Triple Sigh

So confession.  I am one of the people giving away my side heel.  I tend to turn my knee in and I almost “preblade” my foot.  Which actually ends up messing with my heel as the striking point on my foot.  Sigh.

I was discussing this very thing with Sihing Csillag at Saturday open training.  And I worked on it that day, and again Sunday….where I realized that I do the same thing for my roundhouse.  Double sigh.

I believe this is something that began when I started trying to speed things up and really connect my crane and kick into one motion.  Essentially, I’m anticipating the kick and am already changing my body, my foot position and my intent before I should be. I got faster, but not without a sacrifice.

On a positive, this has prompted an idea for a kicking drill.  I’m going to try and make a recording of me saying “crane” followed by “insert kick here”.  The kick will change each time, the “crane” will not.  I can start this recording at different spots each time, so I don’t eventually learn the sequence.  Hopefully this will help me stay true to the crane.  And help with reaction time as well.  I have a feeling I’m going to have to break my kick apart a little bit, in order to rebuild it again properly.  And just when I was starting to think it was actually improving.  Triple sigh.

I’m also going to give this a try with the kids classes.  I’m told it’s been done and has been very successful.  Hopefully I can save them from developing the same bad habit later on in their Kung fu careers.  And they can help me get mine back on track.  Win win!