Changing Up Saturdays

In speaking with SiFu about my plans for Saturday, he brought up a great point and suggested (well... more than suggested heh) that I start with punching. My plan had been to mirror a fight in how I train - start with entering and kicking, then into punching, then elbow/knee and grappling.

SiFu's point was, in starting with punching I would be able to dive right into sparring. Kicking can be introduced to the equation later on, same with grappling. So I will be brainstorming punching exercises for this Saturday.

Rough Brainstorm of Kids Class Self Defense

I am working out a kids class self defense curriculum. Currently we don't have anything that is set in stone for the kids. My idea is basically to take the adult self defense curriculum and simplify it so that it is accessible to the young kids. There will be a simple and more complex version of each and with each sash, the requirements increase. Here is a brainstorming sketch of the structure so far:

• White to Yellow Test (I assume that we *might* have some VERY young students at this level):
  
  1. simple variant of hand combination 1
     
  
  
• Yellow to Orange Test:
  
  1. simple variant of hand combination 1
     
  2. simple variant of punch counter 1
     
  
  
• Orange to Purple Test (by now we should be dealing with older students so we start ramping up:
  
  1. complex variant of hand combination 1
     
  2. simple variant of punch counter 1
     
  3. simple variant of kick counter 1
     
  
  
• Purple to Light Blue Test:
  
  1. complex variant of hand combination 1
     
  2. complex variant of punch counter 1
     
  3. simple variant of kick counter 1
     
  4. simple variant of hand combination 2
  
  
• Light Blue to Dark Blue Test:
  
  1. complex variant of hand combination 1
     
  2. complex variant of punch counter 1
     
  3. complex variant of kick counter 1
     
  4. complex variant of hand combination 2
     
  5. simple variant of punch counter 2
  
  
• Dark Blue to Green Test:
  
  1. complex variant of hand combination 1
     
  2. complex variant of punch counter 1
     
  3. complex variant of kick counter 1
     
  4. complex variant of hand combination 2
     
  5. complex variant of punch counter 2
     
  6. simple variant of kick counter 2
  
  
• Green to Red Test:
  
  1. complex variant of hand combination 1
     
  2. complex variant of punch counter 1
     
  3. complex variant of kick counter 1
     
  4. complex variant of hand combination 2
     
  5. complex variant of punch counter 2
     
  6. complex variant of kick counter 2
     
  7. simple variant of hand combination 3
     
  8. simple variant of punch counter 3
     
  9. simple variant of kick counter 3
  
  
• Red to Brown Test:
  
  1. complex variant of hand combination 1
     
  2. complex variant of punch counter 1
     
  3. complex variant of kick counter 1
     
  4. complex variant of hand combination 2
     
  5. complex variant of punch counter 2
     
  6. complex variant of kick counter 2
     
  7. complex variant of hand combination 3
     
  8. complex variant of punch counter 3
     
  9. complex variant of kick counter 3
  
  
• Brown to Black Test:
  
  1. complex variant of hand combination 1 from sparring
     
  2. complex variant of punch counter 1 from sparring
     
  3. complex variant of kick counter 1 from sparring
     
  4. complex variant of hand combination 2 from sparring
     
  5. complex variant of punch counter 2 from sparring
     
  6. complex variant of kick counter 2 from sparring
     
  7. complex variant of hand combination 3 from sparring
     
  8. complex variant of punch counter 3 from sparring
     
  9. complex variant of kick counter 3 from sparring

Fighting Training, Lesson 1

The first session of my fighting training and conditioning was a great success. So far my training partner is doing great, all the more so since he hasn't really trained since he was young. No matter how disciplined you are, working with someone else will always push you further than you will on your own. I haven't worked this hard in years, and we only touched on about 3/4 of the tasks I had laid out for the session. I hope to keep ramping it up until we knock out huge amounts of conditioning and training in a short, extremely focused block of time.
Today we just went over basics, thrust kicks and round houses. I have notes of everything we've done and will keep these and future notes handy so I can replicate this training with the standard Kung Fu classes.

More to come...

Fighting: It's On!

Now that I am doing Shaolin Iron Palm conditioning I no longer have that ideal time after Kung Fu classes to work all my forms as well as my own cardio and other conditioning. When I am at home I typically work on stretches, push-ups, sit-ups and the horse stance... things that don't require a large workout area.

