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Book Review: The Tao of Gung Fu

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Theme of the month is making a comeback

Theme of the month is on its way back from next month, by popular demand. After class last week Lisa, John, and Ash said that they missed it, as had Damian on a previous occasion.

The original idea, inspired by Patrick Parker's Principle of the Month, was to use an over-arching theme each month to provide a particular focus in class, exploring how the theme applies to our regular training fare, and bringing in some supplementary material. [In practical terms it helped shape my lesson plans, and gave me oodles of fuel for this blog.]

After a furious start I let it drop in July, as the class knuckled down to preparation for gradings, a period of consolidation. Also, my themes were starting to get a bit more "advanced", and with a new influx of beginners I needed to get back to basics, but I wasn't ready to repeat my basic themes just yet -- I figured I'd wait until 2010 before starting re-runs!

Anyway, when I asked the delegation what they were interested in theme-wise, the suggestions were fairly technique-area focussed: Hand-throws, sacrifice throws etc. And that may be a good way to go this time around: Do some extra training around a particular area of our syllabus, explore connections to other techniques, uses in self-defence, etc.

Other requests and suggestions welcome. Here's my original list of ideas.

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