3.6

 After the first two weeks of in person classes, I have found my training to have increased in quality. Tai Chi is much easier in person, and getting back on the mats that I've trained on for 12 years. I have found the extra space to also be beneficial, as I don't have to do any weird modifications to my movements in the kwoon during class. The extra space also helps me with my sword form, as I plan on making it larger than my nun-chuck form was last year. Now that the weather is getting warmer this will be even easier. The only difficult part is finding my flow and where it leads me in my form. Even though I'm not there yet, I am getting closer to the beta version of my form, which is a decent start.

3.5

 Since the beginning of the year, I have been looking for inspiration for my sword form. I've tried looking through the school form and different Tai Chi sword forms on YouTube, but none of them really connected with what I wanted my form to be. As almost a last resort, I looked through the 7 different forms of Lightsaber combat, and that's where I found what I was looking for. The Vaapad form of Lightsaber combat, which is one variation of Form 7, has almost everything I have been looking for. Now that I have a definitive source for my form, it will be a lot easier to create my own form. This should be fun!

3.4

Since tomorrow is the first day we go back to in person classes, I am excited to see what a low intensity class consists of. I am also excited to see how the I Ho Chuan class works, especially with all the weapons of different sizes. This upcoming week will be a test of sorts, to see if the new restrictions are good, or if they need to be reverted again. I hope that people have finally understood the fact that the pandemic is real, so we can keep moving forwards in this direction. I can't wait to see you all on the mats!

3.3

 For this year of the I Ho Chuan, I am making my own Sword form, and I am doing Hung for my hand form. I chose to do Hung because it is quick and I enjoy doing the form. I chose to make my own sword form because I wanted to give myself a bit of a challenge. This will be a challenge as I haven't used a sword in a decent amount of time. It is also my first year not doing a hinged weapon, which is something that I am looking forward to. One of the reasons why I chose Hung is because I can do it in a lot less space without shortening my stances. This will be extremely helpful for doing the form in the house. I am looking forward to working on these for the next year!

3.2

On Sundays at 9am, my family gets together with some other people like the Kohut's and Mr. Repay to work on our kicks for the Black Belt grading. Last week we focused on power and how long it took us to get a score of 10. This week we focused on speed and how many kicks we could actually do within 1 minute. This has given us a baseline for where we are at with our kicks. I assume that from here on out we will be focusing on combining those two aspects and improving on them until we are completely confident that we can get a passing score or higher. This will also help with one of my personal requirements of doing 50 000 of the three main kicks. As of right now I am at 367 on my Front Thrust, 352 on my Roundhouse, and 321 on my Side Heel. Still a long way to go, but there's still lots of time left in the year.

2.54/3.1

 Since the online banquet is this Saturday and not the previous one, I will consider this my last Rat blog but also my first Ox blog. The year of the Rat was a big difference from my first year as a Pig, but that wasn't necessarily for the worse. The lockdown in March was a complete change of everything, and with it came a new life style basically. A lot more free time to do with as I wanted. With the way we switched over to online classes almost immediately, I found that it was easier to be motivated than if the switch wasn't as quick. Then the summer came and everything started to open up again, and it was a nice feeling to be back in the kwoon. Then the second shutdown came and now here we are. At the end of the year. This year should be easier in the aspect of it already being a pandemic, and we know what to do instead of last year where it started normal then changed shortly after. This year will also be one of the most difficult years for me because I will be working as hard as I can to train in preparation for my Black Belt grading. This year I will also be changing how I record my numbers. Instead of recording them in a physical book that can be forgotten somewhere, I will be using Google Sheets, which I can access anywhere at any time. I look forward to seeing how this year goes!

2.53

 I have started to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance lately, and I now realize what people mean when they talk about how different it can be. I find myself going back a paragraph or two very often just to better understand what I just read. This is what I spent most of Friday doing, as I didn't have school.  I will definitely have to read it again once I'm done, maybe even once again after that. I haven't really formed any thoughts or opinions about anything in the book or anything that deals with the book yet, but I most likely will soon as I keep reading.