Catching Up

The past few months have been chaotic between work and travel and time seems to have slipped away from me once again. Working in Nunavut has been a challenge as it keeps me away from home and Kung Fu for 15 days at a time which means I miss over half of my classes now. The other challenge I am having is the travel that I have to do when I am home as this also cuts into my time at home and the Kwoon. I think I have been averaging only about 30% attendance at classes this past 5 months.

it has been a bit tough to feel engaged with the team as my schedule has me missing most of the meetings and half of the mandatory classes. The other issue is that the internet at the mine site is restricted so I cannot access Mighty Networks while on site so reading posts or blogs is a no go. When I get home, I try to catch up as much as I can but I never really do so I try to get to the ones I feel are important and comment where I can.


The other issue is the lack of training space available up there and surprisingly they dont have a bench that I could just swing around without destroying a few things. So what do I do? I utilize what I have available to me and work on what I can. I work on my conditioning and cardio everyday while on site. I will hit the gym in the morning and either treadmill or bike and then in the evenings I work on strength and endurance training. So far it has worked out well and it is something that I plan to continue.

This leads to next Years I Ho Chuan team. Do I join knowing the challenges or do I take a step back? We all know what the easy path would be, but I have never been accused of doing anything the easy way (according to September anyway). So I am committing to next years team knowing that I may miss out on some demos, half the classes, maybe most of the meetings and with being out of touch for aver half the time. I want to do this because it is something that I feel strongly about and it is a new challenge that I know will benefit me.


Back to this year. We are just over a month away from our banquet and with the holidays coming up I will be at one more official practice only and a few Thursdays and Saturdays in between. This means that I dont have the benefit of being able to rehearse with the team as much as I should be but that is something beyond my control. I will be there every chance I can get and I am looking forward to seeing how the demo is progressing and also how the lion dance is coming along. I will do what I can and am looking forward to being a part of this years banquet.

Big Decision

I have spent the last month doing some consulting work in Nunavut and the North West territories with only 5 days at home in that time. This last 2 weeks have been spent in Fort Good Hope, Norman wells and Tulita in the NWT. The problem with training is it has been long days with no access to a gym so I have done a lot of push-ups and sit-ups in my room at night with a few burpees thrown in. Internet has also been not so good so I have fallen way behind on reading everyone's blogs as well as my own. I get home tomorrow night but there is a good chance that I may have to leave again Tuesday for two more weeks as the one client would like me back specifically.

On the topic of travel, the company in Nunavut would like me to continue until the end of 2019. This is a big decision as it will affect my how life and my Kung Fu life. This means I would be missing half the classes that I am supposed to teach, mandatory I Ho Chuan classes and I may miss the banquet. It would also be a huge adjustment for September and I dont know how she feels about it yet. This will be the biggest deciding factor for me. Anyway, I will let you all know when I know.

Being Away

Being away for an extended period of time has been an eye opening experience. There is limited things you can do to train while at a camp so I was down to going to the fitness room every night to at least work out. There is no open floor space so you either lift weights or use a treadmill or stationary bike. I was able to go everyday so I am happy about that but that was all the training I was able to get in.

Being able to adapt to your situation is something that I have been working on for the last couple of years as I seem to be constantly changing where life is taking me. I think if I do end up going back that I should be able to do a better job of maintaining my training while away again. I will find out in the next couple of days so we shall see what is next for me.

I have attached a link below that shows you were I was if you are interested.


https://goo.gl/maps/32yy3FaJ1FG2

San Shou

I was going to write about my leaving for work but I want to talk about the San Shou seminar instead.

The goal I had for this seminar was to give people some insight into how San Shou is different from normal sparring and I also wanted to give the students some techniques that they could use in matches. Mostly though, I was hoping that this would help with there confidence and help them improve there normal sparring.

From what I saw over the last 2 classes, I would say that it was a success. I am not bragging about what I did but I am applauding the participants because all of them showed immense amounts of improvement from where they started. That is not saying that any of them were bad to start, but the execution of technique and the confidence in their abilities improved greatly.

I want to thank you all for allowing me the opportunity to be part of this and I also want to thank Sifu Brinker because his insight and experiences made it much easier for me to teach the techniques.


A couple of students have continued to work on this after class and on Saturdays which I hope will continue into the future.

Stress

It seems like a recurring theme of mine for the last few months but it is still an issue. My work situation has not yet stabilized and the stress is starting to wear on me a lot more this last 3 months. When you have a small client pool that you rely on and they all slow down at the same time, this leads to a loss of income quickly. This has led my focus lately on trying to secure a more reliable income (Job search) but so far I have had not much luck. As I am sure most of you are aware, stress has a way of taking most of our focus and from there things start slipping by the wayside. I am trying my best to keep engaged and focus on my training but I am focusing most of my efforts lately on securing work.


With that being said, I do have some work lined up but it will take me to Calgary for the next week so I will be missing class starting tomorrow and I wont be back until Saturday the 28th. I am going to be back this Saturday for the San Shou Seminar as I have the weekend off and this seminar has been great so far.


