Consistency

Heyo everyone, this weeks blog is going to be about practice, and the importance of practicing properly.

When looking at the amount of classes I attended this week, it was really bad, in comparison to my what I used to be getting. I was only able to get to 3 classes this week, which includes the Wednesday and Thursday morning classes and the IHC class on Thursday. But even though my classes weren’t as good as I’d like, I’d still consider this one of my more successful weeks, because I was finally able to get something off of my plate that was starting to weigh down on my mind; breaking my boards. 

I didn’t want to blog about breaking my boards at first, but I realized there is a lesson in it, so here I am. When I first attempted on Canada Day, I had two major red flags. I failed to break all four in a row and my side heel kick failed to meet the required technique. My kicks have proven to be rather below the level I want them to be, and that was an eye opener for me. Over the past month and a bit since Canada day, one of the big things I’ve been working on is the flexibility in my hip. After a small incident a few years ago I lost a fair bit of the flexibility in a few of my joints. At the time, I thought “no, I’m as good as I was before hand” and with that, I’m pretty sure I’ve been practicing some bad technique for the last few years as a result. 

I ended up slowing down my side heels and practicing them at 25% speed to make sure the toes stayed down, and I’ve slowly begun to speed them up. However, as Sifu Brinker mentioned on Thursday, there are times where my toes do rise above my heel. Despite these flaws, I feel my kicks have come a long ways in a short time, yet they still have long ways to go. With that, I have to work on my other kicks just as equally, because they too have a lot of room to improve. It reminds me that I have a lot of things I still have yet to achieve and everyday I get better.

It reminds me that all we can do is get better. As long as we can identify and create a plan for a problem, we can figure out how to get around it.