Are written notes any use in martial arts?

While I'm stuck in lockdown and public classes are closed, I've been thinking about "codifying" my baguazhang knowledge (for want of a better word).

All those techniques, principles, drills and such are sometimes hard to call to mind and I wondered if writing a series of annotated lists would help me to organise my knowledge better?
All this knowledge in my head, would it be better recorded or more use carefully scribed into a nice little, thematically-appropriate notebook?
Would having those lists to refer to actually improve my practice to any meaningful degree?

Would they make me a better and/or more knowledgeable martial artist? More so than a reading a book written by someone else?

Well, looks like this weekend (i.e. the next opportunity for free time) we may find out!

What's important to me?

Its kind of a weird feeling when you're doing some impromptu jiben shou fa (basic hand movements) at 11:45pm of an evening, cos you just realised you haven't done any baguazhang so far that day.

That was me last night before retiring to bed. It's weird when I try to understand what it was that motivated me to do that. Is doing bagua every day so important to me now? Is it more about self-knowledge - knowing that missing one day by accident will give me more of an excuse to miss other days by design later on?

Maybe even I am getting some kind of perverse delight in selected parts of my body aching throughout the day?

Recording it makes it seem more real...

I've set up an impromptu training log on Twitter to record my practice. The twitter account is called "Eating Bitter" (see what I did there?) Hopefully, this will motivate me and give me something to refer back to when I need to feel that I'm actually achieving something. You know how you train and train and train yet don't seem to be getting any better? Well, this is meant to remind me of the hours(!?) I'm putting in.

Additionally, it will free this blog up to be more of a place for commentary about the martial arts world and/or my musings about how hard it is to get motivated/fit training into a busy, modern lifestyle.

The new normal

My "new normal" for training is in my living room, dodging my cat and referring to videos from my teacher in a class Whatsapp group.

What's your new normal?