Captain's Blog, Stardate 2012.09.29, Starship U.S.S. Enterprise - Persp-Active Part 1.5

I called this part 1.5 because I didn't want to make the other one too long, but I also dislike the idea of a multi-part topic. It  feels less complete. So this is named slightly differently and it is part 1.5 of the Pers-patience post.

So if the last post was called pers-patience, and it had to do with perspective and patience, then this post called persp-active must be something clever too right?

nope.

A lot of things are very different depending on where you choose to stand when looking at it. It took me a while to figure out what patience kinda means (as I will probably further change or develop that idea later on, so how I see things now is only at the time of writing. It wasn't until I actively thought about it, did I realize how mistaken I was. Which is what this post is about. The thingy between knowing something and starting to understand it. Knowing something means you can repeat it to someone else; however, understanding it means that you could explain it if needed.

Perspective is also tied to your attitude towards a situation, and as motivational posters around the world say, attitude determines altitude. For example, sparring can be approached in infinitely many ways. Some may see a competition, a situation where there is a winner and loser; whereas others may see it as a learning opportunity, where they can try to do the things they may not be so good at, and practice them in a controlled environment, with people they can trust not to hurt them if something doesn't work. That was the idea I got from Sifu this past tuesday. This made me think about my perspectives, not just about sparring, but about all the other aspects of my training.

This made me think that control as a concept is not really about pulling punches and kicks, but that control is an attitude, an attitude of precision and empathy, in that you do not want to hurt your training partners because you can only imagine how that would feel if the roles were reversed. As a result of not wanting to hurt your training partners, you will pull your punches and kicks, and anything you land is merely a tap, with no power and penetration behind the technique.

And that concept lead to the large pers-patience post previously. Which brought me back to how actively exploring the perspective of how you are seeing something is so important. Each different view on something comes with its own assumptions, and that only by actively analyzing what you see and where you are looking from, can we know what these assumptions are.

From the cook's perspective, he is merely chopping cucumbers for a salad. But if you ask the cucumber, I think it would think very very differently.

I find that sometimes I have to actively imagine how things would seem from someone else's vantage point, and I find that this helps me understand the situation better, see things I didn't previously, or simply make obvious the assumptions I was unknowingly accepting.

I think this video illustrates this point beautifully:

Captain's Blog, Stardate 2012.09.29, Starship U.S.S. Enterprise - Persp-atience

Perspective is an interesting concept. It can be simply the difference between knowing and understanding; parroting a concept, or applying it. I am embarrassed to say that up until now, I haven't understood patience like I do now. Previously, patience meant making yourself wait for things to run their course, while you sit and squirm; as if you were a child on Christmas eve and you couldn't wait to open gifts. Which was how I felt. I wanted to learn everything all at once, and open all the gifts at the same time. I believed that things take as long as it takes, only under the condition that I put forth my best possible effort. If I do not put forth my best effort, then it is taking longer than it should. Right. How silly.

I still believe that I must put forth my best possible effort, but my perspective on what I'm doing has changed drastically. No longer do I want to learn everything all at once, because finally I see that I haven't truly given the things I know their due attention and practice. Just because I know, does not mean I understand. I may know the steps to Da Mu Hsing, but I have barely scratched the surface in understanding the secrets, and gifts of knowledge and techniques that this form has to offer. In fact, this shift in perspective means that how I practice has also changed. I no longer want to open all the presents at once; rather, carefully unwrap, admire, and appreciate each gift. I want to take the time to play with the packaging when I open the gift. I want to appreciate the effort and care taken in those who wrapped this gift, and when I finally get to it, I want to take the time to truly enjoy the time I spend playing with each toy.

As I take this new approach to practicing, I find new and exciting things to fix and learn and play with in every moment I spend practicing my forms. I find more things to work on than I seem to have time to work on. For every one thing I fix, I find three more other things to fix. This is an extremely exciting and gratifying way to look at forms and practicing. It may appear to an observer that I do a few moves, stop, and redo it, and do so over and over and over. But in my mind I can't move on if I keep doing that one little thing wrong. The knowledge I have been taught so far have already given me a lifetime of things to practice and improve.

So I guess to kinda wrap up this wall of text, I now see patience as more of a state of mind, a way of thinking, instead of something to be done. If that makes any sense.

Captain's Blog, Stardate 2012.09.25, Starship U.S.S. Enterprise - ERMAHGERD STERNCESS!!!

