Tournament Preprations

My kids do alot of prep prior to a tournament and the results of their hard work show. I have 53 trophies and medals in my hallway upstairs from the past 4 years. Ok, I'm bragging on them a bit, but a great deal of it is because of their work. They practice daily for weeks prior to a tournament. This dedication shows in class when they are practicing and in demonstrations. As with all things, they have alot to learn but I'm always so proud to watch them compete. They don't always win, and they are ok with that. It makes the ones that they do win all the sweeter.

Are you preparing to compete in the upcoming tournament? Are you as excited as they are? I hope so. It is a wonderful experience, although a bit nerve wracking. I competed once in our team demo competition and I was so nervous. I was terrified I would do something wrong and let the team down. Thankfully it went well and we won first place.

Tao Hsieh Wu Shu was never designed for competition. However, our students do so well and our forms are so beautiful we have a great record so far. We can thank Soke Geniesse and the others that helped put the forms together for this. Our system is different and each level is more technically changeling than most martial arts systems and in competition; it shows.

In class we spar to submission, and in tournaments it is point sparring, but due to the way we block we do very good in the sparring as well.

The next tournament is going to be different and I think all of our students will be challenged more than in the past. We cannot do any inverted moves in our traditional forms competition. Forms 3 and up all have some type of inverted move, so changes will need to be made. Otherwise, our students will need to compete in the XMA division, will we measure up in that division? You bet!

There will be a new section for our students to compete in this year: grappling. This will be an entirely new event for us to try. My oldest son is very excited about this.

I can't wait for this next tournament. It is going to be a lot of fun and I confident that all of our students are going to do great regardless of winning or not!

Good luck to everyone and I hope you are practicing.