Crash Landing

Lots of throwing at both kick-boxing and kung fu last night, with me in the role of rag doll / crash test dummy. Took one particular slam that knocked the breath right out of me. I can't seem to get used to be thrown however much it happens. I am, however, getting gradually more proficient at throwing other people and can now get T down without too much trouble when the opportunity arises.

Good news on the Master Wu seminar front. It looks like I will definitely be going to the Li Pi / Pa Chi one with both T and D (the more of us from Nottingham who go together the better - it's much easier to retain what we learn when there is someone else to practise with). There's also a strong possibility that I'll get chance the following weekend to go down to Southampton again to do the fourth part of the Chen Tai Chi set that Master Wu has been gradually teaching to us for the last few years...but I still need final buy-in from the other half to that one, so I'm concentrating on building up brownie points.

Junior Grading

Grading for the juniors this weekend, a busy session with around 30 youngsters (and one or two parents) taking part. Behaviour was very good, and the standard of kung fu pretty high. My two both did well, making me proud.

By chance N was back in Nottingham for the weekend so he came along, which helped, although not that many of the kids can remember him any more - he's helping with a kids class down in Portsmouth now, as well as his own training in both traditional and wushu.

After the kids had gone we did a quick kick-boxing grading which was pretty full on and hi-energy, so I was fairly exhausted by the end of the 4 hours. Spent much of the rest of the day feeling grotty, and today my ankles are hurting, which is a new one....

Nurturing the Green Shoots

A handful more new people at both Kung Fu and Tai Chi last night, although also a few previous visitors didn't show up...but most of them so far have come back which I think is a good sign. If we could get them all there at once the class would definitely be a healthy size. Mustn't be impatient though, it will take a while for the class to grow and gather its own momentum.

Pa Kua

I've been trying hard to use some pa kua techniques in my sparring, with some success, but need lots more practice. I really look forward to the sparring at the moment which is quite a change from a year or so ago when I would generally avoid it if I could.

Guns and Sharp Swords in the Hands of Young Children

Last kids classes before their grading this morning, so no messing and lots of form practice. Both of my two are grading, S to her green belt and J to her 2nd brown (or is it 3rd? I've lost track and I never remember to sew the badges on her sash!). She is doing the first part of the straight sword form that I learnt around 5 years ago in the adults class and haven't really done since, and she looks pretty good at it to me. I'm wondering if I should buy her a special small sword - she's currently using a stick as both of my straight swords are too long for her to wield properly (marginally too long for me too if the truth be told). I'll have to see what I can find in the corners of the internet...

Frustration

Frustrated on two counts tonight - first, I haven't yet got in to the rhythm of training on Wednesdays, not Thursdays, so I'm on edge feeling like I've forgotten to do something important. Secondly the wireless card in my computer seems to have an intermittant fault and every few minutes I lose my internet connection which is very annoying. Working hard on cultivating a zen-like attitude about it, but obviously buddhism was dreamt up before the challenges of IT.

So a short post tonight - a few new faces at the Derby Wednesday last night and also quite a few of last week's punters back for more, which is a good sign. Still a way to go to build the class up to a decent size though. Chatted to one of the guys afterwards for a few minutes, he's been doing various martial arts for a while and was keen to talk, especially about Wing Chun. Perhaps I'll suggest to D that we try one of the simpler 2-person wing chun drills out in the near future.

Ball of Contusions...

...that what my arms are today.

Serious scrapping at kickboxing last night without any pads, and today I've felt the need to explain to everyone at work that no, I'm not a victim of domestic abuse, and that you should have seen the other guy.

Maybe I need one of these?

Now this I can just about comprehend, although it's really not the type of training I'm into;

Whereas this is really just madness, isn't it?

Coming soon to a zoo near you

Two good kids classes again this morning. Having some of the bigger lads there is really helping the little ones class have a bit more structure, and with the older ones I got to go over some of the adult's syllabus with the higher grades who have started crossing over into learning that.

It looks like we're going to start adding some new stuff into the kid's syllabus after the grading at the end of the month - forms and 2 person sets from the 5 animals style. That will be new for me, so I'm looking forward to it.

Good training session with T afterwards, too - some more of the stick set I'm learning, butterfly knives, char chuan and then pretty much all the 2 person sets in the syllabus. I expect I'll be covered in bruises tomorrow.

The only bad news is it looks like various family and other social things are conspiring through April and early May to make it unlikely I'm going to get to a Master Wu seminar even though I'd decided I was willing to travel down to Southampton or Bristol for the opportunity :-(

First Night

Wednesday night finally saw the start of our Derby venture, with a kung fu class followed by Tai Chi. Not as many people as I'd hoped, but enough that it wasn't embarrassing. Hopefully word of mouth will spread and more will start coming along soon. Possibly a good sign - today somebody I haven't talked to for ages called me at work to ask if it was me in the poster he'd seen - so at least people are noticing the advertising!

A little odd to be doing kung fu with D again as it's a good few years since he used to be my teacher and he was looking to me at several points in the class to check he was doing OK and keeping it at the right level as it's a long time since he's taught a beginners class.

I'll need to try to keep the differences between his emphasis/technique and T's clear in my mind to make sure I don't start mixing them up, which may be a bit of a challenge.

Feint / Faint

One of the kickboxers fainted fairly spectacularly last night during some structured sparring drills! My first thought was that she'd taken a kick to the head (not from me, I hasten to add!), but it turns out that it was probably because she'd skipped lunch and the room was quite hot (despite sub-zero temperatures outside). She was OK after a brief rest and some sports drink, and joined in happily - hope it hasn't put her off too much.

I was happy with the quality of my sparring in both kickboxing and kung fu, my kicks are definitely improving and becoming quite difficult to handle I think...and I managed to survive both sessions without aggravating my finger again, which is a bonus. I'm not convinced it will ever properly mend though, I think it's just something I'm going to have to live with/adapt to.

After the classes T, me and N went through the Wing Chun Butterfly Knives and then the new stick set I'm starting to learn. The knives sets are starting to re-surface in my memory, but that probably just means that something else is being moved to deep storage to make room for them...

New sparring gloves (pink, of course!) arrived for my eldest in today's post, so a bit of impromptu practice before tea ensued. Younger one also tried them. It still amazes me how hard she can punch - she seems to just naturally have fantastic technique.

Bartitsu and the JiuJitsuffragettes

My legs were like lead in this morning's kids classes, I don't think I warmed up properly until we'd been going for about 2 hours - obviously a week off on a business trip hasn't done me much good.

We've decided to have a grading in 3 weeks time, for the kids, the kick-boxers and the lower kung fu grades. Getting these disparate groups together and grading them all within a 3 hour period will be a bit of a challenge - T and I need to figure out a plan, particularly regarding what to do with the littler kids who don't know much of the syllabus yet (and also have a short attention span!)

Went through plenty of wing chun 2-person drills again today after the kids had gone, culminating in some wing chun sparring, which I really enjoy. Then I started learning a new single person form using a stick, just the first few moves today but it's nice to have something new to work on.

Whilst searching for a suitable picture of stick fighting, I came across this, which appears to be an old form of mixed martial arts for the victorian/edwardian gentlemen.

After the class T was pondering whether to incorporate more of the 5-animal forms into the kids syllabus instead of the more modern wushu forms we do at the moment...I'd like it if it did go that way as eventually I'd get to do a sai set which I've always wanted to learn.

The bad news is that it looks like Master Wu isn't going to make it up to Nottingham on his brief UK tour next month. So if I want to do one of the seminars it looks like a trip to Southampton or Bristol will be needed.