4.6 (March 13)

Now that Spring break is over, it's time to get back in gear and go back to a normal life. Back to school, back to classes at Kung Fu, and back to the Summer heat (Unless we keep getting Winter back over the weekends). This means that in a few weeks we can start to do larger forms outside without putting on multiple layers. This is great for me because I'm running out of space for my stick form inside, and it's difficult to work on it in chunks. After choosing relatively large weapons for the past few years, I think I'll go small next year, with a knife or something similar. That depends on where my stick leads me this year though. If I really like it, then I might do it again or something similar. If not then I'll explore my options. Enough about next year. The due date for the Beta for this years form is coming up this week, and I'm excited to see what the rest of the team has come up with.

4.5 (March 6)

With the Tiger Challenge coming up, we have been doing obstacle courses and pool noodle sword fighting in the kids classes. It's been fun teaching them how to properly start a match, and the basic rules of pool noodle fights. It's even more fun with the older kids because I get to go in and fight them myself sometimes. There are other parts of the Tiger Challenge that we're going to cover before May 14th too, but I think that pool noodle fights and obstacle courses will sort of become a "default" for the time being. After the Tiger challenge, we'll go back to more technique based classes. Doing things like this has really helped me with my planning skills, something that I've needed to improve on for a long time. 

4.4 (February 27)

Since the last mandatory I Ho Chuan class, I have finished the Beta version of my weapon form, and I already have the next few moves in development. This year I am doing my own Stick form, and it has been a lot easier to make than my Sword form last year. Last year was essentially my first time using a sword, as I wanted to try something different. This year I went back to the first weapon we learn, so that I could go back to the basics and work myself back up. I'm doing this because I found the sword to be quite difficult to get the hang of. I had a tough time getting my moves to be somewhat effective instead of flashy. This hasn't been as much of a problem with the stick, as I have spent a lot more time with the school form and it is a fairly simple weapon at its core. I won't be able to fully compare the two until I am satisfied with how my Stick form ends. I'll just keep working on it to get there as fast as I can.