Falling in love, again

Pretty uneventful night of practice yesterday. I brought my bo but only did my kata a couple times, and only at about half speed. I did work on my handling of it, the finer kind of handling. Gaining speed in my spinning will lead me to spend less time spinning it and will make my strikes become the main focus of the kata.

I did all my kata, starting with the three pinan, then Circle of the Tiger, then the Statue of the Crane and ending with Cat 1 and Cat 2. Was definitely more relaxed doing Cat 2 by myself as opposed to being in front of judges, and I worked on some of the little things I didn't like on the video of it.

I also served as attacker for the class instructor. He's done that a few times in the last couple weeks, ask me to come over to help him demonstrate a self defense technique. I'm more than happy to oblige, as I often get tips about how to do them, even though I already know the techniques. Hearing somebody other than my regular instructors explain them, and especially to younger kids, is good. It also helps him as showing a technique against a lapel grab is easier to show with an attacker of about his size and strenght as opposed to being grabbed by a 4 feet high 8 year old. :)

I had brought Andrew's new bo with the hope that there would be a private class right after his traditional class and that we would be allowed to share a tiny bit of the gymnasium. Sadly, the only class planned for the evening was their 6 to 7 traditional class. I still pulled out Andrew's bo for him to try it for a couple minutes. We bought it at the competition last Sunday, but he didn't use it for the competition, seeing how much lighter it was than his older bo. His reaction to it yesterday was a pure joy to see. He went all "woah" and his eyes widened as he did a few figure eight and then some strikes. As I grabbed out stuff to head back home he told me he would have really wanted to keep on practicing with it. Again, when we got hom, at 7:10 or about, he told me he'd have wanted to practice outside, pretty much in the dark. It had rained all day and it was wet all over, so I told him he couldn't but it was still very nice to see him get all excited about it. He told me he really looks forward to our next bo class so he can practice with it some more. Looks like he fell in love with his bo, again... Good kid...

FM