out from my center through my spine to get the requisite extra extension. he covered this later with the entire class, and advised us to expand until it opened our chest. the opening isn't supposed to be too much, but he noted it does need to be there, since it serves to push out the body structure into the bow and then follow through to the release of the arrow. in fact, Sensei observed, if done right, the opening actually causes the release of the arrow--and at does so at the proper moment: the moment of maximum of expansion of the body structure.

we finished a little late tonight, which gave the glue on my string time to dry. i didn't have enough time for a trial run with my yumi, but i figure this is something i can do next class.