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.