Update

It has been a long few days of work and travel so not much training has happened. The communities I am in are only accessible by ice road from 10:00pm to 10:00am and they are about an 8 or 9 hour drive. I have not been getting a lot of sleep between travel, working and then travelling again. I am hoping to be leaving tomorrow night as the road is closing on Thursday morning.

Here are my numbers to date

1) Pushups -9,100

2) Situps -9,100

3) 480 Sparring Rounds

4) 460 Kms

5) 290 AOKs

6) 9 Blogs

7) 85 Reps of Broadsword

8) 40 Reps of Broadsword

The sparring is taking a huge bump as it is a big part of my strength and conditioning training that I am doing. The form reps include partial reps as I did not know the whole forms at the beginning. I am now doing the full broadsword form but am still only part way through the Butterfly Swords.

Sparring

We did some sparring in Black Belt class a couple of weeks ago and after Sifu Ryback asked us if our egos were involved. I thought to myself that mine is definitely not. I can assure you that for many years before it most certainly was. I didn’t want to get hit and I was always trying to get the upper hand and be dominate. Now I have changed my focus.

My main focuses in sparring are:

1) I try and recognize what my opponent is going to do before they do it.

2)I work on sparring form a right lead instead of the dominant lead.

3)I try and incorporate new combinations and see which ones work or don’t work and why.

I recognize that there are people that are way better at sparring than I am and I am okay with this. I am working on things that will hopefully make other people better at sparring or even better than they are now.

After all this, is there some ego in here. I would say yes as but it is a lot different that it was before

Travel Time

I am getting closer to my busy season for work which means I will be away from the Kwoon quite a lot coming up. I have been travelling for work since 2018 so it is something I am used too but it is still not an easy thing to do. No matter how well I plan, I am not able to get in the training I want and sometimes there is literally no place to train. The one thing I have been able to do thanks to Zoom is to stay connected with the Kwoon. This helps me stay motivated and allows me to keep focus on my goals.

In past years, it was a lot more difficult because Zoom was not a thing so when you were away, you were away. You had no idea what was happening in classes or what changes were being made. It was hard to come back and keep up with everything. I have stated in the past and I will repeat it again, Zoom has really helped me. So, although it is not ideal and the training does suffer while I am away, it is better than it used to be.

Hitting A Wall

I hit a bit of a wall this week where I just felt done. I was sore, exhausted and had no energy. I think I had been pushing too hard and not taking enough time to properly recover. It was only for a day but I do need to be aware of this going forward.

I need to start pushing harder on my forms however as I feel like I am not progressing as much on these as I need to. I am going to start putting some extra time in on these over the next little while to get back up to where I feel I need to be.

Open Training & Progress

Saturday was a good day at open training as it was pretty quiet so I was able to focus on a few things myself. I was also a bit dissapointed as there were not many adults or black belts there so I didn't get to work on some of the things I wanted to. In the end, it was still a good day though.

I am making some good progress in the Broadsword form and I will then start focusing on the Butterfly Swords. I will still be working on the Snake form as well but am prioritizing the school forms first as I feel they are more important to my growth.

1 Month In

We are a month in to the year and I am pretty happy with most things so far. My fitness training has been going well and I am on week 8 and have not missed a workout yet. My core requirements are also on track (thanks in part to my fitness training).

There are areas that I need to work on especially when it comes to my forms. I have the sequence (mostly) for the broadsword form and just need to start repeating it. The butterfly swords, I have the beginning and that is all. And the snake form I have even less of. I will be reaching out and asking for assisatnce from people on the team and other instructors to help with these.

My personal requirements are also going well and I feel like these are where I am excelling as they were chosen specifically to improve myself as a martial artist

Priorities This Year

I am approaching this year with the specific goal of improving my skill as an instructor. At first I didnt know how to really accomplish this but I realized it was ridiculosly easy. The best way to accomplish this is by just improving my own skill. Below is a list of areas I will be focussing on.

1) Strength and Conditioning - I am doing a workout program at home and I am also participating in class warmups and lessons as much as I am able to.

2) Sparring - My workout at home consists of sparring drills and I am also researching and learning new drills on a weekly basis (minimum 1 hour per week on this).

3) Grappling - My workout at home consists of grappling drills and I am also researching and learning new drills on a weekly basis (minimum 1 hour per week on this).

4) Sanda- My workout at home consists of Sanda drills and I am also researching and learning new drills on a weekly basis (minimum 1 hour per week on this).

5) Lion Dancing - This will include my strength and conditioning training but will also include working on my drumming as well as working on my own lion dancing. I will also be booking one on ones with Sifu Brinker on a regular basis for guidance and assistance.

6) Broadsword Form - My weapon form for this year will be the School Broadsword form as I need to focus on it so I can teach it to the students. I will also be working on the Butterfly Swords as a secondary Weapon. My hand form will be the Snake Form to help with my mobility.

It looks like a long list to me but I was already doing most of it before this year started but now I have goals and objextives to meet weekly.

Kindness Project

I wanted to talk about Todai Bauers kindness project sooner but I wanted to do it justice and truly express how much it has affected me. I came to realize that I wouldn’t really be able to do this as its something I don’t think mere words express.

I am truly humbled by what everyone wrote and I wish I knew who wrote what. Everyone of them meant a lot to me and I would want to thank them personally. I know that is not possible so I would like to thank everyone on the team personally. It is amazing to be surrounded by such a great group of people.

One more thought on this. I will be honest that there have been times in the past where I have thought about not continuing with my training. I have been gone for long stretches and there was no zoom before so when I was gone, I was gone. Even after zoom, I felt like I had lost my purpose at the Kwoon. I was no longer instructing any classes and I would show up every so often but not really be there. Instead of quitting though, I found something that I was passionate about and that got me engaged again. As most, if not all of you are aware, this was grappling, sparring, Sanda and the Lion Dance. The point of this is when I read the comments, there was a lot about these aspects of my training there. And this has only fueled my passion to continue to expand and hone my skills to better help pass them on to my training mates. So again, thank you all, truly from the bottom of my heart.

I Missed Lion Dancing

The Wednesday before the banquet, I got the opportunity to perform in a Lion Dance at the Onoway Elementary School. For reference, it has been at least 4 years since I have performed in a lion and I felt it. I had forgotten just how hard it was and how much conditioning you need to have.

As a funny coincidence, it just so happens that a couple of my personal goals this year are directly related to Lion Dancing and this dance in Onoway just confirmed with myself why I chose them. I will be working on my own lion dancing skills this year. Not only to become a better dancer but to also work more on the technical side of things. And as an added bonus, it will help with my strength, conditioning and Kung Fu.

I also have even more respect for the Lion Dancers we have at SRKF. It is a lot of hard work and I now have a better understanding of just how hard it is.

New Year, New Focus (not quite yet however).

This past year has had some challenges along the way and I definitely have some areas that I need to focus on more. I let some of my requirements slip and then I never went back to them. This is not how a thought the year would go but I still think it has been a good year for me regardless.

Here is where the not quite yet part comes in.

My main focus for the past couple of months has been the Lion Dance for the Chinese New Years banquet which is coming up this weekend. I know it has been challenging for not only for the Lion Dancers but also the drummers and the Budha as well. I recognize thisbut I also recognize that we have an amazing group st SRKF and I am extremely proud of what they have been able to accomplish so far and what they will be able to accomplish on Saturday. I just want to end this by saying thank you all for helping make the vision come to life.