Tuesday night’s class gave me a much needed glimpse of where I am and where I may be headed without awareness and some self directed intention. After doing Da Mu Hsing at the end of class, we talked about the importance of proper stances and transitions even if we can't execute them due to injury or knee issues.
Sifu Rybak then asked us to video ourselves doing Da Mu Hsing. The goal isn’t about numerous retakes until we have a video showing our best form, it’s more of a tool that we can look at and get a good picture of our current execution and areas for improvement. It's about also about building self awareness to continue moving forward. Are we in a proper stance, do transitions need work, are we committing to and finishing techniques? These are all things to ask ourselves.
After recording the video and thinking more on my stances and transitions I realized my stances are becoming sloppy as I have to compensate more and more for knee pain, and stability issues. That’s sloppiness is also starting to and/or has the potential to spill over into other areas of my forms as well. Everything then becomes muddled, which is something I want to avoid going forward.
Without this tool, without this self awareness, I see myself sliding down a very slippery slope. So, my goal is to uphold the purity of each form to the best of my ability while also understanding and working within current disabilities while also enhancing my skill. In order to accomplish this I'm going to need to slow down a bit so I can focus on proper stances and techniques. I need to be clear in my head what the goals are for my forms so that even if I can't execute completely, I can still relay and teach others.
All in all an excellent class!
No comments:
Post a Comment