Hundred days of the sabre training
There is a Chinese saying "Hundred days of the sabre training, thousand days of the spear training, ten thousand days of the sword training" (百日刀, 千日槍, 萬日劍). What does this actually mean? Does it mean you actually spend a hundred days training in sabre etc? No, the saying is not a guide to how long training actually is. But depending on how much time and effort you put in. You could learn the sabre form within a year. However, knowing a form and being good at it is not the same thing. In the same way that doing a form well and having the skill to use a sabre is not the same. So this saying should not be used as a guide or taken literally. Knowing the form is not the same as mastering it. There are many layers of understanding to discover. The more you practise, the more you will discover.
This is the second blog for 2020. I first started Tai Chi in January 2006 and I started sabre in 2008. Twelve years later, I'm still practising sabre and each year, I can still find new ways to do the form better and gain more experience. So in no two years, has my forms been the same. Sometimes things change for the better, but not always. However, that's life and we learn from life's lessons. This is about initiating and managing change. I won't going into the spear and the sword, but the analogy and the principles are the same. I will continue to train as I have done.
My advice to you, is to carry on practising what you do. You will see the true gems once the novelty wears off and you train because you want to get better. Next time you see people doing Tai Chi well, remember that it took a while to polish that stone into a diamond. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Thank you for reading my blog.
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