Sometimes you just gotta hit something
In yesterday night’s level 1 class I was instructing Lao Gar 1 and was specifically working on the knife hand strike after the “poses” we do. What I kept seeing, and was related to our black belt class, was how the vector of power was anywhere but forward. Very similar to the punch we do near the beginning of Lao Gar 2. I know what has helped me in the past is to set up in my form next to a heavy bag and feel how effectively I was transferring my power. I find it helps to have a physical target in front of you to hit. So that’s what I did with a couple of students, had them set up to the heavy bag and had them hit it with the knife hand. It was starting to look good, but when I had them go through the form again they still were losing a lot of their power backwards or sideways. Could just be not enough muscle memory, or perhaps the visualization just isn’t there yet. Now I lik...
