Training Tip: Smaller is Better

This is my first week back after my long wedding- and honeymoon-induced hiatus. As such, I knew Tuesday's practice was going to be hard; As it happens, Tuesday's practice was unbelievably frustrating. I had almost no energy, which was hard enough, but my technique was so bad that Shifu pulled me out of the line on Lunbi Caijow. I was really looking forward to working on forms, so it was a real downer to have to go off to the side. Once over there, Heng Li worked on Fanyao with four of us, and I just couln't get it right. It's not so much that I don't know how to do it, though, more that my damned shoes didn't fit.

If you're like me and you're not precisely one size or another, it's so much better to get the slightly smaller size of Feivues. They're canvas, you know, they'll stretch. I'm basically a 45.5, and I thought I'd try a 46 to see how it would work which was a terrible mistake. When your shoes are too big it's impossible to get your feet in the right position if there's any twisting involved, as I've learned over the past few practices.

For Thursday's practice I went out and got some size 45 shoes, and everything was excellent. In fact, this is the first time Shifu's had us walk that I was surprised when he gave the order. I was just cruising along full-speed, and he stopped us twice during basics to walk. When we got to forms, I'd finally watched enough and gotten enough instruction to do Yiluchuan all the way through. I was a little nervous when Shifu came over to watch later on, since I hadn't had formal instruction on anything after the first pubu, but he watched the entire form and had no comments - I consider this success. It looks like I'll be able to test the first two forms in October, and have a full 6 months to work on Erlichuan. I'm very excited to get to the five-kicks everyone seems to love so much.