Monthly Mini Challenge - August

 Hey team, 

One of my personal goals this year has been to conduct the monthly mini challenges. While I have fallen a little behind in that regard, I plan on trying to get it running again. So without further ago, Augusts challenge is...

Learn a piece of someone else's forms / teach a piece of your own form!

Sometime during the month of August, I want to challenge people to try and learn a small section of someone else's form. Or rather, I challenge everyone to try and teach a portion of one of their forms to someone who might not know it or might not be familiar with it. 

I do not intend for this to get in the way of regular training; aim to only teach a small chunk to whoever is willing to learn. Teaching is often one of the most effective ways to learn and the insights that can be provided through teaching may not be able to be found anywhere else. 

If there are any questions, please ask!

Where My Training Is At

As I mentioned before, something I’m working on is becoming more consistent with my training. That’s not the only thing, however, I am working towards. This blog will serve as a bit of a catch-up for my progress lately. 

Aside from my consistency, I have been working largely on instructing and my teaching. I have been trying to play a bit of a bigger role in the classes, and I’m working on developing senses of awareness, engagement, and strategies that help me connect to the students. 

A strategy I have found that works relatively well is displaying excitement over the students accomplishments. This isn’t faking excitement; it’s simply displaying it. I believe this has been a way of showing that I care, that I am in engaged in their training, and that I am invested in their developments, all while catering to who I am as a person and my natural strengths. 

Something else I have been working on is still my intent, although that has been modified compared to my goals last year. Teaching my sword form has been great for me; it has allowed me to take the intent that was existing in my mind and verbalize it, as well as making sure I physically embody it. I believe I have gained a far better understanding of my sword form because of it and I am extremely grateful for that. 

With that said, if anyone wants to teach a section of their personal form to someone to see if it helps with their understanding for it, please reach out. I’m more than willing to learn. 

70% Simon

Do you ever have so many blog ideas, but they never see the light of day? And you just don’t blog? And everything seems to be just blegh? That’s kinda where I’m at. 

While there’s lot I want to talk about, the target of this blog will be my recent undertaking to better understanding my limits. As many point out to me, I lack the ability to limit myself properly. I don’t recognize my own limits, nor do I respect them. Mental and physical fatigue, physical wellbeing, patience, etc. All very abused elements of who I am. 

The downside to going “100%” is that it isn’t maintainable. There’s burnout, recoil, recovery, all those nasty things. It can result in inconsistent showings and overall, a decrease in ones general reliability. That’s the thing I hate most. 

I want to be reliable. I want to be relied on. 

I have to earn that, obviously. To be reliable, I need to be consistent. That means consistent and frequent fluctuations from 100% to 30% and back up to 100% are no good to anyone. The fix? 70% Simon. 

I am working on maintaining a consistent 70% Simon. As Sifu Rybak told me, a consistent 70% Simon is far favourable over a drastically inconsistent 30%-100% Simon. This means taking breaks. This means slowing down. This means taking it easy. Not just in Kung Fu, but with every balance I have. Work, personal, home, so on and so forth. 

Once I can maintain a consistent 70%, my goal will be to maintain a consistent 71%. It’s a long game, I think, and one will take lots of mentoring and reassessment. After all, it’s not like I know the difference between my 70% and my 100%. Maybe that’s the first step?

numbers

Numbers post since I haven’t blogged in a week ish. Still having issues with sizing formats.. please bear with me

Numbers

Situps: 11150 / 50000

Pushups: 15060 / 50000

AoK: 462 / 1000

Katana: 185 / 1000

Sword Spear: 213 / 1000

Sparring: 281 / 1000

Distance (km): 381.75 / 1609

Personal

Tai Chi (reps): 61 / 250

Tai Chi (unexcused absences): 1 / 0

Stretching (hrs): 54.75 / 150

MMCs: 1 / 10

Ski Trips: 1 / 4

Volunteering: 0 / 3

Proper Frustration?