In case it hasn't been all that clear, this post is gonna be all about stances. I can hear the groaning and moaning already, because like someone has said before "it's not the sexy stuff"; however, I have come to the conclusion that they are the basis of all the other things I want to improve. From what I have gathered, Stances affect the following:
1) You can't do much without a stable stance.
2) You can't have one leg in the air to kick if you have no stability with 2 feet on the ground.
3) Even if you have the perfect block, without a stable base, you'll go flying.
4) Stances are a great way leg workout while also focusing on good form.
5) Dynamic stability in motion seems rather impossible if you don't have static stability

For a while I was thinking about mobility and footwork in sparring, but after watching Sihing Robinson's sparring video on the Silent River webpage, I saw that the way he moves seems to come from starting with a  stable base first. In short, unless I have good static stability, to work on dynamic stability is putting the cart before the horse.

Personally, with the new knowledge development from leading with the hips, I have been paying much more attention to my hip alignment in my stances. Such as:
1) Not sticking my bum out in my horse stance, which allows me to relax my spine, instead of arching.
2) Bow stance, I found that I can channel the weight on my shoulders through to the ground a lot better if I can straighten my back by tilting my hips slightly, and thereby not arching my back.
3) Open X stance feels much more relaxed if I tilt my hips so I'm not arching my back.
4) Crane stance. I was doing this unknowingly, but if I just tilt my hips, it naturally puts a slight bend in the bottom leg and makes if easy to bring my knee up higher, which in turn gives me all kinds of stability.

Now, with all this focus and thinking about stances, obviously I came to another conclusion. Really. This new thing is weight shifting. Which was something that happened when I started using my hips. It happened naturally. It was great. For example, when I go from the first crane stance to the sweep and bow stance clockwise rotation at the beginning of Kempo I, I place my foot and as I lock in my stance with my hips, I naturally move into the 60/40 weight distribution. Which I found provides a solid punch without much strenuous effort. But more importantly, this weight shifting happens on it's own when I lead with my hips. No longer to I have to shift my weight after the motion to get that weight distribution, provided I place my foot correctly.

Not sure if I'm headed in the right direction, but that's the way I see it ATM.

As always, comments are always appreciated!

Captain's Blog, Stardate 2012.09.24, Starship U.S.S. Enterprise - ERMAHGERD HERNDS!!!!

Now that we have determined how my knee was put into it's current state, I can now see how this is possibly the best thing to happen to my kung fu since my kung fu. Allow me to explain.

1) This forced me to stop using my legs as a primary attacking tool.
2) Forced me to focus on my secondary attack tools. Hands.
3) By forcing instability on my legs to make me pay attention to my stances even more so out of necessity.
4) Realizing how underdeveloped and useless my upper pair of limbs really were.
5) Being frustrated by this, and began looking for ways to improve this situation

At first, I began thinking about my hands specifically and individually, just like I used to view my legs; merely as cannon tubes for launching balls of flying fists. This approach leads to development of powerful kicks, but little else; technique, speed, accuracy, and smoothness (logical progression of combinations) all suffer as a result. So in reality, while this thought process may lead to breaking lots of boards, it useful in very little else. About as useful as a comb to a monk. Recently, I had begun looking at my kicks as a full body motion, with my arms, shoulder, torso, and head all playing a part in the kick, and each being put in that position during a kick for a purpose, either defensive or for balance.

I then applied this thought to my hands.treating each jab, each punch, each block as a full body motion, recruiting every muscle and gram of mass to achieve the intended goal; giving purpose to every cell in my body in each maneuver. In short, making every cell in my body earn it's rent in every motion I undertake. This lead to a little experiment I did on saturday in open training.
Repeating the simple combo of Jab Jab Reverse.
1) I punched the bag as hard as I could. Noting the sound and motion of the bag.
2) I then punched the bag as fast as I could, disregarding power. Noted the sound and motion of the bag again.
3) Lastly, I punched the bag again, but this time, I disregarded everything except to focus on leading every move with my hip, and allowing my shoulders to follow, and my arms to follow my shoulders, and hands to follow my arms; while consciously focusing on not adding power nor speed. Noting again the sound and motion of the bag.

Without ever considering it, I had always assumed that I would get the most power out of 1/2. This proved to be the most wrong I could have been. Turns out the results, from best to worst, ended up being 3, 2, 1. By a huge margin. Also, if I were to be honest with myself, #3 I could do for a very very long time, 2 and 1 I would tire extremely quickly as well.

