Some Riding Punches

Did an evening session at Sensei Taka Kinjo's gohakukai dojo last night, where the absurdity of sports combat was discussed in some depth. Ended up getting to bed fairly late, so allowed myself to sleep in this morning in order to compensate, and this meant less time than usual at the park before work. Feeling a bit weary as it was, I pretty much just fed the ring-billed gulls, stretched and did some stance work, both static and moving

I've been watching some initial videos Sifu sent me links to, really thorough introductions to basic postures and how to understand their functions in relation to fighting postures. Of these, I've never really worked with the cross stance, and so this is some new learning for me, which is good. Also, I'm getting a taste of the techniques component of the Zen Martial Arts curriculum Sifu has put together, and I really appreciate the level of instruction

One of the practices I'm familiar with is moving in straight lines with the stances, and combining them with basic punches and kicks. This morning, I played with moving in several directions, more freestyle, mixing through the stances, weaving around my cluster of trees at the park, etc. It was kind of awkward, owing in part to the patches of slippery mud at the base of each tree (they'd just watered before I got there), but also to my inexperience just trying different ways of flowing between them. So I"m going to play with that a bit, and hopefully put something up eventually when it looks half-way pretty. In the meantime, thought I'd at least post a couple minutes of riding punches I taped today. This is good evidence of where my flexibility and leg-strength is at right now, having recently taken such a long break. Not way far off the mark, but definitely needs some work as well...