Yang Long Form (Week 2)

Frustrating day today. It was just me and Don, and mostly we worked on cementing the bits of the long form that I learned last time. We did add on two more moves: raise-hands-step-up and white-crane-spreads-wings. In the CMC form, there's a move in-between those two, sometimes called shoulder-stroke, though Don generally calls it Kao. I presume that's the Chinese name. That move is only implied in the long form.

Anyway, I was apparently putting too much of my fencing habits into the steps for the long form. See, it's been so long since I've taken steps by collapsing the weight onto the foot that I'd forgotten how to do it. I was starting to re-figure it out by the end today, but it was annoying. I like fencing lunges! At least then I see a point to the lack of separation.

Don tried a new push hands exercise with me today. As far as I know, I'd never seen it before. It was a following exercise. You have your palm touching your "oppenent's" palm, and try to follow as the opponent moves his hand around (without losing contact or tensing up). Don actually seemed impressed with me on this. My right shoulder tightened up a few times and made me lose contact, but overall I did pretty well.

Back to long form stuff... Next week I doubt I'll get anything new, since Mark and Melissa weren't there today. But after that there aren't that many moves to the end of "the first third." Though from the sounds of things, in the Yang long form, it's more like the first sixth. But from white-crane, it should go brush-knee, play-guitar, brush-knee, parry-punch, wipe-off, apparent-close. There may be extra and/or skipped stuff, but that's the broad outline.