T.J.I.F. (12/25)

No .. I didn’t misspell T.G.I.F. (“Thank God Its Friday”).  I was utilizing the little-known acronym for “Tai Ji Is Fun”.  Which I’m using because today I was able to get some footage of a few athletes training in Taiji.

But first let me start at the beginning of class.

Today I took the bus and as I was walking up to the wushu guan I noticed that the girl from Zhejiang was walking to the wushu guan too.  That seemed strange since usually all of the athletes walk together in formation as a group when they go to training.  Maybe she was late?  Or early?

As I was unpacking my wushu shoes and knee braces I saw some more athletes walk in.  The Taiji group was there as usual.  And from my group only a few people came in.  I asked Xiao Yu where everyone was and she said that they had school.  This might be a regular thing. Since this is my first week coming in the (brrrrr) morning, I wouldn’t have known that they have Friday mornings off.

So, it turned out there were just five of us.  The girl, Xiao Yu, Yuan Ming, another guy (cq,dao,gun) and me.

“I’m scared”, I said.

“Don’t worry” she explained.  ”The practice won’t be too bad today”.

We pretty much followed the schedule that I posted up last time.  Two lines of each basic after a bunch of running around.  Then they did nandu while I worked on my horse stance (it is getting better, I’m happy to report) and then it was time for sections.

According to the schedule we were supposed to do 16.  I was planning on doing 3 of each section, starting with the last, and then following up with all of them in sequence.  So it would have been:

4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4

But after the 12th rotation we stopped and the class was over.  At least I was able to get in some good training.  And boy did I work hard.  I think I was trying to make up for being out of it on Monday and Wednesday, but I pulled out all the stops with my forms.  Well, except for the jump inside fall, which I didn’t do.  But aside from that I worked hard (for me, at least).

The coach gave me one or two suggestions for my form too, which was nice.  Baby steps … baby steps …

We also have a few visitors.  One girls was there on the side stretching.  She looked like a taiji athlete, based on body type.  And a guy came that Xiao Yu told me was really good at dao/gun, but had injured his knee so was out of commission for the time being.  He did his own thing on the side, working through some combinations.

Class was over pretty early — around 10:40 — so I took some taiji footage which I’ll show you here:

First is Wu Ya Nan walking through his Taiji Form:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h9cW6jpl3I

Then I have a girl going through her form too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1jzcbnp8OQ

I actually have a few other ones, but the connection where I am is a bit slow so I will add them later on and then edit this blog entry. So be sure to check back for that.

Anyway, after some taiji I got tired of watching and headed out to catch the bus over to Wai Yuan and meet up with Ruhi.

Two days off, and then its back for more morning training.  Jiayou!

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