March 3rd - Jumping Kicks and Cool Names

Evening Thoughts

Tonight ends with a very tired me and a very cold room. A lot has happened today; Jumps class, Applications class, Sanda Take downs, and Baji Quan Class. On top of that I also practiced on my own and stretched on my own so that I can continue to make progress each day.

Let's start off with this morning, I slept in until 7am and ate the normal breakfast that us Kung Fu School people eat. I studied some Chinese in the morning until it was finally time for the first class of the day: Jumps and rolls. Every morning we do a 2 kilometer run and luckily I was able to do it as my knee is showing great recovery progress! But, once we all got together for jumps and rolls class it was obvious our class size was still small. Only around 5-6 people, so we practiced basic jumps today which included some cool moves that are easy to do: 旋子 - butterfly kick，旋风脚 - tornado kick，单飞脚 - single flying kick，and 外摆莲 - outside jump kick（神龙摆尾）. We kept drilling these kicks continuously until class was over, it was fun and our legs were sore.

My Room with some changes to it!

Then, after a short break of drinking hot water and reviewing the moves we just did it was time for Applications class taught by Master Yan. During this class we learned a simple move for what to do when people grab your wrist. It was neat to mess around with and learn but I didn't take it seriously as it didn't seem... practical. It was hard to do and most of the time that the students did it, the move wasn't right. I prefer the application classes where we learn a move or two from a form as most of those moves, so far, have been more practical and easier to do. Just my thoughts though.

Finally, we got to eat lunch and I went to go stretch and watched a some Kung Fu movie fight scenes for inspiration. Sanda Takedowns was an interesting class as I feel I actually did well this class, we practiced 前扫腿 - front sweep. It is another cool move but I can see how it can be very bad if you mess up the move as you end up on the ground (but hopefully your opponent does too). That class went by quickly which led into Baji Quan class where I had a solo class with Master Ning. We trained for one hour on two moves, Cheng Quan/Cheng Zhang. Even though it was a very "basic" class and I performed the same two moves numerous times, I learned many ways to use these two moves along with some history of Baji Quan. (Its apparently used by body guards in China and their method is always attacking forward, never backward) My form is bad though, as I asked him after performing it, "Like this?" and he simply said, "No" and just like that class was over.

Dinner came, and I ate three bowls of food and chatted with some other students about our time and experiences here. It has been fun for us all and we all are seeing progress after our first and second months here. Once my stomach had digested the massive amount of rice in my stomach, I decided to review all that I had learned over the past few days. Wing Chun, Baji Quan, Chang Quan, Shaolin, and many other kung fu moves. It took me about 40 minutes to an hour to review them but it was worth it as I saw what areas I had been slacking and what areas I was starting to forget. After my short review session I was covered in sweat so I took a shower... which brought me to the current moment.

So now, I'm spending my last minutes before bed writing this post.

I hope you're all having a good week. What are you all working on or reviewing at the moment?

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