Continuing To Improve

This week, I was reminded of something very important when looking to achieve mastery. In our second degree brown belt class on Tuesday, Sifu Rybak was talking to us about eye for detail and said that there is always room for improvement; if we ever got to a place where we weren't improving and digging deeper, we have stopped using our eye for detail. This was a great reminder for me, and a piece of advice that is very relevant for my I Ho Chuan progress. A big part of this team is the progression towards mastery. I find I will sometimes forget this in my training. I see these requirements as numbers to crunch, not opportunities to improve. Sometimes, I will do a form just to get it out of the way, not focusing on anything new, just keeping my form the same, from repetition to repetition. As Sifu Brinker always says, there is a big difference between maintaining and improving. If you don't have goal in the forms you are doing, or the technique you are executing, you aren't improving, and not making steps towards mastery. This next week, I am going to try and look for things to improve on in all of my requirements, and if my eye for detail can't dig deep enough, I will ask someone else to help me make my goals.

This week has gone pretty well. It was a challenge to get some of my requirements done this week because of a big physics assignment we had this week (it was cool though - we had to construct a marshmallow flinging catapult!), as well as a unit final. This also caused me to miss helping out in Monday's Adult class which was disappointing. I also ended up having a band workshop through this entire weekend, which made it even harder to reach my requirements this week (so I might be up a bit late tonight). I know these may sound like complaining or making excuses about why I have to spend so much time on Saturday night trying to catch up, but it is more of a reflection on this learning experience. I am going to have weeks like this where I have so much stuff to do, and I need to try to figure out a way to get things done more efficiently. That will be another goal for next week, as my family and I will be going on a ski trip for the weekend, and there won't be too much time for homework or training (but I'll make time for my requirements). Despite all this, or maybe because of this, this week was great - busy but great.

Numbers (coming soon)  

Harrison Whitehouse-Strong