day 312: review review review

concepts:

• review
• review
• review
• principles v. techniques
  

lessons:

• hsing-yi
• kyudo
  

this will be another short post, since i can pretty much summarize what the focus of last Saturday was: review. lots of review.

which was good. i really needed it.

Sifu took some time to get everyone together for some discussion. we primarily dealt with 3 major topics:

• the Las Vegas tournament is coming up on August 12-14. we need to start organizing rides and figuring out who is competing and who is judging. we're a little short-handed this year, since Kieun and Cheng-chieh are both gone, meaning that we're going to have to shuffle things a little bit in terms of judging.
• Sifu is thinking about holding a retreat in the mountains. he held one some years ago, but it's been a very long time. the purpose of the retreat is to cover teaching methods, and to help us learn how to teach what we've learned to differing kinds of students.
• principles v. techniques. Sifu reminded us to not become obsessed with techniques or forms, and to focus instead on the underlying principles. apparently, it came up during his summer class at UCLA. he's spoken to us about this before, but feels it's important enough to stress. he said that techniques and forms are only tools to learn, but that they're not all of martial arts and that it is dangerous to obsess over them. he said they're only meant to help us learn the underlying principles used in martial arts, and that the principles is what we need to focus on.
  

hsing-yi

we reviewed the bear & eagle. i actually ended up taking all of class to go through as many of the Shanxi 12 animals as i can. i needed to refresh my memory, and to also get the feeling of the movements back.

things were a little rough. it's going to take some polishing.

kyudo

Sensei was not present tonight, so Jean, being the most senior person present, ran class. turnout was a little light, and so everyone had plenty of opportunities to shoot. we actually did more shooting than we've done in previous classes.

i also took some time to do some much-needed maintenance on my bow, particularly with my string. it's going to take a little time to sort this out, but hopefully i managed to address the major issues.

days 310 & 311: ugh, a long way back

concepts:

• basics

lessons:

• hsing-yi
• kyudo
• miao dao
  

i'm back...sort of. at least, in body. perhaps not in much else. i was gone for 3 weeks on vacation, but took an extra week off to get over the jet lag. so this past Saturday and Sunday were my first days back. needless to say, i was a bit out of sorts.

i'm not going into too much detail, since i think things were so rough that there's not much point in me trying to summarize anything since i wasn't really doing much good with anything. it is amazing just how quickly you can lose your abilities with any period of inactivity. i felt like i was starting all over again.

i'll suffice it to say that i'm back with just trying to get my handle on the basics. and i mean basics. as in trying to regain stances, flexibility, coordination, and physics. and even this was a bit of a struggle.

i'm going to have to take the next few weeks to get myself sorted out. in the meantime, i think you will just have to be patient with me if the posts return to something more fundamental and less advanced. it doesn't sound like fun--and i guess it's really not--but i can tell i need it.

joy joy joy.