Theme of the Week: Combinations

Learning the basic stick drills is, at first, a bit mind boggling. You have to think about each individual move. You have to remember where to put the stick that isn’t currently engaged with your partner’s stick. You have to remember how to set up for the next move.

It’s a lot to remember. It can cause great frustration at first. However, after a few sessions of working on the drills, they become rote and flow easily. The combination aspect disappears and it becomes just doing a single action.

We tried to restore the combination feel to the drill “single sinawali” tonight in weapons class by adding some new wrinkles. We went low to the ground. We dropped sticks on purpose. We juggled sticks back and forth.

The process is to make things slightly more complicated so that what was easy before (the regular drill) becomes even easier and what is hard now (the new wrinkles) becomes easier. Ever onward.