Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

 Sihing Bjorkquist brought up an interesting question last night in class: what to do when you mess up a move and it throws off your mojo for the rest of your form?  Sifu Brinker's answer was a good one, improvise if you can, and make it look like it was all part of your plan.  

It made me think of 2 things. First, in teen/adult class a couple of weeks ago, I was working with Todai Vogt on Lao Gar, and Sihing Tymchuk (I'm guessing wildly at the spelling of his name, my apologies) gave me an excellent pointer.  There were a lot of groups practicing all around us and I had to keep scooting away from people to continue my form.  Sihing said, don't scoot, do a move, any move.  Thrust punch and a downblock, or a spinning back kick and an inside hooking block, whatever.  Get clear of the people/things encroaching on your space and then continue with your form, but do it all with style.  Great advice.

And I thought back to high school, I was in the Drama Tech program, which ran all the lights/sound/stage managing/set building/etc for the drama programs, dance shows, school assemblies, sports events, etc.  It was a great gig, and was sometimes very hard work and long hours, but did come with some great experiences.  One of the things we would do for drama shows, close to opening night, was to have a special rehearsal where the Techies would try to mess up the actors during the run.  We would intentionally screw up the lighting or sound, talk loudly in the audience seating, heckle, throw popcorn, misplace props.  Once one of us even popped up through the trap door in the middle of the stage during a scene, threw confetti around, and popped back down.  The idea was that the actors had to stay in character and deal with whatever we threw at them, gracefully.  It was a fantastic learning experience for the actors and a TREMENDOUS amount of fun for the techs.

So, why not apply this to Kung Fu?  I'm sure I could convince my 4 year old to introduce some chaos when I'm practicing forms.  After all, the best way to deal with any possible situation is to practice dealing with the worst scenario.  Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.


Song of the Day: Jammin by Łąki Łan

https://open.spotify.com/track/1KmK9UEMbuuleSFdrNthcO?si=e9f2c78bd4144e83

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Warp Factor Metaphor

 Ya know, I made the title of a blogpost "Increase speed to Warp Factor 2" a little while ago as a joke, but I was thinking about that metaphor today and I think it really works.  Because you want to be able to take yourself to Warp 9 and be able to hold it for a while, but that speed isn't sustainable long term, it's too hard on the engines.  And there are times where you're going to have to slow down to Impulse and coast, but if you want to get anywhere, Warp will get you there much faster. So my goal is to get myself to a comfortable cruising speed of Warp 5, with the options of going higher or lower, depending on whether I'm encountering a Borg Cube or a Class M planet. Also, in the book I'm reading I came upon a fantastic section that fits with the concept of mediocrity: "Failure is easy to measure.  Failure is an event.     Harder to measure is insignificance.  A nonevent.  Insignificance creeps in, it dawns, it gives you hope, then delusion...
Read more

Bumpy road

Image
This last week has not been great for my I Ho Chuan numbers.  I didn't realize how much leeway I had with my time being on night shift, and now that's gone I've been having trouble getting into a new routine.  But I haven't given up!  Things are settling in at work, and I'm figuring out little moments I can get my push ups and sit ups in.  And I figure if I can get 30 minutes of Kung Fu in every evening then I can start getting my form reps up. Cleaning up on Saturday was brilliant!  It was really nice getting to see everyone outside of the Kwoon, and I thought we did a pretty awesome job in the park and at the Kwoon.  I really liked how the kids got right into the spirit of it.   I actually started working on some crafts yesterday, too.  In order to raise funds for our Star Trek social club, the crew of my ship makes crafts to sell at markets, and at the upcoming Fort Fan Fest in Fort Saskatchewan.  My contribution is the painting of te...
Read more

I AM Organized

Image
I've been putting this blog off all week, not because I'm not feeling good about everything, but because I just couldn't think of something to say.  So, I'm dipping into the I AM chalice. I realized last year that I have undiagnosed adult ADHD.  It was stupid how, lots of my friends who are diagnosed ADHD were posting memes on facebook about the condition and it was getting a little too familiar, then I saw this one: I looked back on my life and saw all the signs, from hyper-focusing on the wrong thing at the wrong time, to time-blindness, to procrastination, to executive dysfunction.  I've spent the last 20 years building up my coping mechanisms without even realizing it.   So, the last couple of months when I actually got my butt in gear and worked on my Bat'leth form, made the Bat'leth, researched it, organized it, printed and laminated it, put it into a good (I hope) order, and practiced it, tweaked it, all long before the deadline instead of frantically...
Read more