Yesterday, I had the opportunity to go out tree planting with some of the members of the I Ho Chuan team. It was a great experience, and I enjoyed being able to carpool with Todai Thelwall. I’ve never gone tree planting before, so this was definitely a new and enjoyable experience. It was great to see several other team members out there, and I hope that we will be able to do a similiar project again next year. I think I heard that we planted more than 1100 trees, though they were a lot smaller and easier to plant than I expected. One of the things that I am finding that I enjoy most about Kung Fu, is the way in which the classes and team activities build community and connection.
I also picked up a freestanding punching bag on Friday, so I was very eager to participate in Todai Ward’s birthday Challenge of 60 reps of sparring. I just did a simple projection, jab, reverse combo, but I had a lot of fun practicing the moves with a target. I still need to keep working on my rotation when delivering the punch and on pulling back to guard my face though, so I am going to make a point this week to do 33 sparring combo reps every day for the rest of this week.
This brings me back to my commitment to put in more effort on my training in preparation for the Canada Day Demonstration as well. Since my last post I have been doing a lot more than I was, and I am enjoying the training. I am hitting 100 pushups and sit-ups every day as well as 4 reps of my weapon form and my hand form daily. I am going to add the 33 sparring reps as well and make a deliberate effort to maintain this momentum until at least Canada Day. I think they say it takes about 3 weeks to build a habit, so hopefully this will last beyond the planned goal.
One of the things I still need to work on though is my timing for the demonstration, I still have no idea how long my form is lasting, and I know I need to make sure it is only about 20 seconds for the demonstration though. I also keep hoping to rebuild/redevelop my form into something that is cooler and more pose worthy, but for now I think it is wiser to make sure that I am refining the form I currently have instead of resetting everything and then ending up even rougher for the demonstration.
Way to go!