Which brings me to the next thing I "discovered". I have been practicing Da Mu Hsing and Kempo I repeatedly, focusing on all the things like ending my hands at the same time as my feet, twisting of the hands at the last second, good stable stances, placing and thrusting each limb with intent, and just practicing with focus and mental intensity as much as possible. What I had found was that in each move of each form, I found I had a checklist of 10+ things to remember for each motion. This got inefficient very quickly; however, not knowing anything else I continued to do so this way.
We had recently had a class focused on 2 handedness in our forms. which was followed by a class focusing on slide stepping, and stable stances. Which I then also focused on in my own practice of my forms. Somehow, I came to a different thought. What if, hypothetically speaking, I forgo thinking about the timing of each limb and step independently, and focused on one thing? This thing being, LEADING EACH MOVE WITH YOUR HIPS. When I tried this, instead of leading each move with the forward stepping foot, or the hand that was about to block, or the fist about to punch, I found something peculiar. Without thinking about my previous checklists, I had automatically done most of them. This, this was incredible, and efficient! Also, a nice by product of this is that I have my body weight behind each block, instead of just my shoulders, and I can have solid, intentional blocks and motions, without being exhausted by the end of only 2 repetitions of each form. This is a huge breakthrough!

With this, knowing that a decently solid punch can be thrown with such efficient use of effort, it seems that it takes 3x the amount of energy to kick than it takes to punch, being that my legs are much heavier. So it seems silly to be kicking constantly. Perhaps legs should be for standing. Unless there are those rare openings that just ask for a kick.

So I'm going to use my stubby upper limbs more. Now the question becomes what shall I make them do?

Captain's Blog, Stardate 2012.09.24, Starship U.S.S. Enterprise - temporary loss of my foot launching leg cannons

Due to the timing of the start of this blog, it is unlikely that the posts will be in any consecutive sort of order in relation to the dimension of time. I will probably post about something today, and then go back, and go forward and go back, and so on and so forth.

A bit of background before I begin this post; I ran an obstacle course race in mid August. yippee doo da. But the excitement began shortly after the starting gun.

Suspending all disbelief, imagine a young vibrant little man, taking the first steps in this race, which he knew at the time consisted of 5km of running and around 15 obstacles designed to stop him from finishing this race. Jogging and pacing himself in the middle of the pack, the crowd surged toward the first corner. the second corner came up shortly after, at approximately the 300m mark, and the participants quickly laid eyes on the first sign of trouble; a mudpit the width of the track and perhaps 10' long. Most participants waded through this chest height pit; this young man in the middle, in his eagerness, leapt in before looking, and due to the evil curse surrounding this obstacle, felt his knee bend in 3 directions, none of which were the directions knees normally bend.

At this point, a shocked expression crossed this young man's face, as he realized what had happened, and the pain that had begun to set in. In an act of pure stupidity, this young man refused the reality of this situation, and kept trying to run. Taking a step, falling. another step, falling. again and again as if the evil curse never happened, and refusing to acknowledge the lack of a functioning knee. After eating dirt for 100m, a vision visited this young man, of 2 people whom he respected greatly; advising him prior to the race not to push through an injury.

The young man then stopped, and realized his mistake, and decided he needed to seek medical attention. And with a heavy heart, he hobbled to the first aid station. At the finish line. Because the thought that the exit from the track 400m behind him did not penetrate his thick skull, he went the rest of the 4.6km to go to the same and only first aid station. What a moron.

Captain's Blog, Stardate 2012.09.24, Starship U.S.S. Enterprise - ERMAHGERDDDD! BLERGGERRRNG!

I shall introduce this blog. On this day, I said a blog shall be made. I moved my hands, and it was so.

This blog started at Sihing Robinson's behest. Jon's repeated, unyielding, excessive, continued, aggressive, loud, command. Perhaps he grew weary of my repeated excited revealing of new discoveries that to him seem so trivial. I no know why.

This blog will explore the journey of my kung fu training, but also my mental and spritual pregression through this journey. It would be mucho difficultienda to separate just the physical, mental or spiritual progression of my efforts on their own. They seem as much intertwined as any other intertwined objects. So I say, this blog shall explore my journey in kung fu training, but is not limited to, my growth as a human being, mental growth,  self awareness, and some such.

Having said that, feel free to look around and only partake in the articles that you find interesting and comments are always appreciated, encouraged, and gladly received by this little feller.