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Archive for the ‘training’ Category

An online friend of mine is currently training at Zhao Chang Jun’s schools here in Xi’an.  I’ve been wanting to check this school out (or even find out where it is) for a while now and so when he invited me to check out a forms test (i.e. “mock-ompetition”) they were having I was eager to see what it was like.

Now anyone who knows anything about modern wushu’s “golden age” (i.e., the 70’s – 80’s), knows who Zhao Chang Jun is.  Multiple Chinese National titles as well as a slew of other credits to his name makes him one of the best known athletes of his generation.  (If you really don’t know who he is, go to youtube and type in his name.  And then slap yourself on the face for being such a n00b.)

I’ve also had the opportunity to train with him one time when he visited Wushu West back in 2005.  (Or was it 2004?  Wow … I’m getting old.)  Anyway, I could quickly tell that he was an excellent coach with high standards – he really knew his stuff.  Of course, that was also around the time that he moved to the U.S. from his native Xi’an and left his wushu school under the care of someone else (I think his “sister”, so says the rumor). 

I’ve heard relatively good things about the school since arriving in Xi’an.  Of course most of the local people are familiar with his name since he was a pretty predominant local celebrity back in the day, but it was hard to find out where his school was located.  And in any case I wasn’t in a huge hurry to check it out since I already had a place to train.  I had corresponded with one or two people who have trained there and they had decent things to say about the instruction there.  I have talked to some athletes about the school and they didn’t have anything disparaging to say about it either. 

But whether I’m checking out a new movie, restaurant or wushu school, I generally try to reserve my expectations until I’ve had a first-hand look. 

The school itself is located just past the south 3rd Ring Road in Xi’an a couple kilometers to the west of Chang An Road (Google Map Link).  Coincidentally it is about 5 km from where I’ll be living in September, so when I found out where it was located it appeared on my radar as a possible training location.  The local area itself is a bit isolated, but not terribly far from actual “civilization”.  When you arrive there are a few large signs on the main road letting you know that the school is just a half a click down a wide alley spotted with various ceramics and botanical supply shops.

The gate wasn’t manned when I walked in, so I just started to explore a bit to see if I could find out where I was supposed to go.  There are four main buildings – one is classrooms and offices, one is dorms, there is a weight training and sanda training building and a wushu hall.  There is also a new building but it was small and I wasn’t sure what it was for.

From the looks of things, they also rent out or share some of their school space with an automotive mechanics college.  Of course, every building has pictures of ZCJ with various famous folks or on the podium accepting trophies and medals.  But if I had to use one word to describe the general condition of the buildings and grounds I would probably go with either “dilapidated” or “run-down”.  I could tell that it was probably quite the nice little school back during its inception, but it was clear those days were somewhere in the past – or more optimistically, somewhere far in the future. 

I really am hesitant to say too many negative things, because these are only my observations based on about an hour hanging out there and seeing things at a glance.  Undoubtedly there are many very positive aspects to training and living there.  But since my experiences are limited I can only go with what I know. 

And personally I think that whether or not the soccer field is overgrown with plants, or the wushu carpet is a thin strip of rug on top of a hard wood floor, or the dorms have working showers is irrelevant if the training is of a high standard and the level of instruction is top-notch.  Those other things can be overlooked if you are really improving and developing as an athlete.  This isn’t a country club, after all, it is a Chinese wushu school.  You aren’t supposed to be wrapped in luxury while you are getting your butt kicked in the wushu guan. (*cough* Shi Cha Hai *cough*)   (Although … I will admit that it is nice to have a high thread count on the sheets when you are recovering from a workout.)

So the real proof is in the proverbial wushu pudding.  I was anxious to see how their wushu looked.

And here is the thing … the school isn’t strictly a wushu school, so much as a boarding school that has a rather predominant wushu program and theme.  The people who live and train there are kids who pay to go to school and, if they are so inclined, learn wushu.  In fact, it isn’t a requirement that they train, but most of them do since it is available (and probably their parents have sent them there for that purpose). 

