CAS Blogs

This week for my jiu jitsu practice, the head coach, decided that as a fun activity for this month, the students would learn how to use nun-chucks. When I first heard this, I laughed but also thought that it would a super cool and rare skill to learn. Soon after the announcement I went to go pick up my nun-chucks from the gym. Luckily for me, they were not real nun-chucks meaning that they were soft rubber and not hard plastic. That would have been painful to practice with.  The advanced jiu jitsu class is twice a week with the last ten minutes being nun-chuck practice/lesson. The first time I had the lesson we were learning how to do basic nun-chuck skills such as changing direction of the swing, figure eight and switching hands. Within the first thirty seconds, I learned that movies definitely overstate the simplicity of using nun-chucks. To change the direction of your swing, you have to ricochet one of the chucks (I don't know what a singular side is called) off your inner thig...

This week I've started practicing a new song for piano. I chose it because it sounded nice but mostly because my piano teacher said it would be a good challenge. Especially with the dynamics. The first few days of any new piece is sight reading. However that never posed much of a challenge for me. What was  challenging for me with this song was the small yet dramatic dynamic changes as well as the technique behind the wrist movement. I decided to put those aside for now and focus on the notes. Once I picked up the notes and chords and was able to do hands together I was ready to integrate the challenging parts. To deal with the dynamics, I discovered that playing hands separately with dynamics before putting hands together worked best for me. I think it's because it helps my brain and muscle memory remember the dynamics for each hand as a separate entity, which makes it easier to combine both hands later on. For the wrist movement, that would be more challenging. I have been pl...