I have decided to start working my own stuff on Saturdays. As I was pondering this idea I thought it would be good to have a partner to work with. I ran through the list of people I knew - people who would be quick learners and intimidating partners to fight against. One name rose easily to the top. After talking with him - it's on. Now I will be able to really hone my fighting skills once I get him up to speed. Then after getting beat up I'll work through a few forms before beginning the rest of my Saturday.

We'll see how it goes this weekend.

The Difference Between a Form and a FORM

Today I surfed YouTube a bit, perusing the mantis form videos. I watched a video of a student doing a mantis form and it reminded me of myself. It was technically good, but all the movements were pretty uniform in speed and intensity. When I contrast this with videos of Shaolin Monks (purists might argue their Shaolin Monkiness - but I'll use that title they give themselves) doing mantis forms the difference is beyond night and day. Of course their lives and training regimens are completely different, but I think that even those of us outside of the Kung Fu monasteries can learn from these fellow students.
First they are amazingly fast, clean and accurate. This comes from repetition and any of us can dedicate some time each day to working our forms.
Second there is contrast and dynamics in their movements. This is like the difference between a dramatic actor speaking and a Speak-And-Spell reading a script. I, personally, still do my forms very Speak-And-Spellish. I think I will pick one form to start with and work it hard until I get even a LITTLE closer to the caliber of the Shaolin Monks and their forms. Then I'll move on to other forms...

Here is one of the videos I was looking at.

New Technique Idea

Haha, tonight was a little frustrating. I had a great idea for an exercise I could do with the kids class tonight. The idea:

Have one student in the center of a circle of students. Each student in the circle would have punching mits on. Random students, at random times clap their mits together. The student in the center has to find that target and throw a series of punches.

As you can imagine, my idea didn't work out so well. It quickly became chaos with all the students in the circle constantly clapping their mits. I tried to get them to clap one at a time, yet still totally random. Yyeah, that lasted about five seconds.
Next I tried having the mit students wait until I said 'go', of course then EVERY student clapped their mits at once.
I will have to find a way to have a random student (one at a time) clap their mits, so that the student in the center has a reasonable chance to find who did it and punch their mits. Then eventually they could clap their mits and hold them up for a couple seconds then drop them to their sides. That would force the center student to work on reacting faster, etc.

I'll have to further ponder and develop this idea.

Lots of other stuff coming down the pipe, but I'll write about it in the future.

Old Curriculum and the Kung Fu Reference

In spite of my amazingly packed schedule, I am currently going through ALL of my SiFu's old curriculum documents and notes. The requirements that students are currently held to is a mere fraction of the amount of information that students in the past were required to learn. I am beginning to learn all of this (this is my second level black sash curriculum). My goal will be to push students toward the higher standards that were required in the past. This will be a tough task since I need to do a juggling act, pushing students while keeping their training enjoyable for them.

The more serious the student, the further we can take them. Those are the students that I would like to see learn the complete curriculum... as soon as I learn it myself.

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Regarding the Kung Fu reference, I am slowly continuing work on it. Unfortunately I cannot offer it publicly since it will contain every aspect of Kung Fu we learn in my kwoon. If you train with me and would like the url just ask and I can get it to you.

Forcing Better Stances

It has been a long time since I've posted here. I've been keeping myself busy with teaching Kung Fu, starting Shaolin Iron Palm again etc. Last night as I was working on the two person cudgel form with some of the late class students, I was harping on their stances (as I do every class) when I became frustrated with the state of the stances in the school. After reminding them that they needed to work toward better stances I let it go but took a mental note that I would come up with a solution to the problem of sloppy basics.

Every class I push the students to work their stances lower. I push them to clean up their stances, clean up their movements, and demonstrate in their forms that they know what the application of the movements are. This would be fine if I could look back over time and see improvement in these areas. Yet I still see high, half-hearted stances and muddy movements (this is not a kids class, by the way).

In light of this, I am now on a mission. I want my students to look like Shaolin monks when they are doing stances and forms. I want their core basics to be flawless, so that they have a solid foundation to build sparring, grappling, and other street level fighting techniques on.

My first step, logically, will be to discuss this with my Sifu. After that conversation, if I still feel the need, I may be visiting various Kung Fu forums and blogs and see what I find there and perhaps begin topics about this. I am looking for ideas on techniques and creative ideas to push the students in ways that will inspire them while getting them to do the hard work it will take. I know what inspires me as I train and I have shared this with students, I'm not sure if it is a tool that has helped any of them yet.

Don't get me wrong my students learn well and work hard, but their foundation seems to be lacking and progress seems stagnant. I will be posting my progress here.