Today Kathy and I invented a new exercise for developing a fundamental skill, the namesake empty step. For fun, I call this exercise “The Counting Step”.
The counting step incorporates three fundamentals of Master Chen’s teaching:
- the three nails (in gripping the ground);
- peeling the foot up to start a step; and
- stepping at “mighty river” speed, the empty step.
How it happened
For a change, I decided to just watch my student perform. As Kathy executed Ward Off Left, I noticed she was falling into the step to the North. We want this to be an empty step, which I now define simply as a step in which the advancing foot travels at the same steady “mighty river” speed as everything else.
Until I noticed Master Chen’s stepping, my definition had been “a step that can be withdrawn without ever alighting, if one were to so choose”. Master Chen never spoke of the empty step, so when I focused on it recently I ended up staring closely at his videos, and that is when I noticed for the first time that he made even the longest, turning step with his foot advancing as slowly as every other movement.
So I stood alongside Kathy and modeled for her slow stepping as we simply walked from one end of the gazebo to the other. Then we both could see that, although she was not falling into each step, she was making them pretty fast. Then I had an idea.
The Counting Step
We wanted the step to be slow, right? How about timing each step?
I started stepping by first shifting my weight to my right foot, then peeling my left foot off the ground, and then slowly counting “one, two” as I eased my left foot forward, before placing the heel back down.
It worked pretty well. We experimented with a tougher “one-two-three”, but the easier “one-two” was sufficient I felt to make the point. But this is something to be explored further. Anyway…
We had also covered earlier something new I had noticed, which is how Master Chen initiated steps by peeling the heel off the ground and lingering a moment on the toe for balance before lifting it for the step, so we added that.
Then I remembered the skill we had covered recently, gripping the ground with our feet for balance, and incorporated that.
Just to round things out, I suggested elevating the arms a bit to use them for even more balance.
The exercise
And now we had our skill exercise:
- elevate the arms just an inch for balance and keep them there throughout;
- shift our weight to the right foot, gripping the ground;
- peel the left heel from the ground, keeping the left toe lightly engaged with the ground;
- fully lift the left toe and slowly count “one, two” as the left foot eases forward; and then
- gently set down the left heel, ball of foot, and toes to grip the ground anew.
Now repeat the sequence to step forward with the right foot.
It worked!
Counting one-two got our speed under control. Indeed, we became so aware of the speed that Kathy noticed on her own that one side was better controlled than the other. She could then work on improving the other foot.
Here is where Kathy’s extensive experience with dance and Pilates paid off. She was able to adapt to the exercise at once, and pick up things about her execution even if I did not.
One thing I did notice was that, without us even trying, Kathy was hovering a moment with the advancing foot before setting it down — the extreme empty step I had always emphasized!
To top it all off, I pointed out that we now had an exercise that could be practiced any time at home. This led to a new idea, because Kathy said her kitchen was too small for a long sequence of practice steps. So…
Advanced exercise
I then suggested we explore the same exercise, but stepping backwards. I tried a few steps, and then it occurred to me we could also step 90° to the left or right. This empty step arises in Single whip, Step up deflect, and Retreat to mountain camp. Two of those movements combine turning and retreating steps!
But we were out of time. We will work on those next time, and report back on how well this translates to the form itself. Some cures work only in the test tube.