Demonstration

What fun that was, two full demonstrations 2hrs apart. It was a long day but a good result. I think that very few people were able to see the errors that were made and even less were able to say exactly what was done wrong. We seemed to pull about 100 more people together than any of the other displays for the day so that must be a good sign.
I've been told that I will be getting copies of photo's taken by students etc so I will post those asap.

NAS round 3

Many moons ago I told my students about a tournament that was being held last weekend. Unfortunately for me some remembered and wanted to enter! My rotten luck!
I don't know why, perhaps to satisfy my own standards for the competition or at least know how the event was going, but having students in the comp made it necessary for me to judge.
It wasn't a bad competition but I did have to spend a lot of time not doing things like study (still the reason I'm not getting this site updated regular like).
The results, Xiao Mao, 2 firsts and one disqualification (just but came from bad understanding not true misconduct/malice. DaGe 1 Second for one of the better performances of his form I have seen him do (though he did muff it up a little). In the end we came away well ahead.
Now to blow my own horn, I also had someone come up and say that they were happy to have me judging their students and that I was an exemplary judge. I like it when that happens.

I also got recognized by a heap of people afterwards, that I didn't think would have seen me there. That was interesting. Eg, my office mate said his friend told him that I was there. Why in blazes would he... I live in a small town.

Thought while blogging

Principle,
If you know the attack you can make the defense fit.

Exercise,
Work on defense, understand defense then see how long it takes you to work out application to any attack. Speed up the process of thought/learn what doesn't work and don't do it, build up useful reaction speed.

If you're out there and read this before next class, remind me so I can test principle... Should be interesting...

三次课

Say after me, "isn't it interesting how this month misses the days 9-13, those days do usually appear in this month, must be some kind of leap year type of thing..."
Isn't it wonderful how time flies when you are so busy you can't blink.

星期六的课
Looking at using obstacles to redirect momentum. E.g. using a tree to turn on pursuers without having to about face. The fun part was watching the attackers stopping on damp grass.

星期一的课
Centrifugal power, it is a great thing. Spinning as a recreational activity is good on its own not to mention looks cool when you through in a couple of kicks to the mix, but when you can use it in an effective way to add strength to your body, it is better than chocolate. I spent a good amount of this lesson playing with spinning strikes and things that allowed you to disguise your direction to the person you were moving in relation to by showing a forward movement with your upper body while making a backward movement with your lower body, or using a defensive movement to disguise an attacking movement. The majority of these techniques rely on the person being able to spin much further than their opponent thinks they can. This means that they don't see the attacks coming or don't guard the angles that they can approach from well enough.

星期三的课
I took the spinning lesson further this time to look at balance and how to spin into someone else's space and take their feet out from underneath them. I then put these moves back in to the context of one of our beginning forms and played with the new applications this made possible. It is amazing how much reverse engineering techniques teaches you stuff!

星期六的課

As a rule my Saturday classes are an informal event. No uniform is needed no sash (of rank) required, they are as informal as you can get. This doesn't mean that you should turn up in clothes you don't want to get dirty!! In the students own defense "my other jeans were is the wash". However this aside it was a great class, we worked on getting hit from behind (among other things) the exercise that this lesson brought about was where you have one person walking away from their partner and then have the partner progressively harder push them from behind. This ended up being all students walk toward one end of the park and slowly position themselves behind each other to give someone a hit who was not expecting it. Depending on the angle of attack the best responses seemed to be rolling away or landing in a long stance turning and kicking with the closest leg. Worked well, will teach again. There were a couple of downsides to the rolling response however, apparently your clothes tend to get a little muddy...

