Last Thursday

Neck felt good enough to go to training last night, and since it was the last opportunity I'll have to go to a Thursday kung fu/tai chi combo for a while, I decided to strap up my fingers to protect my painful knuckle and go along to see how I felt.

Last residues of stiffness in my neck disappeared once I'd warmed up and I had a good class, other than the fact that we focussed quite a bit on mantis, where it's quite tricky to get the requisite "hook" hand shape when your fingers are taped together. After kung fu first D came up from tai chi to get my help with a section of char chuan he'd forgotten, then I had a good chat with one of the intermediate guys about plateauing in training and having to work through it to start seeing more improvement.

In Tai chi we worked on the Yang Long form, then some chen and some mi cheong, which I haven't done for ages, but D helped me revise the opening few moves which I've always found particularly tricky. D wanted to talk about me becoming a proper instructor, he wants us plan out my "development", start applying for my CRB checks, getting my first aid qualifications and so on....

Off to the pub afterwards with a couple of the guys because it will be a while before I get the opportunity again, given that I'm going to have to (at least temporarily) give up Thursday's for a while to concentrate on the Wednesday night classes we're starting up in Derby. I'll particularly miss the tai chi guys, since I get to see most of the kung fu lot on either Monday or Saturday at the other classes.