With my experiences in other cities I recognized that there was quite a difference between athletes at a professional sports school such as Shi Cha Hai or the Shaanxi Sports Training Center and those who are at wushu training facilities without a professional emphasis.  I assume that most of the kids who show any promise are whisked away to the local professional training centers rather quick, leaving the remaining students a random collection of sub-standard ability and unrealized motivation.

The group I observed were the older kids – probably around 12 – 17 – and it was their traditional forms (fanxi, ditang, shuang dao, etc.) day for testing.

I will try to be honest and pragmatic about this.  The level of fundamentals were not all that high.  Stances and basic techniques were lacking.  It seemed that a lot of emphasis had been put on nandu training rather than basics training, and this was confirmed when I spoke with my friend out their training regimen.  In fact I have to be honest in saying that the foreign student from the U.S. had better fundamental technique than the kids who lived at the school – which is really a credit to his coaches back home since they clearly instilled in him a high standard for wushu.

And while his “tricks” might not have been as interesting as the local kids, I would say that the jumps he did do looked better because they were built on a stronger foundation; straighter legs on his butterfly, more “pop” with his explosive power, etc. 

Again, I don’t want to say that they local kids were bad. They weren’t.  Actually, some of them were fairly decent and showed some promise.  But after training with the Shaanxi Team for the past 9 months (granted, in a very inconsistent manner) my standards for what I will view as an “acceptable” level of wushu has grown considerably (Woe be to those at Wushu West when I come back there and help out at the beginning of August! You have been warned) and so I was watching this with a different eye than I might have a year ago.

I also heard that ZCJ will be bringing a group of his students from the U.S. to train at the school later in the summer.  I’m pretty sure that when he is there the level of instruction as well as the focus of attention on basics, will improve dramatically.  Heck, the whole facility might even get a face lift prior to their visit. 

I feel compelled again to emphasize the fact that this was a very quick snap-shot of what the school looked like at this particular hour on this particular day.  Take my views with a super big grain of salt and, as always, you should judge these things for yourself.  What looks good to one might look bad to another, and vice versa.  I’m a strong proponent of the independent investigation of truth – so be sure to do your research before you make your final decision!

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More photos are here

I took videos, but I’m not sure if I want to post them.  Post a comment if you want to see them.

As you know, I have been a little on the quiet side with my blogging as of late.  I’ve even blogged about how I’m lamenting over my lack of blogging (and training), which is a little funny when I think about it.

But now that my future plans are “official” I can talk a little bit more about what is going on in my future over the next year.

You see, part of the problem with my current situation is that my work load and current obligations don’t really allow for a consistent amount of training.  Often I will have to drop my training for a period of time while I travel to meet a client in Hong Kong or spend a few all-nighters finishing up a project.  This doesn’t really bode well with me as I am the type of person that, if I am going to do something, then I really want to focus some energy and attention on it and not spread my attention across too many things.

In other words, I’m not all that in to multi-tasking.  I prefer to focus on 2 or 3 main priorities in my life than spread myself too thin with 10 different projects.

So, in looking at the various alternatives that I had available to me I realized that there was one opportunity which I’ve been around for the past 5 years which I’ve never really explored.

Teaching English.

Now, to be honest I’ve had my reservations about doing something like this.  It took me a long time to get comfortable coaching wushu, and I had zero experience teaching English aside from a few conversation partners and some English practice sessions with Jet and his English teacher back in L.A.  I figured the best thing to do would be to try it out in a controlled environment to see how I felt about it.

So I scouted around for some light teaching opportunities.  I put up notices that I was available for English conversation practice at some of the coffee shops near universities and even replied to some requests for part-time teachers.  One request was for someone to teach twice a week at a primary school in Gao Xin.  Well, I thought I could at least check it out and see what it was like by watching someone teach.

But when I got to the school I was told that I would be teaching that day!  There I was in front of 50 3rd grade students with zero classroom teaching experience and no lesson plan.  Thank goodness that Ruhi was able to quickly give me some suggestions on the phone before I stepped in to the room.  But it was certainly a stressful 2 classes.

Coincidentally, on that day I also made contact with a private school in Xi’an that was opening up and they provided me some neat opportunities to learn a bit more about teaching as well.