Times for Teas, cause and effect

This is a post that I have been thinking about for a while now. It is an experiment that I have been doing on what tea's work best in my Gong Fu class.
There are three teas on the table for consideration at the moment; Pu Er Cha, Tie Guan Yin and Long Jing. All of them are great teas that I can get in reasonable quantities, practically free. They are my payment for my Gong Fu Cha demonstrations at the OuZhouChaGuan.
The Pu Er Cha is a very nice 8 year old bamboo cooked Pu Er, it is a great tea and the worst thing that I have ever served in my class. Consistently makes me and students flat and unbouncie. It does well as a tea however the leaves are so not done by the end of class and it is a shame to through it out after only about 5 serves. I think that this goes to prove that Pu Er Cha is best to drink before bed or after dinner. This is how I always recommend Pu Er should be drunk and I stand by this as testimony. I noticed how this affected class quite by accident. I taught class one day and I brought along this tea and wanted to try it. I did and the tea was great! However the class was a terrible class. Students were as flat as I could imagine and I was not much better, so irritation started. It was not the best class I have taught. I put this down to a couple of things but I didn't at the time consider the tea. The next time I served this tea, I had a similar class, flat, uninspired, unresponsive, so I started to take note... The next lesson I had Tie Guan Yin, this is a partly fermented tea that I absolutely love! It was a good lesson. The tea has a little caffeine and it class hummed away like it should, was lovely. Shi hao gong fu cha. I did this for another lesson getting students to drink a cup on arrival. Again, good class, attentive students. I tried the Pu Er one more time, I had half of my students drink the tea before the class started, the other were control. I was right, the students that drank were all flat well before the end of the evening, that night I packed the PuEr into my bag and took it home to drink before bed. As I am still doing. I have since started to take note how all my teas affect the people I can monitor who drink them. I have decided that even though it is slightly more effort (in preparation and longevity of leaves), Long Jing is best. It is fairly high in caffeine as it is a green tea and it shouldn't be steeped in boiling hot water, so it is easier to manage the water side of things from that end. It doesn't last as long as Tie Guan Yin though and doesn't taste as good when it isn't quite hot anymore, which happens often as I get taught teaching. The best properties of this tea for teaching is probably the caffeine that it has for the added jumpy without the jittery that you get from things like instant replica coffee etc. I also find that after about 4 serves it looses some of its kick and becomes more mello which makes it easier to sleep afterwards as the bounce element is well used on bouncing around the class.
So my cha of choice for Gong Fu Quan is Long Jing. Feels Good, Tastes Good, Mmmm Good.
K thnx by now.

星期三的课

I was looking to cover some basics this lesson, but for random reasons I only had 3 students. So I did some other stuff. I looked at movement interpretation. I took a move out of a form and told those who were there to give it meanings beyond its appearance. Once they had made a couple of different combinations I showed them some other strikes and techniques and then got them to practice some application of those techniques, then linked those techniques back to the original technique. It ended up a very well rounded lesson, I was very happy with the journey that we took.
The technique in question was stepping forward with your right foot into a back weighted stance bringing your hands up together in a large clockwise circle starting at 6 and dropping straight down from about 2 ending with your lead hand over your lead leg.

星期一的课

This lesson I introduced some old techniques. The class that I attended the Thursday before showed me (again) a different way to appraise someone's balance and take it. What they do is look at the place on the ground that the balance is over then not letting them shift their feet, put their balance on the same spot. This means that the other person can't stand. It was a good lesson and involved a lot of stepping on feet! It carried onto involve ways to take someone's space.

Something Different

This is an interesting youtube that I happened across looking for Pai video's. For those not interested in martial arts it might still be interesting but what I like the most is the attitude of those in the center. They are so relaxed it is great.!

星期一的课

This lesson we practiced the technique that I learned the day before, I also worked on a defense, the only one that I could find was an application of the first form that we learn, stepping in and bring arms down to open for an attack. (won't work unless you know what I am talking about.)
This is all I can remember from this lesson without digging out notes or attendance lists...

星期六的课 and soccer.

This lesson was preceded by gong into town to buy mu Chinese tutor soccer boots! At the request of his uncle, we were going into town to buy soccer boots and clothes with $100. It didn't make too much sense to either of us as I have posted under the title Soccer all the times that he has played in the last ten years! If you check the logs his boots haven't caused any problems at all! Anyway we went and boots and ball were bought though no clothes as they were too expensive on our budget. This meant that when we went to training we had a brand new soccer ball and boots to trial. It was the first time in about 4 years that I have kicked such an object and nothing much has changed, after half an hour I am still good to kick on but my partners are tired of running.
So once warmed up with ball kicking, students started to arrive. Most of the lesson was devoted to forms and their brake down. The focus of this was on loading up a punch to be powered by the legs. I did this by pairing off people and getting one to push (punch) and one to resist. The pusher took a cat stance as low as possible allowing their weight to be carried by their standing leg only. The resister would then smother the pushing hand of their partner and apply as much force as necessary/possible to help their partner direct their force, up, out, and under their partners center of gravity.
I then put this into a technique/response to a left right boxers attack.
Many spills and thrills were had.

