Tournament WAS Saturday!
And if you didn't go, too bad. You missed out on a lot of good stuff! The biggest tournament Sifu's had in a very long time, perhaps ever. I think over 300 people were there. Oh, and if you're not Amy, you probably weren't there. Shame, shame! You can ask her about what you missed.

The quick version: We had some excellent demos to start the tourney, from various schools. They were all very different, but good. Finished it up with our own demos, including a sparring set between me and the other Eric (which we did without messing up, yay), a bit of demonstration from the kids (including some rather exciting board breaking), and wrapping it up with the lion dance. The lion dance seemed to have gone over well. We got several complements, and above all, Sifu was very happy with it. Sifu doesn't get very happy about much. So the fact that he did about this was a fairly big deal. There were video cameras there, hopefully I can get a copy of some of the events.

Then it moved onto the actual competitions. Black belt forms was first (after the horse stance competition), so I competed there. And I won! I didn't have too much competition for my category, but I think I did the form okay. After that I spent most of my time helping out around the tournament with various things. Including being a scorekeeper as well as a judge for the continuous sparring with some categories. Sihing was pretty much in charge of the tournament and Sifu just kept watch to make sure he was running things okay. Everything turned out fairly well, though.

So went through all the various competitions, and then it ended with adult sparring. And FINALLY with black belt sparring. I got matched up with a guy who had faster kicks than anyone I've fought previously. He nailed me in the head with a snap axe kick. Although I did rack him multiple times. Apparently not hard enough. I think only once was it noticed very well. It was a close fight, the judges were split on who won each round, but in the end he got the match. It was okay with me, because after me he had to face Shannon. And no, he didn't beat Shannon. I'm just glad someone else was there to get pounded by Shannon instead of me, this time. It was almost becoming a tradition for me to face him to see what kind of pain he could inflict. It was quite a pleasure to watch someone else in the hot seat. He fought two guys and won first. I still feel bad his first, erm... victim. I'd never seen this guy at a tournament before, so I had a feeling he was rather new to our style of sparring (continuous). Shannon hit him once in the side of the head and the guy (a rather young guy) got rocked. HARD. His eyes looked like they started rolling back in his head as he stumbled off to the side for about two or three seconds. When you're in the middle of a match, two or three seconds is a LONG TIME. And it didn't really improve for him from there. Shannon did make the crowd (whoever was left at the end of the tourney) entertained, though.

So at the end of the night, I had a couple of new bumps and bruises, I was sore and exhausted, but the tournament turned out well. It was good stuff. In the morning I went back to the kwoon for the workshops, starting nice and early at EIGHT AM. Holy cow. I'm not a morning person, and I was still sore from the day before. So what was the first workshop? Why, Chin Na, of course. Joint locking techniques. From an older Chinese man who was VERY GOOD at it. I still have bruises from it. I think that might be on video, too. Hopefully they recorded the time where he grabbed my wrist and threw me to the ground with enough force to spin me around (lying down) on my butt about six times. Seriously. He didn't look extraordinarily strong or big, but he was more powerful than anyone else in the workshop by FAR. He was just playing with us. But it was fun. He'd just say, "Chin na me. Chin na!" And we'd try doing a lock on him - he'd either melt away from it or reverse the lock to put us on the ground. Our wrists were all very sore by the end of the workshop.

We had a few more workshops, including a staff form workshop, a self-defense workshop (that really wasn't anything new), and Sifu's takedown workshop. Oh man. Sifu's workshop only had three of us. One older student from Tai Chi and Crystal (who's 14). So yeah, I was Sifu's demo dummy. And I got thrown to the ground plenty of times. But there were some good techniques. I need to try to remember at least three of them.

That was essentially my weekend. I'm still sore from it, but I have some good bruises. I might post pictures of them later this week. This week it's back to the grind, work and such. But it's late! I should get to sleep. So I'll leave you with a random link. Random link action! I was watching the ultimate guy's movie earlier - Road House. It always makes me smile. Somehow Patrick Swayze reminded me of Shannon. Don't know why. Anyway, I found a blog that's related to the movie. Sort of. Well, you can see what I mean.

Oh! And since I've been thinking about cars lately (don't know why), bonus random link. Not everyone knows what my first car was. But I'll tell you what. It was faster than people assumed it would be.
- posted by Pootenheimer @ 12:54 AM | 1 comments