Thursday, August 5, 2010

Getting someone to fall with the Positive Circle

Last Saturday during practice, I tried one of the first drills I learned from Master Chen with an opponent. Every now and then, we would go back to these drills. This was the first time I was able to perform the drill with relative ease and no force to get the opponent to fall. The drill was like this: I had my right arm across the opponent's chest, with my right thigh behind the opponent's left thigh, while my right shoulder was touching his body slightly below his left shoulder. When I performed the top half of the positive circle, the opponent would seem like he was squeezed out or scissored between the upper and lower bodies, and hence, fell.

A few points I noticed:
- I was standing really close to the opponent, with the sides of our trunks touching.
- I was just performing the positive circle, and not really trying to push the opponent.
- I dropped the shoulder while performing the circle.
- A stationary axis seemed to be formed between the right shoulder and the right hip.

On the Wednesday practice, I tried it with another friend, who was taller and bigger than me, and I was able to do the same thing on him.

When it worked, it would seem to be really easy. These drills were really good tests for checking if one was able to perform the particular technique properly. I wouldn't be 100% sure that I did it yet until Master Chen would confirm it in September.

So far, I was only able to do it with my right hand. I couldn't do it with the same ease on the left side. I had to admit I did many more circles with the right hand till this time. It would be time to train my left hand more.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Finished the entire Yilu for the first time

Today during the Wednesday practice, I performed the entire Yilu for the first time. Although the last ten moves were a bit choppy at this point, it felt good to reach the goal of knowing the basic choreography of Yilu by September 2010. I would shoot a video of it later after I remembered the moves better. This was exciting.