Shaking things up to see what falls out

         I've committed to 10,000 kicks each of front thrust, side heel, roundhouse, and spinning back kick for my personal requirement on next year's team.  I'm obviously not waiting till next year to start, so I've already begun creating a routine for myself.  In doing this, I'm also playing around with each of these kicks.  Utilizing these kicks from different stances, bow stance, fighting stance, horse stance.  Power versus taking the power off.  Kicking into the air versus heavy bag.

        This kind of training is really helping me find areas that I can improve on.  It's easy when you throw a kick one way and improve on it, but when you start to change it up a little and see that your kick falls apart, it becomes really humbling.  It also gives me an opportunity for deeper learning.  I still definitely struggle with the spinning back kick, especially when just throwing it in the air.  We practiced it last night from a horse stance and it wasn't any better from my bow stance; yet when aiming at and hitting a heavy bag, I could connect the pieces again.  My takeaway so far is that, having a target to stop my kick and give me feedback feels safer for me, especially when I want to put some power into it; throwing kicks in the air, I need to leave my ego behind and focus on technique (doesn't mean there can't be power as well); I still need to work on balance and control; throwing kicks from different stances shows me when I'm cheating on my chambering.  Overall, I'm looking forward to seeing what throwing 10,000 of these kicks is going to yield for me.  Haven't decided if I'm going to include kicks in forms, or if I'm only counting kicks on their own.

        More on the topic of stances, I'm still working on mine, especially in my forms.  Slowing down the forms has still been a very useful tool, because I can really feel the connection, or lack thereof at times, of my upper and lower body.  There are definitely still times I want to utilize that upper body instead of engaging the hips fully and allowing technique and my skeleton to take me through.  I noticed when I really try to do a form full speed that the wheels fall off, and I tend to a) put myself off balance, and b) start engaging my shoulders too much.  Having said all that, I do feel like my footwork is improving in general.  Doing some knife defence the other day in class, I made the comparison of how I set myself up in the technique, versus how I would have done it 3 years ago.  So that's something.