It's all in the wrist

Two big classes on Monday night with newcomers at both kickboxing and kung fu. In Kung Fu T asked me to teach the Chi Nar wrist locks to the beginners, which I duly did, only to discover, when one of the lads reacted rather more strongly than I was expecting to the fairly gentle lock I put on him that he had several bits of metal work in his wrist as it had been broken in about a dozen places a couple of years ago. Don't think I hurt him too much though as he was enquiring afterwards whether he could come to the Thursday class as well as the Mondays.

Char chuan afterwards, and more bokken.

Reminiscing

Thursday night was a grading for the adult beginners. Around 20 grading in all, going for 3 grades - yellow, green and blue. T used all the students above these grades to help out with the teaching (well, revising) that went on during the evening - I was assigned to the yellow-to-green group, which meant plenty of work on Chang Chuan, the first proper two person set (which I think is called char chui?), Mantis San Sau, chi nar locks and the first stick set.

At the end we went back to the way beginner gradings used to be back when I was doing them, in that we all sat down and watched just those people grading going through their form. A welcome change from the more recent trend of everyone who knows the form going through it together. It's undoubtedly a bit more stressful for the gradees - but as T pointed out afterwards, if you were ever called on to use the martial arts in a real situation, that would be pretty stressful too.