The tiger challenge was fun today. Tiring for sure, but overall a fun experience. I enjoyed the judging opportunities I was provided, and it made for great learning chances. 

I am a little disappointed that I was not able to finish my events, however. There’s a sense of guilt and gnawing frustration that I didn’t keep pushing myself, that I didn’t force myself to get up and keep going. I think withdrawing for the second half of events was the reasonable and responsible decision (and feasibly, I recognize that it was probably the only decision and I didn’t even have to make it for myself). Continuing to push on (especially into continuous sparring) would have most likely put both myself and my opponent at risk. 

Despite this, there’s that twinge of lingering frustration. How could it have turned out different. What could I have done better. What paths existed that would have allowed me to continuing competing in other events. Once home, my parents did some checks and concluded that my temperature was high and my blood sugars were low, so obviously I have to take that into account. Next tournament, I’m going to put 10 sugar cubes into a bottle of DayQuil and chug it as a preventive measure (I jest. It’ll only be 5 sugar cubes). 

I guess what I’m trying to say, at the end of it all, is that it feels like I could have prevented my crash. Or maybe that I should have been able to. That it happened as a result of negligence somewhere along the path of mastery. That I should have been able to handle the fatigue and soaring heart rate, that it wouldn’t cause me to start hyperventilating and losing sensation in my hands and feet, and that wouldn’t cause me to have a panic attack and consistently repeat the process. That maybe there was an issue I could have identified sooner. What if I had my panic attack meds? 

Even though all of these what-ifs are kicking around, I am trying to remain positive and not let them damper the entire experience. I still believe I performed well during the first half, despite many hiccups. I’m happy with the performance of my weapons form most of all. My sword form is one that has evolved and grown a lot over the last 16 months and I am beyond pleased to continue developing it. 

Bring It Back

I got home from Ottawa on Friday night. Hooray! To be completely honest, I didn’t handle Ottawa half as well as I thought I would. It completely tanked both my mental health and my motivation. My numbers have fallen behind, as have my personal requirements and general “Kung Fu Habits”, such as class attendance and blogging routine. 

To be entirely honest, I’m a little worried. I have a terrible habit of not being able to restore lost momentum. With that said, I have hopes that being back in the flesh will help restore my motivation. 

To be more accurate, I’m hoping that the return of my routine and element will help improve my mental health, which will in turn help with my motivation. Obviously, I recognize that simply hoping life will be better won’t accomplish anything. I need to take extra effort to try and restore what I lost. 

Speaking of lost, I’m feeling lost? It’s as though my vision is clouded- as though I’m not really sure what I’m working towards at the moment. I think this loss of direction is also a contributing factor to my loss of motivation. I’m trying to focus on the journey and not the destination, but I’m struggling to appreciate the journey when I’m not quite sure what the destination is? Overall, there’s a lot of twist emotions I think I’m experiencing. 

I’m still having technical difficulties with my number logging- I’m hoping to have another blog out this week where I can figure out said difficulties and post them there. 

One More Excuse

I’ve been having issues with my blogger lately. Stuff hasn’t been coming out right, fonts been messed up, all sorts of things. I really have to take a step back and work on my blogs from the ground up too, I think. Formatting, content, all of that. It’s been tricky for me lately. 

I plan on doing another post about motivation soon, but I think this one is a pretty good prerequisite. Right now, my issues with blogger have been just another excuse for me not to blog. It piles onto “I’m not motivated, my numbers aren’t great, I want to ignore the problem, yada yada yada”. All poor excuses, really. And yet it gets the best of me.

Of course, here’s a blog, so clearly I’m still in the ring and fighting as much as I can be. It goes to show how different things can become. In the past, I tried to convince myself that one more excuse was one more reason to avoid doing something when in fact, it was just one more excuse. Really, it has begun to become the opposite. One more excuse has instead become one more reason to do better.

Given the format of my blogger and my numbers, I am going to try and post them with another blog tomorrow once I have access to a computer, as I do not have much ability to check them from my phone.