2.46

 With school out for Christmas break I now have a lot more time to use towards Kung Fu. Now that I don't have any homework to do or even classes to attend, I can now spend almost the entire day on Kung Fu. I won't be training all day every day, but most days I will be training for longer periods of time. I'll be training like this until school starts again on January 4th. My blogs until then will be summaries of the week and what I learned during the week. 

2.45

After doing each days challenge, I find that I am trying to find how I would apply the technique in real life. Some are easier than others, like the combative roundhouse being a fast kick. However, there are some that aren't as easy to find a "practical" use for. Today's challenge of Cross Step Back Kicks is one of the more difficult ones to find a use for. The concept of the technique is easy to understand and find a practical use for, but I find it difficult to see myself using the kick itself if I were to get in a circumstance that requires physical action. While I'm sure that it does have it's place where it is very effective at what it needs to do, I feel like this kick would very rarely be high on my list of choices that I can use. I do know that it is still good to practice and learn it, because we may end up in that situation where this is best suited defense.

2.44

 800 push-ups is a great way to not only celebrate Master McNeil's 80th birthday, but it is also a great time to see where we are at. To do the push-ups, I am doing 50 of them every half hour. This has gotten me up to 450 so far. This is helping me figure out where I would score on the black belt test, and it's safe to say that I still have lots to improve on. With school being shut down again, I'm now at home all of the time and I will be putting a lot more time into my training. This will help me get more reps in and it'll help me find more questions to ask.

2.43

 Having your heel on the ground and being grounded in your technique are connected to each other a lot, but they don't always have to be. You can still be grounded without having your heel on the ground, and you can have your heel on the ground without being grounded. To me having my heel on the ground makes it much easier to be grounded compared to having that little bit of extra range with my heel off of the ground. At the same time, I feel that I sometimes have my heel on the ground without being grounded. This usually happens when I am using my upper body for my strength instead of my whole body. When practicing, I understand why the Sifu's don't teach us about how to stay grounded without your heel on the ground as it is fairly easy to mess up, and without good eye for detail you wouldn't be able to see that you're not doing it correctly. I have found this thought in my mind more often last week with the raised reverse punch technique we were doing in class. I found that when I was lifting my heel, I had more range, but I wasn't as grounded as I could've been. Finding my grounding is something that I will be looking deeper into while training.

2.42

 Questions are not something that comes to the front of my mind most of the time. Most of the time it is just thinking about what was just said or what just happened. When we've gone over techniques and applications in class, I spend most of the time trying to understand what we just did better then I did while doing the technique. This usually leaves me with a very small amount of questions to ask, which is something that I want to change. Asking more questions would help me lots at understanding the technique. Another difficult part is the actual question part. Having to think of what to ask and how to ask it isn't something that I do very often, but I will definitely be doing it more in the future.

2.41

 Right before the shutdown last week, Sifu Csillag challenged us to do 1000 Front Thrust Kicks on each leg before our next class. I have currently done 900 on each leg. That leaves me with 200 to do within the next day. One thing that I have understood better is Sifu Hayes analogy of "fold the bag, don't push it over." I am still working on completely understanding it, but I definitely understand it better now. I'll keep thinking about that while I do my kicks, not just until I reach the 1000 mark, but until I have another concept about kicks to think about.

2.40

One of the main things that makes writing a blog difficult for me is taking the ideas in my head and putting them into actual sentences that make sense. This has never really come easy to me, except for a few times where I had something on my mind for days. I find that it can take me awhile to find the right words to start writing. Even once I start writing, it can be difficult to find a good way to continue on with the thought. Blogging has made it easier to formulate my thoughts into actual written sentences, but it is still fairly difficult. I think that if I keep consistently blogging, it will continue to become easier.