Robyn's Travels

First night of intermediate kung fu

After getting my orange belt on Monday, I decided to suffer thru my body aches and attend my first intermediate kung fu class offered on Wednesday evenings. Surprisingly, I was a little nervous because I wasn’t sure what to expect.  There were only 4 of us in class last night, one green belt and three orange belts. After warm-up, the class broke up into who was focusing on each style, Shaolin or Choy Lay Fut.  I was the only student who was focusing on Choy Lay Fut, so I was on my own for practicing drills and forms.  This really worked out to my advantage.  

These intermediate classes are apparently great for getting more individualized attention so that Shi-fu can pinpoint incorrect techniques, why they are incorrect and how to train into the proper technique for better advancement.  

For the longest, I have been having difficulty moving from a cover stance to horse stance.  Shi-fu was able to determine that I have been picking up my back leg from cover stance, lifting it up too high and dropping it in a perfect 50-50 horse stance.  This then makes it ineffective to have forward motion towards my next move. I should be starting from cover stance, transitioning into a back stance, then striking into a forward horse stance.

I also learned in that drill that I cannot move the back leg in a circular motion; it needs to move linearly.  Therefore, I need to find the right balance of moving my foot forward into horse stance without lifting the foot prior to movement, nor scraping my foot across the floor.  Easier said than done.  But the “a-ha” moment has been reached so at least I can now sense when I do the movement wrong and know what I need to do to fix it.  I just need to practice extensively to correct that transition.

I really gained a lot from that one practice and I feel so motivated.  My focus is to really correct my techniques so that I can be more fluid, faster and powerful in my approach!