Rod and I have been working on spinning hands training for Student Level 5 and looked into doing some distance learning on the subject with Ashe Higgs but it turns out that training spinning hands really needs to be hands-on.
Eventually we started discussing with Ashe the possibility of coming out and teaching a workshop focused on basic Student Level 5 spinning hands training. Since we wanted the training to be focused and hands-on, we decided to limit the number of attendees, making it a semi-private session rather than a workshop.
For some context, I should mention that a bit over a year ago (January 2015), Rod established I Liq Chuan of Redwood City and started holding classes regularly. Our initial plan was to hold the session only for folks training with the group, limiting the size to 4 participants.
As we started setting things up, we decided we wanted to be more inclusive so we opened it up to the other I Liq Chuan students in the Bay area working on Student Level 5 and ended up with 8 students registering for the session/mini-workshop:
It was a great session. Ashe explained the points that Student Level 5 training is concerned with (e.g. circle-with-center, 1st section) and some of the things that it's not. We did a number of partner drills and focused a lot on slicing in order to maintain the point of contact (Ashe always has great partner-drills). Our group got a lot out of the day and the other folks seemed to enjoy (and benefit from) the session too. And dinner afterwards was a lot of fun.
As an added bonus, Sifu Wu dropped in for the last hour or so and Ashe showed her some of the principles behind I Liq Chuan's spinning hands training.
In retrospect, I'm glad we kept the session relatively small - there were a number of logistical issues that we had to work out and it was a lot easier with a small group.
We plan to arrange more of these kinds of focused workshops with Ashe in the (near) future and plan to open them up to the I Liq Chuan community in the Bay Area - we just have to figure out how to do that in way that preserves the hands-on aspect.
