Thursday, April 09, 2015

Little Changes...


My next martial arts grading at hapkido involves using a short wooden stick called a tahn bong. 

Using it is quite difficult and, after learning an eight-strike pattern, there's a seven-block pattern, plus freestyle striking and blocking, plus a whole host of other techniques to counter punches and kicks, and throw people, and choke them. It's quite difficult.

I struggled with the initial striking pattern for months, but I decided the easiest way to improve at this was to break it down and routine the training into bite-sized chunks. 

So every day I'm at work, I take a ten-minute break in the afternoon and do at least 150 strikes or blocks. Since I started this, I figure I've now done 12 weeks by five days by 150 strikes/blocks per day, which means about 9,000 strikes/blocks in total. 

And it's helping matters, too, so I'm going to adopt this tactic of doing a little thing every day in other areas. I've finished lots of writing work over the past few years by utilising my commuting time and that produced dividends. I may adopt a wrestling drill and see how that goes, too. 

Big improvement can be built in little spaces.

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