Expansion and Contraction

If wielding two sticks at the same time has taught me anything so far it’s that expansion and contraction are a thing! Of course, I’ve known for a long time that expansion and contraction are a part of Kung Fu but when the instructors say that using a weapon, such as a staff, accentuates your movements, they aren’t kidding. With every move I make I have to make a lot of room for the sticks to move and then bring them back in again. It’s an expansion and contraction that you can really feel! Moving sticks on two different plains is also… interesting. They have to move like cogs in a machine so that they interlace with each other rather than hitting each other. This is my first time ever creating my own form, and I’m really enjoying it. Only time, practice, and the Sifus and Sihings can tell if I am successful in putting together a decent form.

I am “off the rails” with my numbers. I’m behind on my situps, and even worse on my pushup equivalents. My drawing and meditation are worse still. Goes to show why I needed meditation on my list. Two things that I know contributed to the bad numbers this week are various distractions such as hubby home, changes in work, as well as tweaking my back a bit over the weekend.

A few times in class now, the instructors have been getting after us to keep our feet on the ground when doing situps, and that doing so will help prevent back pain. However, although I have significantly reduced how much my feet lift off the ground, I haven’t been able to completely prevent it. Based on some discussions with instructors, and what I already know, regarding core strength I’m pretty sure that part of it is that I still have core strengthening to do, or rather, continue doing. Not completely sure that some of it isn’t also anatomy – short legs trying to balance against the rest of the body. I figure time will tell and I’ll keep working on it. One of the Sifus shared an exercise for enabling shoulder rolls that I may use as an alternative to the situps - kind of a “two birds with one stone” thing.

My hand form is usually very connected with my weapon form, when it comes to practice numbers. However, right now I’ve been concentrating so hard on creating a weapon form to practice that my Lau Gar has fallen by the wayside. That said, my weapon numbers are based on any work I do for the form, such as repetitions of a component to solidify it or figure it out.

Still need to learn now to say “no” to taking on too much. Ended up scrambling at the last minute to do something that I could have… should have… said no to. Because of this it threw off my schedule, which also throws off my training.

The numbers so far:

Pushups/equivalent 105 / 50,000

Situps 2662 / 50,000

Weapon form - Staves 103 / 1000

Hand form - Lau Gar 5 / 1000

RAoK 59 / 1000

Sparring 120 / 1000

Kilometers 102 / 1609

Blogging now 5 (out of a minimum of 52)

Drawing 0 / 52

Meditation 2 / 365

Great Coat project fabric washed but still not cut