Balloon Baseball

Noah gave this game it's name. We used foam noodle swords to hit a balloon back and forth to each other while Jonah took a nap. In other words, we did this activity for two hours. I got bored quickly but if that's what he wanted to do then we should do it. It's not like I didn't get anything out of it either. I did feel like it was helping with my sword form, in terms of relaxing, focus, and hitting a target that was not in a good spot for you. Then I realized after I got bored that I had wasted my work out opportunity. Why hadn't I been in a low stance the entire time? Then I realized I had wasted a cardio element. Why not swing the noodle sword continuously even when the balloon was not near me to simulate a fight?
Oh well.
Darren Yee (he's a Kung Fu Karate guy from Chinatown) had actually demonstrated something similar as a drill/game he did with his students. But it was a solo activity. Actually even when I first saw it (I guess that was two years ago) I thought, "That could be made into a game."

And actually you could really use it to actually practice for real. It's just that I had been lazy about the whole thing.

It got me thinking about sports in general, and about how there is a Kung Fu saying about a few good moves being much better than knowing a bunch of moves and not being able to use any of them. In sports, you basically always learn a few good moves. In Baseball you can do a horizontal swing, you can throw a rock, and you can run. That's enough for a fight isn't it? In football you tackle, throw and you kick the ball (though usually people specialize and don't learn all of these things necessarily. In Soccer you kick.
 Then Boxing and wrestling are combat sports.

But if you put all those sports together, even taking away the combat ones, you have  martial art right there don't you? The problem is people usually take the sport itself seriously and make that the end in and of itself, even with kids. But actually basketball, for instance, was just created to get people to move around in a fitness class.In other words, it was a way to get students to train while having fun.  Now people train to play basketball.