And finally I was able to help out with a class at a local university teaching Oral English once a week.

Those combined experience made me realize that this was something that I not only was interested in doing, but that it was something I actually was enjoying as well.

So I applied for a teaching position at Xi’an International Studies University (XISU), one of the top Foreign Language studies universities in China.  Actually it has a very good reputation and probably the only other language school that would be better on my resume would be Bei Wai in Beijing.

But that aside, it is also a good situation because we get on-campus housing, which allows us to both save some money and takes a couple hours off of Ruhi’s commute, since this is also the school where she is getting her Master’s degree in Chinese studies at the moment.  Plus, to be honest, I sort of like that side of town better.

So, what does this have to do with wushu training?  Thats an excellent question.

I knew that, if I was able to get this teaching position, that it would actually free me up so that I would not have to take on so many projects at once.  And, as I mentioned, taking on so many projects has been hampering my ability to get any exercise and training in to my daily routine.

Come the fall I would be able to teach in the mornings and spend my afternoons training.  I could keep two of my maintenance clients and focus on providing them with good service and my life would suddenly become free to study Chinese, spend time making some Friends, hanging out with my wife a bit more, less traveling to Hong Kong every month, and other important things like that.

But in order to get from where I am now (inundated with projects) to where I want to be (see the previous paragraph) I would need to get ALL my non-essential projects finished up and out the door as quickly as possible.

In fact, I’m planning a trip with Ruhi back to the U.S. in August for 6 weeks.  And during that time I am really hoping to be able to enjoy myself and not be constantly stressed out about work.

So, my current focus is on getting everything done.  All my projects (except for those 2 clients).  And to do it all by the end of July.  For the sake of my future ability to train in wushu, I will sacrifice the following 3 – 4 months without any training so that I can clear out these obligations.

And this is why I haven’t been training very much lately.  I have been trying to focus on getting these things out of the way — on getting all of these projects finished and completed.  And to be honest I still have a long way to go.  I still have a lot of things on my plate that need clearing off.  So, for the time-being at least, you are still going to have a bit of silence with regards to my training in wushu.

I will still try to blog whenever possible, but for the next 2 months you will have to be patient with me while I work on taking care of a few loose ends so that, come the late summer months and in to the fall, you will be able to enjoy some high quality blogging and a lot more wushu videos and information for the coming year.

I was waiting until now to write about all of this because, right now I’m in Hong Kong and I just received my work visa for my new job teaching English at XISU.  Now that I am officially on my way towards the coming year’s plan to get my priorities re-aligned, I felt it was okay to share all of this with you guys out there in the blog-o-sphere.

So, there you have it.  To celebrate this, I finally posted up some of the videos I took at my last training with the Shaanxi Wushu Team back on May 15.  They were preparing for an upcoming Compulsory forms tournament and you can check out their forms here:

And finally, here is a wushu training vlog that I made when Qi Peng Hui invited me to eat at their cafeteria.  It was my first time there so I thought I would put it on video.  Enjoy!

And so I made my way back to wushu class with the Shaanxi Wushu Team.  Over 2 months away from training and I don’t think I need to tell you that it was a bit on the painful side.  2 days later now, and I’m really starting to feel it in my hamstrings — but it is a good kind of sore, not the bad kind of sore.

When I showed up the door was open and no one was there yet, but I was a little early.  I put on my budosagas and waited for the athletes, who showed up promptly at 9:00.  I got some surprised faces, since they hadn’t seen me in a while.  Han Laoshi said hello and had Xiao Yu translate some information for me regarding some training requests I had put in to him from other foreigners.  It has taken him 6 MONTHS to finally get back to me with this information.  But apparently he had to get permission from the head of the facility or something.

Anyway, class started up.  I looked at the weekly schedule on the wall.  This week my plan was to go on Tuesday and Saturday morning (I think I mentioned that in the last blog).  Fortunately both of those days had wushu practice scheduled so I was good to go.

