Windchill

Just been out for a three mile run, and it was cold....so cold I can scarcely feel my fingers to type this, even though I was wearing gloves. How come it seems colder this week than it did when it was snowing a couple of weeks ago? Took a real effort of will not to turn back after about 50 yards. Let's hope it's warmed up a bit by mid-week

Grounded

Kids kung fu today, slightly less manic than next week because T was "on" them right from the start of the class. One of the littlest ones was still a bit of a pain though, really I think he's too little and needs to be at least 6 months older before he can concentrate well enough to join in properly. Little I is coming on well though - she managed a scissor kick for the first time today and was really chuffed!

During the older ones class my kicking seemed to be flowing really well for once, and I was very aware of the feeling of the floor under my supporting leg grounding me. I was conscious of being rooted and force starting in my grounded leg and flowing up through my hips to make the kicks powerful. Let's hope that's here to stay.

Poster Girl

Good Kung Fu class on Thursday night, first teaching some biu jeet, then the first char chui 2-person drill and then a short mantis 2-person thing I don't have a name for. Afterwards T, N and I went through the bokken versus pole a few times, then down to Tai Chi.

2-person pole work in tai chi, with D making me work really hard on technique (which is good, because I tend to coast a little bit when we do pole in tai chi because I know it pretty well). Plenty of focus on waist-turning and using technique and speed rather than arm strength.

Then a little pa kua, concentrating on the two new changes we've learnt (unfortunately I don't know what either of them are called, so they just have the stupid names I've made up for them in my head - "the swimming one" and "exploding monkey").

Then D called me and a couple of the others over to one side in order to take some photos of us for the poster and leaflet campaign in Derby for the new classes. So it looks like I might be the poster girl for kung fu, striking a very fetching pose with my pole - just call me the monkey king......

Full Steam Ahead

Went to check out our potential venue in Derby with D earlier tonight, it looks like a goer, so it's full steam ahead in the preparations for the new class. Looks like we're going to do a Kung Fu followed by a Tai Chi, with a possibility of a kickboxing squeezed in earlier in the future if there's a market. Now we just have to sort out the advertising - there must be hordes of frustrated martial artists out there waiting for us.

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.

Careful with that bodypaint

Three and a half miles this morning, hard going. I reckon I run much better (or at least it feels much easier) after I've had lunch, but the layout of the rest of the day was such that going fairly soon after breakfast was my only option.

I seem to have lost a couple of pounds this week, not as much as I would have hoped, but better than nothing. It set me to thinking though about why statues of Buddha are sometimes fat, when the buddhist way is "the middle way" with restraint in all things, including eating and drinking. Anyway, a bit of internet research tells me that despite the common misconception, the guy on the left isn't actually supposed to be Buddha - It's a Buddhist monk called Budai (or Hotei, maybe, depending where I look).

The skinny one (from Thailand) is probably meant to be Buddha during his fasting stage, following which he is supposed to have decided that the extremism of that kind of fanatically ascetic way of life wasn't useful, and developed the whole middle way theory.

So I guess I'm aiming for something in between, like the last one, maybe.

Or maybe more like this?

.....but not so dead.

Restraint in all things

Happily T was around yesterday so I didn't have to take the kids classes myself. Even with him there both classes were pretty hyper and therefore pretty exhausting mentally.

In the second class one of the older boys came up to me and, only half jokingly, asked if he could be paired up with one of the younger and particularly annoying ones so that he could "make him stop messing around". Fearing blood and/or broken limbs I declined his kind offer and gave him a little speech about how learning patience and restraint was a key part of martial arts....definitely not the aspect that I have found easiest myself. When I first started training I was very impatient to move on and learn more and more, and felt like waiting for other people to "get it" and the whole grading structure was holding me back. Happily I seem to have moved past this now and I'm content to go over and over the stuff I already know to perfect it. But beginning teaching is showing me that there are still some patience issues I need to work on.