6.3

 Going into this year I was undecided what I was going to do for a weapon form. I had just done cane, with stick the year before, sword and nunchucks in the few years before that. I decided I wanted to do something different, but I wasn't sure what exactly that would be. I knew that I wanted it to be something that isn't usually seen as a weapon. This led me to pick a hockey stick. I figured that since I haven't ever played a game of hockey, and that I haven't been in a pair of skates since grade 5 that a hockey stick would be the perfect choice for me. I knew it would be a challenge getting used to the length and shape, since I was used to a regular staff. I also knew that if I wanted, chunks of my previous forms would still work since the general shape is still similar to a cane and a staff. So that's what I did for my beta form. I didn't have an ending figured out yet, so I took the ending from the demo version of my cane form as a placeholder for the beta version. I'm going to ditch the last few moves that I showed on Thursday, and make the form longer and make a new ending that doesn't share almost every move with my ending from last year.

3900 push ups

6240 sit ups

110 M'long Koon

110 Hockey Stick Form

246 Kilometers

6.2

 Dragon dancing is something that I've enjoyed doing since I started doing it around 4 years ago. I've done the Dragon dance at the banquet three times now, and it's been fun and rewarding every time. However, over the last few months my shoulders have started to give me more and more trouble, to the point where my arm will lose all strength and go numb if I turn my shoulder too much. Obviously this isn't good, especially since I'm only 18. I'm just starting to get into the field that I want, and my body is already disagreeing with it. This came super clear to me on Thursday, as I was doing an oil change at school. The vehicles we work on at NAIT stay in the shop their whole lives, never seeing the road once. This means that 99% of the parts on them aren't seized or rusted and are very easy to get off. Even with this perfect world scenario, my shoulder gave out trying to take off the oil filter. Not good, as I was essentially useless to my group for around 10 minutes after that. So how does this relate to Dragon dancing? I find that the morning after every practice/demo my shoulders feel like garbage. It hurts to move them for awhile after getting up and I have very limited strength as well. What I'm trying to say is that I will taking a break from Dragon dancing this year, and focusing on getting my body back into a good condition, where it can handle what I'm giving it. If I was older, I would just try to change what I can about my Dragon dancing to accommodate for my shoulders. But I'm still young enough that whatever damage I may have done might not be permanent, so I can take steps to undo it and come back stronger and better. I want to say thanks to my fellow Dragon dancers for all the fun during the practices and dances, and I hope to be back on the team in the future!

2800 push ups

4480 sit ups

80 M'long Koon

80 Hockey Stick Form

168 Kilometers

86 AOK