Being the first day back I didn’t try to kill myself.  I just wanted to get back in to the groove of things.  I warmed up with them as much as I could.  My calves were super tight from 2 months of no stretching so that was tricky.  Basics started and I tried to focus on some fundamentals like front stretch kick and horse-bow stance transitions.  I worked on those during their nandu training too.

Around the time they started forms training Yang Min told me to grab my nangun to work with some athletes he was overseeing.  It turns out there is a Compulsory Forms (guidin taolu) competition in Wuhan on June 5th.  A few of the guys in our group were going to be competing and so I worked through sections with them.  I hadn’t reviewed my nangun in a while so I spent most of the time working on the first two sections, trying to remember how they went.  The other kids were working on the new compulsory staff (2) and spear (1) and one kid also did some of the old compulsory Changquan.

That lasted about 30 minutes or so.  There were just 5 of us, so rotating sections took a bit out of me — granted I wasn’t really going full out, but mostly just walking through sections.  It was a good workout either way.

After class I spoke with Xiao Yu and Coach Zhang for a while, just talking about random stuff.  I walked out with Xiao Yu who was going to lunch.

My plan Saturday is to try to push myself a little farther still.  Each class I will up the ante and put more in to the training.  So, I have a few days of healing and recuperation before the next class.  I think I’ll need it.

Later in the day I made arrangements with Angelica Cukon (pictured below), who was visiting from Italy, to meet up for dinner in the evening.

We ended up going to the Shandong BBQ place next to my house.  It was me, Ruhi, Angelica, and two of her friends — James from New York (not to be confused with our other friend James from New York) and another friend from Chile.  We had a great time talking and telling each other funny stories.  It was nice to finally meet her in person after all this time only knowing her online and from AliveNotDead.  (Angelica’s Chinese is crazy good, by the way.)

Unfortunately she will be heading back to Europe later in the month, but the good news is that she plans on returning to Xi’an later in the year.  I will probably see her again when I get back from my summer U.S. trip in September.  Good timing since I will have a bit more time available then.  Maybe we will even get to train together!(?)  Us nanquan people have to stick together, right?

Anyway, this week I have a lot of work going on so it is a good thing I’m only training twice.  I will provide another training update after Saturday.

In just 7 days from today the next wushu competition in China will be held in Hangzhou.  I am planning to attend, although I may miss a few events due to other obligations.  Of course I will try to film as much as I can.  (I’m actually behind on my blog from the Hong Kong -> Xi’an leg of my last trip, but I’m going to cut ahead a little bit to today’s wushu class.)

The Shaanxi Wushu Team is hard at work to put on some finishing touches on their forms.  I’m actually on the temporarily injured reserve list (my knee is acting up making walking, let alone training, rather uncomfortable) but I had to go talk to Xiao Yu about a few things so I headed out to the wushu guan to check out their form run-throughs during the evening practice.

The first thing I noticed is that Zhang Yang is back from her Guangzhou training with the National Youth Team.  Whatever they fed her down there sure did the trick because she was much stronger and her wushu had improved since the last time I saw her.  Unfortunately I didn’t get her footage on my camera.  Why?  Because the people I did manage to film would come up to me after their forms and ask to watch what they had done.  Coach Zhang used my camera to check out Xiao Yu’s nanquan form too, which was sort of neat.  I felt handy!

So there were maybe 3 or so athletes I wasn’t able to capture.  But I did get a few so I’ll show you those right now …

First up is Yue Xiao Yu sporting a nice new silk that she had ordered from Beijing.  i definitely like this one better than the one she wore during the All China Games.  Red is a better color on her.  This is her nanquan form:

Second we have Zhang Yuan Biao who performed his daoshu form.  He didn’t go full out on the nandu, but I still think he has some nice moves in his form.  He’s definitely the strongest non southern/taiji athlete on the team right now.  I hope he does well in competition.

And third was Yang Zhao, a young man who does changquan and who I don’t really show much on my blog.  He’s sort of one of the athletes that hang out in the background of my blogs and videos, but his stuff is actually pretty good, as you can see.  During the middle of his form my camera ran out of room so I had to quickly delete some older files and then start filming him again.

