In this class we continued with the theme from the last class, which was test prep. That last class wasn’t great. We reviewed all the material together as a class but since I’m new I hadn’t seen most of it. None of it really seemed super difficult, at least in theory, but since I hadn’t seen it before I kind of needed some time to digest it, which I didn’t get. Luckily in this class I didn’t spend as much time seeing the other stuff. We didn’t practice together as much in the previous class so I was mostly working on my stuff, which was mostly the three basic blocks with the step that I ..read more

  This was a full on review class. All the stuff we did was stuff we had covered in previous classes with no new material. This is the kind of thing that seems like it would be boring but it’s what’s allowing me to get better at wing chun since I have so much time to practice everything.  I was struggling a bit with the not chi sau drill though. I was sort of circling my punch and block, which is kind of obviously wrong, but I have trouble throwing a straight punch from that distance. I’ll have to see if maybe my weight is settled wrong or something. My leg also isn’t strong enough t ..read more

  More wing chun classes means more baby steps building on stuff we’ve been working on since I started. I usually feel I’m okay at JKD so when we jump from one thing to another either in one class or between classes I don’t usually mind. I figure I’m competent enough at what we’re doing (hahaha ya right) that I’ll be okay. But I’m much less competent at wing chun so although on the surface repeatedly doing the same thing seems kind of tedious it’s probably the only reason I’m slowly getting (a little) better. In this class spent some time practicing the rotation we’ve been working on for ..read more

JKD Tai Chi Wing Chun I’ve mentioned before that 2020 was a pretty good year for martial arts. Over the course of the summer I got back into JKD, started tai chi, and then got back into wing chun. Summer was easy of course. I had all the time in the world so I had no trouble getting to class. Then I settled into a pretty good schedule once work started back up in September. I went to a wing chun class and a tai chi class during the week followed by JKD on Saturday. I kept this up through about March of this year, then it started to unravel.  Once work started back up I struggled a litt ..read more

  Wing Chun is still doing what I enjoy most, and that is reviewing past material. I guess that’s a little more boring than doing new stuff but by regularly reviewing and building on old material I feel that I get better at it, versus learning a bunch of new stuff regularly and never getting good at anything. Case in point, doing more rotating into blocks, in this case tan da, helped me figure out that the rotation is probably (I haven’t specifically asked so I won’t say for sure) happening on the toes, since rotating not he heels seems to create a stance that’s much too wide. It also hel ..read more

I fit in now! I finally got a uniform. And did wing chun too I guess. One thing I’ve noticed about wing chun is that the school I’m going to seems to have a more structured curriculum than other places I’ve been. Or at least more obviously structured. The benefit of that is that the classes often build on each other, calling back to or adding to things from previous classes. And that’s how we started my first class in uniform. Class had the normal conditioning. These wing chun classes seem to do conditioning more consistently than JKD and tai chi do. The main ones seem to be planks, pushups ..read more

  August wing chun classes started out pretty good. It was still the summer so I fortunate enough to be able to go twice a week. There definitely seems to be a pattern to the beginning of class that I’m starting to get into the groove of. We start class with a couple of different warm ups that don’t seem to change to often, some kicks, some siu nim tao practice, and usually some conditioning. I think that last one is particularly important. I personally feel that martial artists and martial arts schools often don’t put nearly enough focus on conditioning as they should. Martial arts are a ..read more

JKD was a good start and I really enjoyed starting something new in tai chi, but the whole time there was something eating away at me. Something I had to do. Wing chun was the first martial art I had tried after coming to China and although I enjoyed it I was pretty bad it. For the sake of my ego I had to get back to wing chun so I could learn more and get not bad at it. Or at least…less bad at it. Unfortunately I had forgotten just how bad I was and was quickly reminded upon returning to class. All joking aside it was good to get back to class and everything came back to me pretty quick. Firs ..read more