Last night I did my usual hour-long BJJ class from 6:00PM but instead of coming home I went up the hill to meet Sifu Radford for a Kung Fu lesson. After chatting with his students about our impromptu martial arts afternoon a few weeks back (we had a roll around in the grass) he suggested that I come and train in some Kung Fu and share some of my BJJ with his class. Sweet!

Last night was the first of the two lessons and with the cold weather it ended up being just Mark and myself. Whilst it would have been good to see Mark teach a class, it turned out being a private lesson for me so I wasn't complaining :)

Mark initially went through some stretching that really worked my legs in preparation for some kicking we did midway through the class. We started with the most basic "walking" stance and added both a jab and reverse punch. After some drills up and down the hall we used the punching mits and practiced hitting a real target. Then we did some front and side kicks, again following up with some use of the contact pads.

It was interesting to see some of the "bad" habits I still have from when I studied Karate as a kid. I say bad, which isn't entirely correct. They're "good" Karate habits, but are generally considered bad habits by modern standards. Things like not retracting punches and breathing out of time, or having longer stances with immobile weight distribution.

I woke up this morning with some sore legs, and while it only lasted a few minutes, it was a reminder as to just how different our arts are. I'm really looking forward to running through some grappling with the class on Thursday (tomorrow), though the hard surface will limit what we can do... though it also give me a good reason to get some (portable) foam flooring.