Next up was Ren Zhang Tao, the hardest working kid in the group.  He was practicing staff, and doing a pretty decent job of it. Not bad for a 15 year old.  (Or maybe he’s 14 … I forget … )

After that it was time for a quick break while 3 more athletes did their warm ups.  As they were trying to mirror the competition experience as much as possible, they next group was going to go at 8:00 PM and included two male nanquan athletes and one male jianshu athlete.  But first, here are the athletes hanging out / preparing to go:

The first is a young man who is one of the only 2 or so male jianshu / qiangshu athletes currently training on the team.  I really like some of his flavor, and his one slash with the sword at the beginning of his form can be felt through the whole wushu guan.  Very nice.

And then was Yuan Min.  He was the second person who got the “memory card full” message in the middle of their form.  So unfortunately you dont’ get to see his nandu, but you can trust me that it was pretty nice.  While he was warming up and would go full bore on some of his combinations, I have to say that it was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen.  For the full form he tapers his energy just a little bit to last the full minute 20 +.  But when he is just going for it on a single section it is really something to behold.  Anyway, here is his nanquan form:

And last but not least was Tian Jing Fang.  He busted out his nanquan form and did a pretty nice job of it.  I’m not sure if I’m the biggest fan of his style, but I must say he has the craziest buffest legs of anyone on the team.  Dude is seriously maxed out.

The team is leaving for the competition on Thursday so that they can spend a few days acclimating to the environment.  I will most likely go on Saturday or Sunday.  If it is Sunday (i.e. arriving on Monday) then I might miss some of the first events.  Hopefully not, but I might not be able to help it.  From what I’ve been told it is in the same sports arena where the 2006 Women’s qualifiers were held.  I’ve finally been attending enough competitions to repeat attendance at a venue!  Time to get a life?

Who am I kidding.  This is my life.

Want to train in China? Click here!

Wyyc asked an interesting question on wushuzilla.com that got me thinking.  Here it is:

Anyway, I met a former [professional wushu athelte] recently who coached me on Nanquan. He was talking about the years he spent training and how he began to hate Wushu by his 16th year in it. He said training was extremely bitter and at the time they could train up to 4 times a day, which I think isn’t the case now from your posts about the Shanxi team’s schedule. What I wanna know is, are most of the Shanxi team members like that? Having done Wushu for so long and under such conditions, have they grown to hate it?

Jet’s Generation

The issue of Chinese athletes “hating” wushu is something that I’ve come across quite a bit in the past.  Especially when I was working for Jet.  I don’t think it is any huge mystery that Jet doesn’t actually care that much for wushu; he’s stated it publicly in the past so I’m not dropping any bombs. (That isn’t to say he doesn’t appreciate it and all it has provided for him in his life, or that he thinks it is “bad” in and of itself.  Just that he isn’t that fond of it anymore.)  And I think that, with athletes of his generation, this is a fairly common sentiment.

Put yourself in their shoes.  You are going along you way at the age of 8 and suddenly someone tells you that you are going to spend all your spare time (and some of your school time) going to a hall with carpets and being forced to endure hard physical exercise for extended periods of time with no rest.  You weren’t asked.  You were ordered.

Maybe at first it is interesting, but that wears off pretty quickly once you realize that there is no end in sight.  Hard, hard manual labor and you start to develop a resentment towards it.  Even later on in life when you start to receive accolades or do well in competition, you don’t really enjoy it because you realize that doing well in wushu is only the natural result of having worked so incredibly hard for so long.  If anyone was forced to do what you had been forced to do, they would also be just as good.

After 15 years of hard, daily, excruciating work, you come out the other side never wanting to do or see wushu again.  The only problem is that now you are stuck since it is the only skill set you have developed over your entire life and it is what you are best at.  In fact, you are one of the best at it in the world.  So you get a job coaching or doing films and continue to have a dual resentment/reliance relationship with wushu.

But this is really just a generalization.  This experience isn’t true for all athletes.  In fact, for just as many athletes you have in China, you are going to have just as many perspectives on wushu.  No one’s feelings for wushu are exactly like anyone else’s.