I dont know what the future holds, but one of the things I am looking at doing may involve a lot more travel and that is something that will require a lot of adjustments and priority reshuffling. I will worry about that though when the time comes.

Grateful

When I was thinking about what I was going to write about this week, I never imagined it would be this. Do you ever get some news that you are at first shocked and then can’t wrap your mind around it? Well this happened to me on Wednesday afternoon. The owner of the company I am consulting for was killed in a motorcycle crash late on Tuesday. He was on an annual tour he does with some of his friends/co-workers when he lost control in Utah. Not only was he someone that I worked for/with for the last 7 years, but we were also friends and the guys he was with were also fiends of mine. I dont know how they are dealing with being there while it happened and I can't imagine how his family feels.

This got me thinking about what Sifu Freitag said last night about being grateful. I am grateful for everything that I have and no matter what is happening in your life, you need to look at what you do have and that is the people that you care about being with you.

More Changes and Challenges

It has been a long two weeks since my injury and I can say I am glad it is over. There are no lasting effects from my fight with the tree except that the tree is now in a lot of smaller pieces. The worst part was waiting to ensure that the brain was fine and I can tell you that at that start I wasn't sure if it was. It was not something that I was wanting to go through again. Anyway, all good on that front.

On the personal front, I have started looking for a full time job again as the consulting business is to up and down and the stress of not having a steady income is beginning to wear on me both emotionally and financially. Being able to work for yourself is great in that you have more freedom and can set your own work schedule but if things don't work out or plans change, then the big downside is there is no money coming in. I have had some success at it but there is not even reward for all the risk in my opinion.

Finally, i am excited about the San Shou seminar coming up and I have broken down into sections that I think will make progressive sense for all the attendees. This is something that I am really excited about and I believe it will be an exciting challenge for not only myself but the participants to be able to modify what we are working on to make it work for them no matter there ability.

Anyway those are my thoughts for the week.

Great to really bad (well not really bad but bad).

This weekend went from being a great weekend to becoming a bad weekend in a short period of time.

So I will start with the good. On Saturday after open training, we went to a movie and then went for dinner after. The movie was highly entertaining and the meal was awesome. On Sunday, we went to the in-laws property and were helping them clean up some dead trees. The weather was perfect and things were going well until....

The bad. There was a dead tree that was hung up on some other tress and while working around it, it slid down and hit me. Do you ever get that feeling of dread because you think it could be bad and then you get confirmation that it is bad. I will spare you the gruesome details but I now have 10 stitches in my head and am supposed to stay fairly inactive for the next few days.

I have to admit it sucked and I keep trying to figure out how it happened but I don't think I will ever know. The one thing I learned is always be aware of what is happening around you and never take anything for granted. Oh yeah, I have a really hard head.

Good to be back at the Kwoon

I got back from our trip late on Tuesday and it is nice to be home again. Although I enjoyed myself, I missed being home, I missed being at the Kwoon and I missed being able to train. Kung Fu has been one of the things that has been the most consistent in my life for the last 3 years and I look forward to being able to get back to it and getting back into a normal routine.

While away, I did not get much training in but I was able to keep up with my physical requirements and I was able to get in some extra workouts.

Anyway, it was great to be at Class again.

Checking In

I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Moncton and have a few minutes to check in. We have travelled through 4 provinces in the last 4 days starting in Ontarion and ending up in New Brunswick. Along the way we have hit Ottawa, Gatineau, Laval, Montreal, Quebec City, Edmunston, Halifax and Charlottetown with a return to Moncton. We plan to drive to Nova Scotia tomorrow to make it 5 provinces in 5 days and then hang around Halifax for the final 3 days.

Training has been going okay considering the whirlwind travel schedule so far as I have only missed one day of my scheduled workout routine. I plan to make it up in the next couple of days and it should be easier now.

Well that is it for now. see you all soon.

Beta version (3/4 of).

It has been a busy week preparing for the I Ho Chuan class as we were to have a Beta version of our weapon form complete. I did have one ready but the form is not complete yet and there are lots of things I want to improve such as my stances and my transitions. I have the next part planned out mentally and the transition finally worked out so now it is time to work on improving/modifying what I have while working on the final sequence.

The next thing i need to start working on is my hand form. This year i am attempting to create my own unique form and it has been a challenge so far. Mostly because i have been focussing on my weapon and partially because I know how i want the form to look in my head but am struggling to transfer that to my limbs.

This Friday i will be heading to eastern Canada to visit with the wife's family and we will not be back until May 1st. This will represent a unique challenge as i always find it hard to keep up with some of my training requirements while away. Hopefully i will be able to keep up with my daily workout schedule at a minimum while maybe getting some form reps in here and there.

Lion Dance

Saturday was the start of the Lion Dance Seminar and it started out a little unexpectedly. Sifu Brinker had to leave early so I was asked to finish the first "class". I have to admit that I was a little nervous about this as I wanted to ensure I did the lion dance justice while hopefully getting the basics covered so Sifu Brinker can continue moving forward next week.