星期三的课

Suprise!
On arriving at training I was greeted by a very familiar face, 阿蛇 was standing at the gate to welcome me. He is my senior student that I haven't seen in a while because of life issues that kept him away and then he suffered an attack of cognitive dissentience that made training impossible for him to continue until his circumstances changed. I don't know if they have yet changed enough but having him turn up at the hall was a good sign if ever I saw one. He stayed for tea and left when I started class, but it was good to see him again.
I used this lesson to expand some of the material taught in the course into different applications and principles. Alternative ways to get to some of the same points, using some of the principles frequently taught by the Shifu Dave of BFD at the yearly multy style camp, organized by Bai Long Zai Xia and Shifu Dave.

星期一的课

The majority of this course was devoted to course revision. Went over forms and pressure points that were discussed and put some of them into practice.

六月十七日的课

Bai Long day course,
Was a good course. It had some good techniques and some new methods of getting to pressure points that I liked, learned two new forms Hung 1 and Hung 2 and had a great time. One of my followers on the path of Gong Fu Cha brought along a set and we partook in some quite enjoyable Tie Guan Yin at the lunch time break (for me between grading one of my students and cutting sticks for techniques later in the day). A good time was had by all. Grading was successful! I now have another white sash!

What I can post about however is the dinner after the event, not a great big event only 5 of us chose to kick on (I had planned to organize it but I was studying). It was a great meal with good company. I have pictures!
The top three are the food after some attacking on the first and last. We were at a SiChuan restaurant, that serves very nice traditional food.
The first is the remainder of Chilly Chicken, 4 different kinds of chilly with 3 different peppers and carraway seeds very nice, quite hot the chilly was flamed so had a caramel characteristic to the flavor. V. nice will order again. Next on the order is SiChuan Beef. Not as hot as I would like but it the spices were quite strong. However they didn't interfere with the flavor so much you couldn't taste the meat. The third was sliced pork in hot pot. It was a lovely broth with a good texture of vegies to balance the fall apart in you mouth meat. Was a very good meal.


















These three are of us! The first two are three of my students who came along, the one in the middle graded that day. The last is of me and one of Bai Long Zai Xia's students, who brought along the Gong Fu Cha to the course.

The evening ended at my place over more cha and Gong Fu (general) talk!
I might expand this post to detail some of what we learned but not so as a guide to teach anything, I don't do that over the web, not good practice in my mind.

星期三和星期六的课

These classes were basics classes, aimed at getting a couple of people ready to grade, at the course the next day. For methods etc, see previous lessons.
Basics are so much fun!

Good night well had.

Getting back to my weekend posts!
Saturday class has been posted, what was not mentioned is that from there I went home and about 30 minutes of cleaning and packing I was off and en route to LongZaiXia's house. I had 4 swords, one walking stick, three bottles of single malt whiskey's and a Chinese chess set.
So I went helped with some house work (hanging a cabinet and sanding a door frame), trained read, watched telly and played chess. It was a good night. Oh and for those who were interested, the Glenlevet 15yr French oak was quite nice, though would have loved to have tasted the 18yr FO I think it would be much fuller. Though as a lover of Islay whiskey Speysides are almost always going to have an element of that.
There was a down side to the night, I slept very soundly that evening, though the bed on which I slept was out to get me. I woke up fine, did some more training, fiddled with this and that but when I got into my car to leave I felt a twitch... in... my... back...
It was awful, but once in my car it went down and seemed to settle. I went and picked up my tutor and went home to study. Got out of the car... there... again... Straightened up stretched a little, seemed to settle down. For a while all was well.