Difference in Generations

But as a generalization, I think it is interesting that the athletes of the earlier generations compared with the athletes of the current generations have a somewhat different perspective on wushu.

Back when Jet was a kid, he wasn’t inspired to study wushu by watching “Shaolin Temple”.  There was no “World Wushu Competition” he could aspire towards.  No videos of great competitors to get inspired by.  Heck, back when he first started training there wasn’t even a Chinese Nationals Yet.

By comparison, when you ask a lot of the athletes from the 90′s or the 21st century what their motivation for wanting to do wushu is, they will tell you “Jet Li” or “Shaolin Temple”.  I remember Li Jing told me that she wanted to study wushu after watching “Shaolin Temple” and Wu Di told me that his motivation for learning wushu came from wanting to fly like the people in the movies.

When those athletes started training, there was already a system of regional, youth, national, provincial and international competitions in place that they could aspire towards.  There was a history of established wushu athletes that they could look at for inspiration and motivation.

One of the things that can inspire and motivate someone to endure hard circumstances is their personal “light at the end of the tunnel”.  If you are a kid and you see no “out” from your situation — no light, so to speak — then how much would you learn to dislike what you are doing?

There is a saying that too much of a good thing is not good for you.  Certainly too much training in wushu can wear a person down if they don’t have any other underlying motivation for being there other than “because I have no options” or “because I have to”.

Today’s Athletes

The current generation has a little more choice in the matter about their training.  There are some other options available if they chose them, but many who train feel that wushu is the best opportunity for them, so they stay with it.  They aren’t “forced” to train like previous generations, but there is still a very strong pressure for them to continue with what they are doing.  But at least, to some degree, they have a choice.

I’m not saying that the training isn’t hard or that they don’t have bouts of “this sucks” with their situation.  But at the end of the day they don’t feel as much of a  lack of freedom that previous generations felt, and that does a lot for lightening one’s mood with relationship to “hating” wushu.

But like I said — everyone is different.  No two people are going to deal with a situation the same way, and even thought I’m generalizing things about the state of Chinese athletes, I feel it is important to keep in mind that not all athletes fall in to a specific category of attitudes.

Asking Athletes in Shaanxi

During today’s class with the Shaanxi Wushu Team I thought I would make some inquiries and ask the athletes a few questions about why they started training and what they felt about wushu.  Here is what I learned:

Yue Xiao Yu said that she started doing wushu because her mother liked wushu and wanted her to do it.  It wasn’t something she was interested and during that first class she literally kicked and screamed not to be there.

When I asked her if she liked wushu today she said “no, I don’t like it” (which I thought was interesting since, as you will recall from our bike buying trip, she stated that she did like it).  She said that if she had a choice she would not train in wushu.  And when I asked her why she continues training if she doesn’t want to be there she answered “because my mother wants me to do wushu”.

I asked her if this was a common sentiment of the people in our group and she said that out of 10 athletes, probably 7 of them don’t like training.  So I asked her who the ones in our group that liked wushu were and she said Yuan Min and pointed to another kid who trained with us (you can see him in this video at 0:40).

I thought it might be good to ask someone even younger, since they might not have the same perspective, so I went to go talk to Xin Rui, the little nanquan kid, and the young chang quan girl that trains with us (you can see her at 0:56 in the middle row in this video).  Xin Rui started training from his own interest.  He was a huge fan of Bruce Lee and wanted to learn real “gong fu”.  The girl said that her father was a wushu teacher and so she had to go in to the “family business”, so to speak.  Both of them said that they found training in wushu very tiring, but that for the most part they were okay with the experience.

I asked them that, if they really didn’t want to be there would they be able to leave, but I think they might have misunderstood me.  They said that, if they didn’t do well they would be told to go home.  That makes me think that, perhaps they don’t even consider quitting their training as an option.  Certainly, they must receive a lot of pressure from both their coaches, teachers and the other athletes to persevere.

Next I wandered over to Yuan Min.  Since Xiao Yu mentioned him as one of the athletes that like wushu I thought he might have a different perspective.

“Do you like training in wushu?” I asked.

“No” he answered.

