Sword-Breaker, Snake-Bearer

With less than a week away until the start of the Snake Team, I am excited for some of the new challenges that will come. This will be my 9th year of the IHC and I think it is going to be my most ambitious, as far as forms go. 

For my weapon form, I will be using a type of jian sword known as a “Chinese Swordbreaker”. For those who haven’t seen me work with it yet, it’s essentially a square steel rod designed to look like a sword. It’s like a mace and a baton got mixed into one? Anywhos, I’m excited for the potential that it has. It is intended to be used in a way that mimics fluid swordplay, but adds more “oomph”. 

A baseline of fluidity while implementing higher levels of intent and intensity has been the core of my developing style. I believe the swordbreaker will compliment this nicely and I think I’ll be able to produce a lot of my own inspiration; this is going to be important because it’s the most “unprecedented” weapon I’ve chosen to study thus far. By that, I mean I haven’t seen it used before in the IHC and online videos of its usage are scarce. I plan on utilizing instinctual feel as well as a combination of sword and baton techniques that I’ve learnt over my martial and professional careers. 

My other undertaking will be my hand form; in the spirit of the Year of the Snake, I’ll be working with the Snake style again. In my previous years of studying Snake, the biggest challenge has been trying to stay true to the style and not doing the form in my own way. To embrace this, I will be creating my own Snake style form based on what I know is right (the traditional) and what I think feels right (the “Simon”). I am intending that this blend of traditional and Simon will produce a form that highlights the traits of the Snake style I’ve grown to love as well as my own personal traits. 

In nine IHC years, this will be the first time I am creating both of my designated forms from scratch. I believe I excel with these types of challenges, and I am aiming for positive results. 

Also - Sihing Regier, I completed your 50 pushups challenge when I first read it today. Thanks a bunches :)

Assuming The Worst

If I had a nickel for every time Sifu Rybak has told me lately to stop assuming the worst of a situation, I’d probably have the total sum of maybe a quarter? Possibly even a quarter and a dime. It doesn’t seem like a lot but, relatively speaking, she’s said it enough times that I can’t keep pretending like she hasn’t said it at all. It’s a pretty inconvenient truth for me, I think. 

A quote from one of my favourite book series growing up was “always expect the worst. That way, when it happens, it won’t be a surprise. It’ll still suck, but atleast you’ll be ready for it”. I was like, 12 when I read this for the first time? I was a very easily influenced preteen boy and as someone who was already struggling with anxiety, it made a lot of sense to me. I really took it to heart; I actively remember, for years afterwards, I would recite that passage to myself every time I realized it was possible for things to go sideways. It was like a shield that made me feel safer when I got in my head, yknow? 

I think there’s some valuable truth behind this, for sure. I would argue that not having some degree of preparedness for things to wrong is a naive approach. But I’ve also began realizing that this motto I abided so closely by from the ages of ~12-15 has done a right good job of messing me up. It didn’t start this way, but over time I’ve reached a point where a combination of anxiety and blindly following the ideal of preparedness has left me assuming the worst of EVERYTHING. 

The quote from my book, it’s only intended to apply to certain scenarios. For examples from my day to day life, stuff such as a demo in Kung Fu or a compliance inspection at work. To be honest, I think this way of thinking has benefited me at a professional when conducting inspections or field work in my career. I still ask myself “what’s the worst that can happen?” before going out and I prepare myself for that type of scenario. If I’m prepared for a worst-case situation, I can handle everything else that comes my way. And it’s true! I believe a lot of my professional success has come from this approach. 

But I’ve taken it too far; I assume the worst of things like a passing remark, a raised eyebrow, a fleeting facial expression, so on and so forth. I can lose sleep over typos in texts to me when the sender doesn’t even realize that their message didn’t get across properly. I HAVE lost sleep over things as silly as typos. It’s happened within the last week (and not for the first time, either). The “shield” I used a decade ago to help alieve some of my anxieties has been reforged into one of the very swords that I needed that shield to protect me from. It’s ironic, isn’t it?

I think the key to overcoming this is confidence and Kung Fu contributes to that greatly. Of course, I still have many occurrences at the Kwoon where I assume the worst, but I am trying to avoiding letting other people get in my head that way. 

Numbers (per last 7)

Pushups;

62-62-93-31-160-31-62

Sit-ups:

62-93-93-93-100-31-62

Reminders of Kindness

Last week, I had one of those days that started off pretty poorly; oversleeping, forgetting stuff at home, forgetting breakfast, all the stuff that can put someone in a bad mood in the morning. I was dropped to a poor enough state that I had already written the day off and it wasn’t even 9AM. 

At some point, I left my desk for about 30min for a meeting. When I got back, there was a letter on it. “Weird, I don’t get letters often”, I thought. But hey, my name was on it, and there it was. 

It was a birthday card, from one of the people I attended training in Ottawa with nearly 10 months ago (the postage strike can be blamed for getting it a month late). I have rarely spoken to this person since training (despite getting along with them really well), nor do I recall ever telling them when my birthday was. But they sent me a card, along with a postcard from the Yukon (where they are from), and photos we had taken while in Ottawa. 

They could have just sent me a text or an email saying happy birthday and that would have been enough to make me smile. But they went a step (or two) above. The impact of receiving that letter was enough to turn my day around on the spot. 

It was a really good reminder to me how impactful acts of kindness can have on a person. I recount my AoK at the end of my day, before bed. Lately, I have started to lose sight of the purpose of the AoK and it became something I was just moving through the motions of. I am glad this letter came a month late; it came exactly when I needed it.  

Silly Goofs

Something I enjoy about the breaks is the opportunity to focus more on my own things and less on teaching. Don’t get me wrong; I greatly enjoy teaching. However, there are times where it feels like it takes up all of my energy and focus when on the mats, so I appreciate the chance to recenter. 

This last week, I torqued my knee while working on my lion dancing. I’ve been really focusing on the level of emotion I can convey using only my legs and have been experimenting with implementing more aggression and intensity to some of my steps to display a more “stern” side of the lion. I got carried away at one point and, with not a lot of energy left in the tank, stepped a little too hard and rolled into my knee. 

While the injury was minor to begin with, the mistake I made was continuing to aggravate it. Not my usual “I can keep going” sort of aggravation, but more of a “thinking it’s good and taking a bit too much risk” type of aggravation. Once I thought it was good, I went skiing. A little slip on the ice, and it was not so good anymore. Since then, I have been really listening to it and been pacing myself slowly, while trying to not be afraid of it either. 

One of my biggest developments over the last year or so is working on my understanding of my body and making sure I don’t abuse or take advantage of it. The more lessons I learn, the more I am able to grow to this end. 

Numbers (per last 7 days)

PU

62-93-62-31-780-0-20

SU

93-93-62-31-800-0-20

KM (total per last 7)

28.5km

AoK

5 per day