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 like repping out forms, especially when it’s new so that I can memorize it. I’ll start picking it apart after I don’t have to think too much about the moves.  When instructing I much the same, but also realize that that can get boring.  So I had them go at half speed with a focus on stances, and then full out.  At half speed everything looked sharper and more defined.  Faster they went, the more blended and sloppy it became.  Then for fun we did a rep together without using our upper body, again just focusing on stances.  I recognize that one needs to have fun with the forms and sometimes the best way to do that is to donut in different ways.

        As for my own training, I sometimes like doing things the “wrong” way on purpose.  It gives me a good feeling of what’s going on within my own body.  What feels good and what doesn’t.  Oftentimes it leads to better of understanding of what I am trying to accomplish.  Point of all this is that it is good to find ways of changing how we train to lead to different questions and insights.