Weapon Form

With the due date of the Beta version of our forms coming up fast I have been focusing on the creation of my weapon form. I’ve spent some time (possibly too much) looking at various types of staff wielding on the internet to inspire and perhaps guide some of my choices. One of my main goals was that this is a “weapon” form and not a piece of performance art. Much of what I saw online felt, to me, like the latter.

So, I wanted the moves in the form to have a purpose. With what I’ve chosen so far there are various purposes involved. Some moves are to demonstrate knowledge of the weapon and its balance. Some are to demonstrate the ability to do different things with each hand, at the same time. One move (trick?) was put in because I thought it might help me improve the timing within one of my kicks (so many of my kicks need more work). I also wanted to explore some advantages of dual wielding and figure out ways to diminish the disadvantages.

During my research I found a new search term to use in the internet search engines, “contact staff”. Yes, this is performance art, but I noticed a lot of things in it that we cover in Kung Fu. The ability to maintain the contact, momentum, timing, and balance at just the right points reminds me of Sticky Hands. The flow of the artform reminds me of flow and energy in Kung Fu. I feel that this artform has a lot to offer me on my road to mastering my staff and other weapons. After all, we are often told by our instructors to practice pen spinning.

Thanks to work and various inputs from people at Saturday’s open training (thank you!) I think it’s safe to say that I now have a beta version of my weapon form.

Pushups/equivalent: 200

Situps/equivalent: 3411

Staves Form: 191

Lau Gar: 15

RAoK: 82

Sparring: 190

Kilometers: 195

Nurture Relationships: The most notable this week was being privileged to help some of the kids at Open Training learn how to do hand rolls with their staff, and another where one of the kids and I worked on our hand forms together. It was fun!

Blogging: 12

Drawing: 0

Meditation: 8

Great Coat project: Looks like their may be some group sewing project time coming up, at least next fall/winter.

One on Ones: 5