8/30 in the park
Hard to believe it’s almost September again. Due to the fact that I didn’t have to take the red-eye bus from the south this weekend, I had no trouble getting up in time for practice at the park this morning. I got there just before Yang Qing-feng, and we practiced a bit. He seemed tired, and I seemed to be doing relatively well against him, as I usually have the most trouble with him for some reason. We were talking about it, and I’m thinking that he just picks up on signals more easily than some of the other students, and he is also very quick to yield and turn around an attack. He seemed to be resorting more and more to the quick push strategy, which he said was necessary as I see the slow moves coming. Teacher X said I should try more three-dimensional strategies, basically turning him like a wheel, and that seemed to work ok. I do need to be more subtle, though. A lot of it is in my attitude.
NL Guy and Little Qin were practicing contact swordwork nearby, and I took some video with my camera of some of it:
There was also a new student, already in the purple uniform of our group. He shares two characters in his name with me and is a rescue worker. As we practiced together I just let him try to push me and didn’t try to counter attack, but Teacher X said I should, so I started pulling him around a bit on each attempt until he got tired.
I went through the sword form a couple of times, and then practiced contact sword with Little Qin. This was very instructional. Hitherto, I hadn’t really given much thought to exactly where my concentration should lie when using swords; I’d always simply focused on the tip when going through the form; As we practiced, Little Qin told me what should be obvious: I should be focusing on the point of contact with the other sword. I’d only really been using a tiny fraction of the sword’s potential all this time. I also figure I should concentrate more on using my left hand as well as my right for combat, as I use my right hand for forms, and I’m left-handed.
Little Mountain Pig is presently reviewing his sword with Teacher X, and I pay attention when I can to that as well. Teacher X will be gone in October and part of November, so I should spend that time reviewing I guess.
