Potential

I have been building a class in Warren and so far it only has two students. Yes those two students are my sons, but someone did inquire about a Kung Fu class and did visit. And although they did not sign up, it leads me to beleieve that what i am doing is not a crazy thing. And preparing my sons for a bigger class is not crazy. Noah will be 16 soon and I think he could potentially teach that class once he can drive etc. It seems like he couldn't at the moment, but with consistent prcatice and some self motivation I think they could suddenly turn themselves around. It's not that they aren't doing well at Kung fu. I mean compared to what and what are the goals? It's just that they have a different mentality right now than I did. And I guess it doesn't matter. What matters is that I do my best and continue on despite the obstacles that are being thrown in my way. And yes there are obstacles but there appear to be much more opportunities coming, just not as I thought. They are sometimes better than I thought and sometimes the obstacles are let's just say surprising. But it really doesn't matter. You just do what you do. You continue on, you strive through. That's what I need to do. I am in pain from my hip and I think that it may have to do with having stopped doing a ton of basics and walking and that sort of thing. Yes there are specific stretches that I can do from Instagram or physyical therapy and all that. But To train new things, I neglected the old and boring stuff, which I think I actually just NEED to do, whether it gets me better at this or that. It doesn't matter. I am going to start focusing on doing more traditional kicks again as well. What I mean by traditional kicks is the kicks from the forms that are not fancy or as heavy hitting as muay thai kicks and not necessarily going to be used for fighting but I think I need to do them just for the mobility and strength training. I also have to understand that I can't just go from what i am doing now to doing 100 of those kicks. i need to do 10 and then rest and to sets and take breaks etc. I was talking to on eof the guys who does BJJ and he said he played soccer professionally until recently and he said anytime he steps back onto the field he is likely to get injured because in his mind he is in his prime. Whereas he won't do that with BJJ because he knows he is learning these movements. There is something to be said for that. And basically I have to learn that I cannot just jump into Kung Fu, even though that is what I am teaching. And even though I have been maintaining it to some degree, still I have to slowly slowly build it back up and have patience with myself. And similarly I cannot just expect my kids to know everything or be able to do everything because yes for a while I was outsourcing their training and so they need to build their way back to Kung Fu as well. When I had them spar though it did look very good. Noah was very fast with his hands and they transitioned into ground grappling very seamlessly. The only thing I was worried about was going too hard on the submissions and Jonah not really tapping quickly enough. And Jonah was somewhat upset when I called out tap and ended and reset it and he wanted to argue that he didn't tap, which is asimilar argument I often have with new kids in the MMA class (which i am only helping with) and maybe I call tap too early sometimes but I feel there is plenty of time to slowly learn their limits under proper suprervision. And since I am a beginner in that art, I err on the side of extreme caution. Plus since we were sparring in a Kung Fu class I feel it's ok to not focus on the details of a submission and just reset. After sparring we had many more forms and other drills to go through. In fact we skipped lion head practice. But I think it's still important to have the lion head on the mat so that if someone were to walk in on this class they would understand that what we were doing was Kung Fu centric and not an MMA class. For Monday through Wednesday I don't teach any Kung fu but instead I help out at a youth MMA class and hopefully get to train as well depending on the day and the schedule. I train basically because it helps my teaching at this point and gives me another perspective rather than just doing Kung Fu. But if my class was full... maybe I wouldn't even be attempting to learn anything and after all I would likely be very busy with teaching the class and woul be stuck in my own world of thinking. I guess i would be just as stuck if I was overtly and obviously succcessful as I am now, being stuck in the potential for success stage for the moment. But thinking back... it could be that suddenly people really start signing up and coming to my class. Other avenues of life can also open up for success as well. There is potential in many directions. I should stay positive and not be afraid of change.