星期一的课

Even though I only taught the technique to one student this lesson was about how to through "broom" sweeps. These techniques are quite effective and fun to use however it is very easy to fall on your butt and get pounded even if you take the balance of your opponent! Because of this the techniques I taught were aimed at being able to defend yourself while you are falling on your butt and using the change in level to your advantage. The main points of which were being able to control where you land and keeping your self guarded.
Some of the other things mentioned were things like "don't do this unless you slip etc or you are in the ring as it is hard to escape if you're on the ground" and "get up as soon as you can if you do find yourself here in real life as you're better winning by 100m than any other way" I think you get the idea.

星期六的课

Form focus lesson.
This lesson I picked apart the way people were doing certain techniques in the beginning forms. I didn't go into great detail about why I wanted them to work on the moves that I was correcting beyond that they were doing them wrong. I gave them the corrections and set them to repetition drills working on the problem moves. This might seem like a less productive way for students to learn but there is a natural order of things, and a reason for its existence. Bai Long Quan has a strong tradition of forms, they are the core of what we teach. We learn many different forms some form other styles most (in my branch) original. The idea behind learning the forms is to better understand how to use the moves that we teach. There are at least a three levels involved in this. There is the direct application, indirect application and what may be called the incidental application.
The direct application is straight forward, the punch is a punch, the block is a block this is taught to beginners. The indirect application, which becomes a little more abstract, it might be use the block as a strike, and the stance as a kick. Then finally the incidental application, this becomes harder to recognize again, here you might use a stance to grapple and a punch to block. To make it more interesting, all these different types of moves and different combinations may be taught initially as one technique (with direct application only). Usually the more simplistic a move seems, the more interpretations can be made from it, because basics are at the heart of techniques.
To keep all the levels, the forms have to be learned in a standard way. The students need to learn the coordination of the basics before they can be situationally adjusted to take on new meanings. This requires each of the moves is to be done in a specific way, usually the most basic form. This allows the students to progress their knowledge naturally. Developing the coordination and understanding of technique until they can change the circumstances and application of the moves to reveal more refined interpretation.
As an example of different levels of interpretation one move I focussed on was one where you drop into a stance while moving to your left from standing position, doing two blocks as you land, one to the left and one to the right.
The first level of this might be moving away from one attacker to block a technique using distance to give you an advantage and toward another attacker to block a technique gaining advantage by charging down the attack.
The second level might be using the blocks to attack, possibly two attackers possibly one. The The third level might focus on the subtle balance changes to used to start the movement that disguise you intentions until you are in a position to act.
The idea of the three levels here is that you can thing about the first one without needing to think about the second or third level and they are still there but you can absorb them in your own time. Once you're savvy with the blocks, you're free to think about what else they could be.

星期三的课

The main aim of this class was to build sensitivity in peoples arms. However I started with a great exercise called 1000 punches. This is where you punch as fast as you can for 1 minute, then take a minute break, then punch again for 1 minute then rest for another minute... Do this 5 times. When I do this, I use a set of four punches to count as one, head head, body body, for example would be one, then I aim to do at least 50 in one minute, doing this 5 times, 1000 punches. Good fun, one dayI will try it with kicks...

The sensitivity drills I will explain another time.

Appreciate it and it is good.

Appreciation, a state of happiness. I have been thinking lately, have had lots of reasons to think. I have recently decided that in order to be content you need to be able to appreciate anything, and everything. If you can do this then you can find value in any situation and effectively never be disappointed. There is not limit to this theory, even if you disagree with something if you can see the benefit of it (and there is always one, feel free to test me) then it can't be all bad so it must be some good and there fore good for something and so appreciated to some degree. It does go in reverse, and it is easier to go in reverse as you don't need as good a reason. "I don't like it" will be very hard to argue with when someone is of that opinion. Even if you can see the benefit in what they don't like. Governments have used this logic for many years to justify wars. And a lot of good has come from wars, medical techniques, engineering developments, transport methods, many recreational drugs, (goes both ways I guess, so I am not a user) sharing of culture, sharing of common goals. There is nothing like a war to bring countries together. (sigh...)