Back to class after four or five weeks off doing research and some travel to Spain. The first class back is all about getting back what I call class conditioning. Experience has shown me that you lose a bit of conditioning every day you are away. A PTI in the military once told me that every time you take a pee, you lose a bit of conditioning. That may or not be accurate, but I have noticed it takes a good class of clanging and banging to get back up to speed.
I have been doing quite a bit of personal solo training and some sword work, but you need to interact with others and have contact to pick up the essential body conditioning, timing and measure control we desire. In our group, you will pick up some minor bumps and burses during training as you apply your art, which is unavoidable. We consider risk and reward and adjust to our training partner’s needs.
Today was all about dialling down to get the body mechanics right on a basic punch, then a quick run-through on defences and combining that with footwork and positioning. During the teaching progression, you get taught lines of attack and defence, and you always work on finding and controlling measure and timing. If we found a lack of intent or a deficiency in our striking, we pluck out the motion and hit focus mitts. Then plug the movement back into our drilling.
About thirty minutes back in, we all revved up and started to sing with our bodies. Things get a little easier, and we dial down into areas such as correct weight distribution. In my group, we work off several traditional and modern fences at the start of interaction; we explored this and ended with a playful “what ifs”.
I have been watching Adam Chan’s excellent YouTube channel; Adam is a Wing Churn player/teacher and some other Kung fu, and I find his channel very beneficial.
Today after class, one of my training partners ran over an introduction to standing post-training from the Chinese Martial Arts, which really helped. I intend to do standing post-training after each training session.
Killick Off Road Arts 