WTV: How to Build Power Like a Wushu Pro (3/16)

I would say that one of the most frequently asked questions here at wushuzilla.com is about the Chinese athlete’s strength training.  I’ve mentioned it before, and even posted up some videos of them doing the training, but people still have questions about what they do.

I think part of the problem (as I’ve mentioned before) is that a lot of people have a limited view of strength training.  It isn’t just about lifting lots of weight at the gym.  Especially for wushu athletes.  Wushu athletes (at least the ones I train with) are primarily concerned with developing explosive power from their muscles.  How much they can bench, how big their muscles are and how many minutes they can hold a horse stance are the farthest things from (most of) their minds.

Here in Xi’an, training with the Shaanxi Wushu Team, I have seen them focus on one specific exercise the most, as this is the one that helps them develop the explosive jumping power needed for the nandu (difficulty movements).  It is the “pop squat” that I mentioned a couple times before.

They don’t do a ton of weight – just enough to provide the resistance necessary to do the job.

They don’t try to pump out a bajillion reps – if anything they just do a handful per set; 5 or 6.

And they don’t focus so much on building big muscles – they focus on building effective muscles.  Because whether your quads are huge or not is not nearly as important as whether or not they can do the work you require of them.

Sure, some athletes have huge quads, and strong legs are pretty common in wushu.  But you aren’t doing wushu to get big legs.  You get big legs because you train in wushu.  It is a result of the training, not the goal of it.  So the goal of your power training should also not be to get big, strong muscles, but to get muscles that do what you need them to do.

Okay, more on that at the end of tonight’s class.  First let me talk about the training itself.

Tonight I went to the evening class.  It was my first time training at night and I have to say that it does have a slightly different feel than the day-time training.  it was just our group in the room, and just like the last class, the focus was on competition.  The athletes who are competing were told at the beginning that they had 60 minutes to warm up before they would do their form.  So everyone did their warm ups, stretching and preparation on their own.

For myself, I did the warm up on my own, running around the carpets, doing some sprints and then stretching as much as my super sore hamstrings would let me.  They were retaliating after Saturday’s workout and didn’t really feel the need to be flexible.

I did basics with the 4 non-competing athletes who did those in a line.  And then I started on my new plan for developing my weak areas (per my conversation with Xiao Yu).

One of the things she said I needed to work on was my stance transition power.  So, I did 10 lines of horse-bow stance transitions, focusing on the power of the transition – really pushing it out in.  Actually Yang Laoshi back in Shanghai used to have us do that all the time so I was at least familiar with it.  But I did it with more of a nanquan focus.  I ended up doing about 100 of them with a walk around 3 sides of the carpet every 10.  it was pretty brutal, but by the end I really did feel like I was getting better power generation from my transition.

Today I didn’t even work on my forms.  I just focused on those things that Xiao Yu suggested I work on.  I did, however, work on my wall sits and some stationary horse stance work, mainly because it helps me drop my stances lower.

Next I worked on some fist pushups.  I’m not a huge fan of the pushup, but this time around I did them.  Of course, never doing them my chest muscles just about had a fit and I ended up doing them to muscle failure, which is actually sort of a nice feeling sometimes, even though it means I can’t lift my hand to my face.

After that I did a bunch of bar-holding front stretch kicks.  My back tends to bend too much when I do kicks these days, so I was focusing on keeping a straight back and kicking with proper technique.  I’ve noticed that some of my techniques have devolved a bit – especially the northern stuff.  Probably should work on that when I have a chance.

By this time most of the athletes had already finished with their short weapon forms.  They did a lot of them today.  For short weapons they each did 2 or 3 full sets and then they also did a set or two with the long weapon.  But since Xiao Yu doesn’t have a long weapon she opened up the weight room for some power training.

This is where it got interesting, because I was able to film her doing the “pop squats”.  Since she had already done a bunch of full sets she didn’t do a ton of them, but it is a good chance to see what they do.  She also had me do some as well, fixing my technique since I tended to lean forward too much.

She also had me ride the stationary bike for 10 minutes while she jumped rope.  Then she came back and told me to do some bench presses (just 10kg plus the bar) which I did 3 sets of 10.  And then I did a bunch of ab work, first on the incline sit up bench and then some leg lifts that she assisted me with out on the carpet.

At the end of the class she said that I had done well, which was nice to hear.  It was certainly the most intense training I’ve done in a while.  Anyway, here is the video of today’s exciting adventures for you to enjoy.

I got to check the schedule for the week, which turns out is different than last week.  Only a couple evening practices, and no practice on Sunday this week, so I will have to replace that day with running.  Instead my week will look like this:

For them, Tuesday will be the same as today was (9AM, 7PM), Wednesday is morning and afternoon (power) and Thursday morning is taolu and afternoon they are doing their 10K run.  I figured that, since I am already running 3 times this week, I would opt for the morning class and do some wushu training.  On Friday they have the day off and on Saturday they are doing wushu in the morning and I forget what their evening class is.  Probably forms since you can’t really run in the dark out there.  And Sunday is also a day off.

One funny thing that happened tonight was that one of the athletes at the beginning of class said “Hey, I saw your picture on Wu Di’s blog”.  It was one of me and Jenn holding the Chinese flag in Binzhou at the 11th All China Games.  I guess Chinese athletes read Wu Di’s blog too!

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