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Please enjoy the newest Kung Fu Party Trick!

Special thanks to Irene for being such a fantastic helper.

Kung Fu Party Tricks: Volume 3 from mikedidonato on Vimeo

Volume 2: The Watermelon

Enjoy!

Kung Fu Party Tricks: Volume 2 from mikedidonato on Vimeo

We’re going to try and start a new series here at MikeDiDonato.com: Kung Fu Party Tricks.

My hope is that these videos will get more and more ridiculous as time passes. I’m hoping to have updated videos every Tuesday. My goal is a total of 10 episodes.

Enjoy our first installment below. Today’s theme is… Panther Pushups!

Kung Fu Party Tricks: Volume 1 from mikedidonato on Vimeo

Last night at Kung Fu, Kung Fu Roland and I were pulled aside and invited to participate in “instructor training.”

How exciting!

While I am hesitant to jump on anything that requires additional time commitments, being a Kung Fu instructor would be absolutely amazing. If it worked, I would likely start by training little kids and adult beginners in the basics. It’d be a great non-stop review of the beginner forms and it’d probably be extremely fun.

In other news, I’m hoping to move forward on some potential house purchases. Provided the House of Rock moves, new residence may not be all that far away!

Last night at Kung Fu we learned a unique block. An attacker moves to kick you in the chest with a roundhouse. You take your closest elbow, arm pointing to the ground, and in one motion turn it away from your body and then twist your hand like you were opening a jar of pickles.*

When you twist your arm like this, your radius slams against your attacker’s shin.

The pain delivered to the attacker is Intense.

As an example of this pain the head instructor asked me to kick him in the chest so he could demonstrate the move. I performed a simple roundhouse. He performed the block.

I reared away in pain! It was brutal!

One of the other students asked a question about the technique, so the instructor asked me to kick him again.

And I couldn’t do it. After one kick I had already been conditioned to believe that kicking him lead to extreme pain. I brought my leg up and performed the most pansy kick you could ever imagine. It was pathetic.

If anyone is interested in learning this move, I’ll be happy to share. It’s pretty simple, and quite effective.

*the pickle analogy is right on. In fact, they use it to explain the move in class.

UPDATE: Ryan made the astute observation that if you’re performing the move with your LEFT arm, you’d actually be tightening the pickle jar.

I got palm struck in the face last night at kung fu. It didn’t hurt so much as completely stun me. My attacker actually stepped forward and grabbed my arms to prevent me from toppling over.

How strange it is getting palm struck in the face.

We were doing an exercise where I would jab at my opponent. He would block and then palm strike in the direction of my face. Except, he didn’t stop in time and plowed into my nose.

I was certain that it broke. But, a few minutes and nose blows later I was back in business.

It was a really strange experience though. Really strange.

In other news, check out this hilarious picture of how a backhoe can ruin your day.

Thanks Jes Saint!

Sometimes at Kung Fu we do partner stretching. Partner stretching is extreme. It typically results in awesome gains and serious stretch umph.

Last night I learned a new partner stretch for Calves. And it is extreme. I shall call it, the calf death stretch.

Let’s suppose Red wants some calf stretch. Blue agrees to help out.

Red lies down on the ground on his/her back. Blue kneels on one knee and throws a leg over Red’s chest.. One arm is wrapped around Red’s foot while the other grips the toe. Blue provides some serious pressure to bending the toe back towards Red’s chest. (see arrow)

Blue starts counting. “1… 2… 3… 1… 2… 3…” on each #3 Red pulls his/her toe back towards himself/herself as hard as humanly possible. Blue continues to apply pressure.

After three or four 3 counts, Blue counts down from 10 as Red uses every ounce of energy to pull back on his/her toes.

If you want, you can have Green help too by having him/her sit on Red’s other leg during the exercise.

It’s Awesome.

Mike D Rocked the Kung Fu Tournament

That’s right. It says ‘Grand Champion Adult Intermediate.’

I am now an Intermediate martial artist.

Mike D has been promoted to Green belt.

I attended kung fu last night and was heartily beaten by my peers.

It was a sparring night and there were 16 of us in attendance. A normal class might have 10-12 people, so the extra people made for wild sparring (8 matches going at once). The space was tight and, for whatever reason, my kung fu was not in its groove. I received a wealth of blows to the head and chest. Despite the pain, I think it was probably a good session. I’m beginning to learn of some serious flaws in my sparring style. Hopefully I’ll be able to patch those up and do better next time.

