Today Craig filmed a lot of our training. He started early in the morning when we began training our tumbling. We started off with regular forward rolls and eventually went on to dive forward rolls. Sifu stood in the middle of the mat with a wooden sword and we had to jump over it. He held it shoulder height for me and I almost landed on my head the first time. I jumped up to get over, but blanked and forgot that I still had to worry about my landing to roll out. It almost ended badly. I hope Craig got it on film for me to see later :P

Most of the footage shot today was for the Retreat Center promotional video so we had to wear our uniforms. Right after breakfast we had our Taijiquan shoot. He filmed us practicing part of the form as well as some of our qigong and jing practice. He also got Patrick's Taiji saber, my Taiji sword, and Sifu's Taiji sword. Immediately afterwards, he had us hold ma bu on the wall so that he could get a time elasped shot of the clouds moving in the background. After standing there for about 25 minutes, he had us stop because the mist on the mountain wasn't moving fast enough. We went inside and so he could shoot us practicing Taiji application for about an hour before trying the wall shot again. We had to stand for about another 15 minutes.

Craig filming Taijiquan practice




Taiji sword


Portrait shots


Sifu examining Mike's hands

Getting ready for ma bu on the wall

After lunch he had us train bricks and staff for his footage. An hour of arm stuff was well... my forearms felt like they were going to explode afterwards :P Once we finished, Sifu was standing there waiting for us to go down the mountain with him. I'm glad that running the mountain was the last thing we had to do today.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Sifu says we have to wake up early to prepare. I think we're going to start cooking around 9am and probably won't eat until 3pm, when his sister and her family arrive. Apparently Craig wants to reshoot our ma bu footage as well. I'm not so sure how this will turn out... but at least we'll get to eat a lot afterwards :)

[Thanks to Stephane for taking pictures for us]

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Also, this was emailed over to me yesterday by Milan (YMAA Memphis, TN). It's a list of the YMAA team results from Taiwan. He extracted all YMAA placing from the individual and push hands lists at http://www.cttaichi.org/english/

套路個人成績

其他太極拳男子甲組-1第一名: Jonathan Chang
其他太極拳男子甲組-3第三名: Patricio Manriquez
其他太極拳男子甲組-4第一名: Milan Vigil
其他太極拳男子甲組-4第三名: Corlius Birkill
其他太極拳男子甲組-4第四名: Nicholas Yang

其他太極器械-刀男子甲組第三名: Nicholas Yang
其他太極器械-刀男子甲組第四名: Jonathan Chang
其他太極器械-刀男子甲組第五名: Patricio Manriquez

其他太極器械-劍男子甲組-1第四名: Nicholas Yang
其他太極器械-劍男子甲組-2第五名: Olivier Pardo
其他太極器械-劍男子甲組-2第六名: William R. Buckley, Jr.
其他太極器械-劍男子甲組-3第二名: Jonathan Chang
其他太極器械-劍男子甲組-3第五名: Corlius Birkill

推手成績

男子組第七級第六名: Celso Barja
男子組第九級第四名: Corlius Birkill

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Finally, a message from Sifu.
He said my parents would enjoy it...
有事﹐弟子服其勞

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Oh yeah.. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone :)