| | I am not ashamed to admit that I really enjoy reading young people's literature! The Underland Chronicles are pretty cool! I am also reading "Wuthering Heights" (Shudder!) but I am ashamed to admit that! Tuesday night class didn’t happen, which was a disappointment since my friend from Tennessee was in town. I called the community education office just to make sure that there would be class and they said their would but when we got there the person who was supposed to be there to open the door never showed up. But my friend and I went west to visit with another mutual friend and it turned out to be a good night anyway, with a fair amount of talk about Martial Arts and other subjects as well. Master Bruce was out of town anyway but it would have been nice to have one of the senior belts give my friend a bit of an overview of what Quan Li K’an is about. Bummer. Last night I got to lead the stretch and warm-up. The seniors said I did okay since I remembered everything. After break I got to assist Ashley in teaching the white belt kata and one-steps to the kids. Ashley has a lot more patience than I have. She corrected me once when I was suggesting a more adult version of a move but I guess it was just the way I learned it. So there is one thing I learned! It all went pretty well. During the second hour John started out asking us first Dans about teaching and what we thought about the reasons for the way things are done. One question he asked was “Some styles have their new black belts go out and establish new schools and then have to send their old school 10% of the profit. We require ours to teach under supervision for a minimum of one year (and usually longer) before they test for their second Dan and if they pass they are free to teach wherever they like and get to keep any and all profit they make. Why do you think that is?” There are a few correct answers but basically it boils down to the fact that we are knowledge-based, not profit-based. We want to make sure the material is taught correctly and we want to make sure that the style continues to improve. After the Q&A session we worked on the kata that we started last week, Kwang Gae. It will still be taught to the junior black belts and so the adults have to be familiar with it. The adults will be learning Po eun and Bassai Dai for testing and besides Kwang Gae we must also familiarize ourselves with Empi since it will be replacing Bassai Dai as the High Green belt kata. Jim and I are already familiar with Bassai Dai since we were the first Green Belts to be required to do it and I totally agree that it should be moved to the Black Belt level. We started learning it two months before we tested for our Low Green belts and still just barely made it through when we tested on it. That is six months of fairly hard study on one kata and I think it helped me to better understand everything that came afterward but is too much for a 4 month testing cycle. I have been through Empi and I think that it will make a suitable replacement and has some things in it that don’t necessarily have to be lethal, while Bassai Dai is just one neck break after another. Bruce has also improved his understanding of Bassai Dai since we learned it so there will still be a lot to learn. At the end of class we had two people spar in the center for 30 seconds (Kevin and I started) and then the others watching had to pick one good thing and one bad thing that we did. So it was a lesson in critical analysis. Then we played one round of “Defender,” a new game that John wanted to introduce. We pretended that the inner circle of the gym was surrounded in hot lava so you couldn’t step out. My eldest daughter was the princess and Lucas was the bodyguard. She stood behind him and kept her hand on his shoulder so he would know where she was. First he had to defend my daughter from Kevin and keep him from hurting her and not let her or himself step in the hot lava. Lucas could defend or attack, whatever it took. Then he had to defend them against Kevin and Ashley, which didn’t go so well and he eventually threw himself into the lava to save my daughter. Very noble but not terribly effective. It was an interesting exercise in what it might be like defending someone who has no experience in Martial Arts. All in all it was a good class. More later- GrumpyGriz |
| | Posted 1/25/2008 1:39 PM - 63 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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"Don't do anything! I'll save you!" I was reassured... At any rate, it didn't go so hot because everytime he'd try to grab the attackers arms and wrench them free of my neck, it just dug the choke in deeper! I think we finally figured out some more effective ways, however. (We didn't have any hot lava or princesses or anything, though 
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