Yesterday I posted a Quickthought asking about what people were passionate. I think I am most passionate about exercise.

I attended Kung Fu last night. It was a very productive session. We discussed sparring techniques and I learned that I have a tendency to get a little too close during sparring and it results in an increased risk for kneeing and elbowing (both are frowned upon in non-full contact fighting.) But I got a few good matches in. It was a good night.

Does anyone else procrastinate with their Christmas shopping? I might start shopping Friday night.**

Hmm. ‘Kung Fu Christmas’ might be a decent name for a band.

**I’m an idiot. see comments.

There’s a Kung Fu move called “fun pack.” Written, I’m sure it’s spelled differently. But when spoken in Mandorin it sounds a lot like “fun pack.”

The following is a description of a move named something like “Chinau chop choy fun pack.”

Your enemy approaches from the front and hastily throws a cross at you. Retreating into a left cat stance, you throw a right hand crane block, defelecting the blow. Simultaneously, your left hand swoops across your face and upward to your left ear. It is armed and ready with a panther fist.

Immediately following the block, you grab your opponent’s arm with your right hand and pull him/her violently towards you. At the same time you twist the panther fist at your openent’s face, neck, or eyes striking them. At this point, if your opponent rears back, you reach up with both hands and grab his/her arms. Pulling both arms outward, you essentially force your opponent to face you squarely, at which point you bring your knee up into chamber and kick them forcefully in the sternum.

You could probably stop here. But you might as well follow that with a Pak choy where you drop into horse stance following the kick and deliver a might blow to their face or clavical in a downward hammer like motion.

Fun pack? I think YES.

I went to see Tony Jaa’s new martial arts movie THE PROTECTOR on Saturday night. The movie was decent… but it was the crowd that made it great. I went with a handfull of folks from my kung fu academy. Part of the joy was to hear them quietly talk about specific moves that were being performed on the screen and mock the inconsistencies and less than obvious shortfalls.

And you know how after you see kung fu movies you talk about the moves in the film and when talking about it, use your body to try and give the specifics as to what happened? well, after this movie the people of my academy were able to repeat the actual moves. So even just TALKING about the movie was more entertaining.

Also interesting: when we left the theater, the group momentarily split into two groups. I was walking with three women (black and advanced brown belts) and one 10 year old (brown belt). I realized that while sterotypes would place me as the most dangerous and able to defend myself within this group… in actually, I was the weak untrained one. it was a humbling moment.

Tonight I’m zipping up to Hartford for some Ultimate Frisbee action. There’s a potential that I might be able to make this sport a regular occurence on Tuesdays. Unfortunately, Hartford’s just under an hour away and with the sun setting around 7:15, it’s unlikely we’ll get more than an hour and a half of play time. I’m sure it’ll still be wildly fun.

Post-ultimate I have to pick up some school supplies for classes which start tomorrow. Although part of me is fearful, the other part of me is pretty excited. We’ll see how things look in a week or two once I’ve been completely emersed.

Last night during Kung Fu one of the instructors paired up with me for body conditioning (a friendly name for ‘beating each others limbs senseless). We started with an arm exercise where we strike forearms again and again. It’s suppose to build up your bone mass over time so that you eventually become an unstoppable machine.

We started bashing our forearms against our partners… and my arms were hurting more than I thought they should.

mike d: am I doing this block right? my arms are hurting a lot more than I expected them to.
instructor: oh, don’t worry. I try to do this for an hour a week with a steel bar so my forearms are in pretty good shape

the man said…
“I TRY TO DO THIS FOR AN HOUR A WEEK WITH A STEEL BAR”

What?!?

Needless to say I’m a bit black and blue today.

Last night at Kung Fu class I was promoted to Jade belt. Jade is the final of the ‘beginner belts.’ Upon completion of this, I will be an intermediate kung fu artist (yes!). One good thing about Jade is that it is the start of sparring. The bad thing is that the “jade” sash is less like jade and more like a flourescent green.

How am I suppose to be stealthy when I have a flourescent green beacon shining out from my waist??

Last night we were all doing quad stretches where you bend your knee up and hold your ankle behind your back, so from the front, it looks like you only have one leg.

Someone commented on how we all look like pirates. Which brought on the joke:

What do pirates like most about Kung Fu?
The like to Sparrrrrrrr