5.3 (February 5)

    Transferring a weapon form to another weapon is something that I've always liked doing, whether it was with the stick form with nun-chucks, or a sword form with a stick. I've just found it fun to do, and a good way to make me think about how a form works. That's what I'm doing this year for my weapon form. I am taking my stick form from last year and reworking it into a cane form. This one has proven to be more difficult, but not in the way I thought it would be. I thought it would be difficult to translate some of the moves over, but that's not giving me much trouble. The difficult part is getting the moves to look like they fit with the cane, as I can do them just fine, but they look out of place with a cane. The biggest spot in my form that this is apparent is near the middle, where I have the "strike-cross step-block" section from stick III. I have been told that it looks weird when doing it with a cane, so I have been trying to find something different to replace it with while still being able to finish off the form in the same way. I have come up with a move, but it seems to end up in a different stance every time I do it, so I'm not too sure if it's going to stay.

5.2 (January 29)

    For the past few months I have been working on involving my hips more in Tai Chi, and it has started to trickle down into the rest of my Kung Fu. The main reason I started working on my hips more was so I could use my shoulders less, and this past week that had really started to show. I was helping my Dad with a move where he was engaging his shoulder and I wasn't, So I told him to turn with the wrist instead of the shoulder. Now, I don't know if it's physically possible to turn your wrist in the way needed without lifting your shoulder, but I find it is possible to do it without engaging the shoulder. Instead of initiating the movement with shoulder, then moving through the elbow and finally to the wrist, I initiate with the wrist, and let the elbow and shoulder 'drag along' without engaging. 

    Being able to do things like that is only half of my goal when working on my hips. The other half is maintaining a low center of gravity. I have always tended to keep my weight high, as I've been told is common with taller people, so trying to bring it down low and then keep it there has been a big struggle for me. With every class that I go to, it gets a little bit better, so I will stay on that trajectory and keep working on it.

5.1 (January 22)

    This is my first blog of the year, and it is two weeks late. Not a great start. If you look at my last blog from last year, it was the blog for the 19th week, meaning I did well under half of the required blogs. Also not great. Roughly 40% of blogs were completed, which doesn’t qualify as a pass at school, and something I definitely believes does not count as a pass in this situation. This doesn’t mean my whole year last year was a fail, but it sure didn’t help. My online presence was nearly non-existent last year, where I only responded to events and didn’t read very many blogs. Again, not helping my ‘record’ for the year. Overall, I see the Year of the Tiger as a pass for me, but a slight pass with lots of room for improvement this year. If I can keep my online engagement up and my blogs consistent, I will have my most successful year so far.

Zhang Fei Most Improved Award

 The Zhang Fei award for most improved is an award that highlights the massive improvement a student can make in a year. Improvement isn’t necessarily something that can be measured in Kung Fu, but it can definitely be seen. Improving consistently can be difficult at times, and to maintain consistent improvement takes a lot of hard work. This award is for the students who worked the hardest to make as much improvement as they can.