San Francisco Recap

By Julius Anastasio
Julius Anastasio is a green belt at Wu Dao

More than enough time has passed since the tournament, so here is a little retrospective analysis of how the two-day event transpired:

Saturday:

After getting an unexpectedly good night's sleep and eating a whopping $50 worth of breakfast ($30 for my FIRST breakfast, then $20 for TWO EGGS at the insanely overpriced hotel), I was rearing to go. My back felt stiff while I was warming up, but other than that my body felt good to go.

Before I give a brief recap about how my forms went, let me take a minute to complain about the tournament venue's carpeting. This carpet was soft. We're talking "The Princess and the Pea" soft. There may have been some sort of adhesive sprayed on as well, which did not make turning or spinning a pleasant endeavor. We all were a bit apprehensive about this, primarily because both Xiao Hong Chuan and Zhen Shan Gun both involve frequent 360 and 180 degree turns. Being stopped by friction halfway through a turn is not a very pleasant experience. Yes, I know, being a martial artist means you need to be able to adapt to any environment, but c'mon, let me complain just this once.

On to the Hand Form!

I was the fifth person in my division to compete. Despite the sticky floor, everything transpired relatively smoothly. Just like last year's competition, I didn't feel like my form had as much power to it as usual, and I probably rushed through it a bit. Overall, I was fairly satisfied with how it went. I even had some people (including an old Chinese man with a long white beard, cane, and a HOOK for a hand) come up to me afterwards and compliment me on my form.

The majority of my competition utilized the expected plethora of wispy kicks, theatrical hand gestures and terrible stance work that one finds all too often polluting traditional forms divisions. This sort of flowery performance is so prevalent in Kung Fu that it's starting to become expected. A conversation my Shi-Fu had during my form:

Random Kid: I don't like this form. He looks too stiff.
Shi-Fu: He's just doing the movements cleanly.
Random Kid: ...Well I don't like it.

Thanks, random kid. Although looking back at the video as an armchair quarterback, I did look pretty stiff:

...Shortly after I finished with my first division, the muscles in my left upper back really started to tense up on me. No matter how many times my wife walked on my back or massaged the afflicted area, the pain just wouldn't go away.
Which partially explains...

My Staff Form!

While my experience last year in this tournament circuit had taught me to expect that advanced hand forms divisions start almost immediately after the opening ceremony, it also taught me that the advanced weapons forms divisions would start... sometime. After lunch. Probably. If they found enough judges. While this infinitely mysterious time schedule isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world (such is the way of track meets, martial arts tournaments, and all events involving more than 20 people), I was getting a little anxious as the hours ticked by and I found it harder and harder to move my torso to the left.


Our ring assignment finally was announced at about a quarter past infinity. The officials apparently couldn't decide which ring they wanted to hold the weapons division, so we shuffled from ring to ring a little while longer, warming up and cooling down. They finally settled on a ring, possibly because the head judge finally deemed his chair cushion to be comfortable enough and the stars to be in alignment or something. We then all sat down to bide our time as about 10,000 Choy Lay Fut competitors with spears went through the same form, over and over again.

My execution of Zhen Shan Gun was OK, barring the tremendous screw-up at the very beginning. I suppose it may have been the carpet, or my back’s mutiny against me, but my very first move landed me in a stutter-step. I spent the rest of the form on what must have been autopilot, stewing with that first misstep burned into my mind. I didn’t score well, which I expected. The head judge later approached me and said “you would have scored so much higher if you hadn’t made such an obvious error,” confirming my prediction. The winner was the one Choy Lay Fut competitor who competed with a staff. His form really stood out; crisp, clean, and powerful. Melvin (from my school) also performed his staff form very well, but was robbed by the sea of identical spear competitors.

(Taken the instant before I lost footing. Thanks for making me look good! You can also note the judge in the right hand corner staring down at his doodles. Well done.)

Sunday

While I didn’t spar in this tournament, I think it’s definitely worth a quick mention about how well all the students at my school did. It was rather validating to see that our training allowed us to move and fight martially in the ring, instead of in the hands-down kick-boxing style that everyone else seemed to fight with.

Closing Thoughts
(OR: Lessons Learned for Future Tournaments)

Competing in a tournament is EXHAUSTING, and not for the reasons you'd expect. Warming up, cooling down, standing around while the AC is blasting, running back and forth from ring to ring, keeping hydrated, eating enough throughout the day; these all stack up against you very quickly.

Unless you leave no doubt in anyone's mind, the judging for any competition will be almost at random. There are too many inexperienced judges, too much observer fatigue, and too many competitors out there to expect the judging to be an unbiased, logical, repeatable activity. While this occurred universally throughout the tournament, it was made particularly obvious while watching the fixed step push-hands competition. Walther, our lone push-hands competitor went against an opponent whose sole concept of fixed step was to barrel into his opponent and fall over. The judges apparently did not consider this blatant foot movement against the rules (for anyone unfamiliar with push-hands terminology, “fixed-step” means you can’t move your feet), and awarded him the win. Even he seemed confused as to why he had won, and kept shrugging to people as they handed him the gold medal.

While an important part of martial arts training, forms should not be overemphasized. There needs to be a clear link from form to function, or martial arts forms quickly regress into gymnastics and meaningless flailing. It may look pretty, but it is NOT martial. Take the current level of my staff form. My movements, while technically correct, do not have all that much true understanding behind them. Sure, I understood what the majority of the movements were designed to do, but they hadn’t been internalized in a way that I would be able to instinctively use them in a confrontation. Focusing on truly understanding the movements that make up a form or technique will vastly improve your martial skill.

Making an error (in a form, life, whatever) is not necessarily the end of the world. Everyone makes mistakes. How you react, compensate, and utilize to those mistakes determines how you are seen.

Thank you!

I’d like to thank everyone for the tremendous level of support over the past several months. I really can’t say enough about how much it means to have such generous and caring people in my life. So thank you, once again. Your help made this tournament experience possible.

OK, I think I’ve been typing for long enough. Until next time, and keep training!