Who would have thought!?

With the banquet fast approaching I have been excessively working on my demo to the point of exhaustion and heightened risk of injury. There is a specific move I have been trying to perfect at the beginning of our form. Just after I throw a punch I cross-step and go down into a crossed kneeing-squatting type position to avoid my partner's crescent kick. I then unwind by throwing a spinning back-kick. I have struggled with this section all year. For the longest time, I thought it was just a matter of building the muscles, and repetition will eventually allow me to smoothly untwist from this kneeling position, throw a powerful back-kick, and recover into the perfect stance for my next move. I have worked extremely hard but realized I have not mastered that part yet. I reached a point where my knees and my quad muscles are complaining and not in a good way. This added to my frustration because now I felt like I could not practice the very thing I was most nervous about.

I decided to try mentally practicing this and my form to give my body a break. After all, I'm already working on visualization so I'll just hit two birds with one stone. 

Wrong!

So when I visualize myself doing my form at the banquette, I focus on a variety of details of that night. I listen to the music and imagine these two martial artists looking great moving through this fan form. One of them looks like me and performs my part of the form. It's a fairly easy exercise and I can picture myself giving a perfect performance.

When I decided to mentally practice my form, however, I didn't picture myself from above. Instead, I imagined moving each body part at the right time and the right way through the sequence. 

I wasn't even aware of the two different approaches until I got stuck in my mental practice, at the exact same spots where I struggle when physically practicing.  

This puzzled me, as I assumed mental practice would be a breeze compared to physically moving. I also assumed there would be no struggles, as my brain obviously knows what it has to do, and my physical body is just not trained enough yet to get these moves right. Well, I think I got that wrong.

I can think of countless times when I was surprisingly pleased with how my body managed to do certain moves, feeling very accomplished, just to find out at the next practice that it is not necessarily repeatable yet. I guess, this should have told me that the body is capable, but it's the programming that is still not solid.

Another revelation was that mental training is more exhausting and I have a very tough time doing several repetitions. In fact, doing one run-through with a focus on every muscle and body part is extremely hard. I'm talking about focusing for 30ish seconds here!😦 

When we do our forms physically we rely to a high degree on muscle memory, we don't think about each step and move each part consciously. I pick and choose specific moves that I'll focus on for that practice but I definitely don't micromanage each step. 

Another issue I stumbled over was, when I was doing my form to the music ( again just in my mind) I discovered that I couldn't seem to keep up with the beat while consciously thinking about each move. I guess my body is faster than the programming in my head.

It's been really fascinating to try to separate mind from body and to understand the strengths and limitations of each. 

I'll be making mental practice part of my training in the year of the snake as I can tell a difference already after a few days. I noticed it's getting a little bit easier to focus throughout the whole form and I got a bit faster trying to hold up with the beat. 

I guess it's just a matter of practice and repetition! Who would have thought?