Monday, July 30, 2007

Shaolin Kicks

By now, you are probably familiar with our trials and tribulations for learning the sweep kick. Lately, as I've been able to make somewhat full circles (yay!), I decided that my beat-up, well-worn pair of training shoes have been a plus due to their smooth bottoms which allow me to spin around somewhat easily on the carpet. I imagine that a new pair of feiyues with their grippy ridged bottoms would render rotations more difficult.

Saturday, however, I hit a snag, quite literally. My right shoe dragged at one point (probably during fanyao or pubu chuanzhang lunbi zaquan) and ripped, connecting the hole that was at the tip of my shoe with the hole under my big toe, resulting in a gaping hole with a flap. I also noticed that when I did pubu to that side, especially during yiluquan, the lack of any grip caused me to slip even deeper into the stance. Owie!

I imagine I'll have to retire this pair very soon, as I doubt training with a monster opening on my shoe could be a good thing. The dork in me loves it, however, when I've managed to wear out another pair -- it's like a kung fu milestone, or some badge of having trained harder.

PS -- Saturday, I noticed Gombulla had some awesome magenta/pink feiyues on. At first, I assumed he might have ordered them from somewhere, like from this European feiyue website (which is bloody expensive), but then he revealed to me that he dyed a white pair himself. Awesome!

4 comments:

  1. I would LOVE to have pink feiyues! As it is, I'm still trying to get some black ones in my proper size. I too love the feeling of wearing out a pair, but also feel the pain of having to break in the tread on new ones... Maybe there's some way you can beat them against something to break them in the way ballet dancers do...

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  2. ahhh!!! gold!!!! Do you think I could really wear them in class? They look the same....

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  3. Maybe gombulla washed his feiyues in hot water and a red shirt. That's why it turned pink!!

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