Hopefully those that were their got something out of the day as I look forward to seeing where this seminar takes all of us. I am eager to always learn new things about the lion dance and am continuously trying to improve my skill set.

The lion dance not only helps with your physical improvements, but the mental ones as well. I tried to emphasise this point and explain some of the benefits that I have noticed since I started to lion dance.

You guys had some really great questions and showed great improvement by the end of the first hour. I look forward to seeing what you look like after the next one.

My Blog

What to write about?

Every time I go to blog, I ask myself this question. It is not like I have a shortage of ideas bouncing around in my head but being able to articulate them and express them is where the struggle comes in.

As I am sure all of us try to do with our blogs, we are trying to get our thoughts, our feelings or our emotions into them. Maybe we are hoping to convince someone to come around to our way of thinking. For me it is just trying to express my frustration, my excitement or what my plan and goals are.

This is something that I have struggled with since the beginning and I have let it control my blogging consistency. I guess it may also be due to the fact that I usually don't like to share what I am thinking or how I am feeling. Therefore trying to express them in a blog is even more of a struggle.

I usually feel like I have a great idea or a subject that I am passionate about but I also feel like I never get that into my blogs. Maybe I need to rethink of how I compose my blogs.

Hate to Love (or the Other Way Around)

I am starting to develop a love/hate relationship with my weapon this year.

First off, I do like the weapon that I have chosen as it feels good in my hands. My biggest issue is I have 4 sections of moves that flow together nicely but its connecting these pieces together that I am struggling with.

I want transitions between sections to make sense like it is one continuous movement and not 4 forms put together to make one form. I know that all I need to do is spend more time working on the transitions but i also need to work on the content at the same time.

So if you see me kneeling on the mats staring into space, you will now know why.

Improving my Kung Fu

I have a few different goals in mind this year and one of them is to improve my Kung Fu. I feel like I can/need to do more that I did this past year. It sounds like a vague statement, but I have some ideas in mind on what I can do and what needs to happen for them to be successful.

One of the easiest ways, is to be at open training on Saturday. So my goal is to spend as much time there as possible. I not only get to work on my own stuff (one of the few places that I have room to swing a bench unless its outside), but i may be able to help someone else out with a technique or a question which actually improves myself as well. Its about being in the right place at the right time.

Another thing I would like to work on is my sparring, grappling and Sanshou. This one is a little harder to work on unless you have a willing partner. How does this improve my involvement in Kung Fu? It will make improve my knowledge base and hence allow me to better help my students with this aspect of Kung Fu. However, the number one reason is it will help not only myself but my I Ho Chuan teammates get sparring minutes in. So if anyone wants to do some sparring on Saturdays during open training, lets plan to do it.

Bench II

I have to admit trying to come up with a new bench form has been challenging so far. I have found it difficult to not start going into my other bench form so it is challenging me mentally as it just feels natural to start repeating movements. I think that is part of the reason i went back to the bench was to see if I could come up with something completely different than the last form. I have got about 5 or 6 moves that I have linked together and a whole bunch more just floating around. So now I am starting to put one here and one there and hopefully from there it will become a functional form.

I am also trying to come up with my own hand form this year and have not even started on that as i am focussed on the bench for now. i hope to start on that within a couple of weeks once i have my bench version 1.0 finished.

Year of the Dog

Saturday marked the end of the I Ho Chuan teams year of the Rooster with our Chinese New Years Banquet. After it was over I felt a sense of relief and calmness sweep over me because it was finally complete. However on Sunday, it started again as i began the year of the dog. This will be my 6th year on the team and my 5th straight.

As in anything in life, there are always up and down years and last year I know was a down year. I cant specifically say why, I just didn't feel the same energy as I had the year before. I think it was mostly a mental issue but that's the nice thing about starting a new year is you can clear your mind and focus once again on the journey you have ahead of you.

This year i am going to try to come up with my own hand form and a new form for the bench which should make for a challenging year. The other thing I will be focusing on more this year is keeping up with the blogs (reading them, commenting on them and writing my own) which I believe will help make this a successful year.

Thursday will mark the first official class and we will have some new members as well as some returning members from years past. I cant wait to see what weapons will be coming out this year.

Kwan Do

We are getting close to the end of this years I Ho Chuan team and I feel like I took a step back this year. I have not been engaged as much and some of my requirements have been affected by this (or were the cause of it most likely). Right from the start, I felt like my weapon choice was not right as the heavy Kwan Do was hard to control and didn't move like i wanted to so I had to use the lighter one. I believe that has stuck in my head and made me frustrated with my weapon. Its only been since we started gearing up for our Chinese new Years banquet, that I am starting to feel okay with it. I think it may have been stubbornness on my part, but I decided to stick with it and try my best as changing would have been to easy.

Next year, i am going to approach the weapon with more excitement and embrace the challenges it will present as it is my choice and no one else made it for me. I am a firm believer that 90% of what we do is mental and only 10% is physical and this will help me going into next year.