“Really?  But Xiao Yu said you like wushu.” I asked.

“I like wushu.  But I don’t like training.  It is too tiring.” he replied.

Ah.  That is an interesting distinction that I hadn’t thought about.  Back in the U.S., if someone likes wushu, that probably means they like training in wushu.  But in China those two aspects of your relationship with wushu can be different.

I asked him why he started training in wushu and he said that it was because he wasn’t any good in school.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes, but after training for one year I was at the top of my class in school (3rd grade).” he clarified.  ”From training in wushu I learned what it meant to eat bitter (persevere through difficulties) and I was able to focus in school.”

Well, there is an argument for putting your kids in wushu if I ever heard one.  (Or any sports for that matter.)

He went on to explain that the reason he keeps training is because it is his job.  He needs to make a living and this is what he does.  But, he explained, if he could have a job where he got paid to just watch wushu, that would be ideal.  Because it isn’t that he doesn’t like wushu.  It is just that he doesn’t like the difficult training.

Some pretty interesting information.  A little bit later as I was sitting and stretching next to a few other young male athletes I asked a 14 year old (the one sitting next to us in this video at :05) the same questions.  He also stated a general dislike of wushu training, but that he doesn’t mind wushu itself. (Of course, he had just gotten back from a 55 minute run, so that might have been part of it.)  He had been training for 3 years and was also from Dong Ming, Shandong.  (Apparently 5 or 6 atheltes who were training at the facility are from Dong Ming.)

So, it wasn’t exactly formal research, but it was interesting to hear their personal thoughts on wushu.

Final Thoughts

I’ve met other athletes that hate wushu.  And I’ve met current athletes that love wushu.  And I’ve met a ton of athletes that fall somewhere in between.  How a person deals with their situation is up to them, and whether or not you love to train, or hate to train, or whether you love wushu or late wushu, has more to do with who you are as an individual than it does about the state of wushu or the state of training in wushu.

Thanks for the question and I hope this was helpful!

On a training note, it was only an hour of self-training today so most of the athletes just sort of did their own thing (I did 80 mabu/gong bus, a bunch of pushups and walked through my nanquan and nangun forms to reinforce choreography).  The reason for the light practice  is that they have a big test tomorrow.  In the morning and in the afternoon they will have a wushu testing session and they need to be ready for that.

What does a wushu testing session entail?  I have no idea.  Unfortunately I will not be there so I can’t tell you what happens. But hopefully the next time one comes around I will be on hand to give you a report.

Next class: Monday morning

With the advice Xiao Yu gave me to improve my wushu technique, I have already started noticing improvement in the transitional power of my stances, as well as in my overall leg strength.  I suppose that is to be expected, but it did get me thinking about the most effective ways to improve one’s stance power and stability and I’ve come to realize a few things that really help build it up.

First, I think a lot of people (myself included) assumed that to improve the stability of your stances you needed to building up the ability to hold the stance for a longer period of time.  True, that will help to some limiting degree (although whether or not holding stances actually helps sport wushu with its high-qi focus, is a whole different discussion) but what I’ve discovered is that the problem isn’t really with holding a stance, but the problem is with being stable with a stance once you have just gotten to it.

Very few people ever lose their balance when they are already in a horse stance, but when you are spinning around and transitioning from some other technique into a horse stance, that is often when your stability is compromised.  How best to stabilize yourself as you transition into a stance then?  Well, with focused attention on stance transition basics, for one.

Generating the transitional power in to a stance position reinforces your body’s ability to “punch” into that stance with stability.  A solid transition helps build stability with stances.  This, as it turns out, requires doing a LOT of stance transitions.  This is why kids wushu classes in China are pretty much just basics for the first few years.  You couldn’t get away with that in the U.S., of course, but here in China they are training athletes, not pacifying parents (no offense to any parents who are reading this, since you are obviously not one of those types – or else you sure wouldn’t bother reading wushuzilla’s super geeky wushu blogs. ).

The second thing I’m noticing that helps with stance power and stability is having a strong core.  Especially your back and oblique muscles, as that is where a lot of the transitional power comes through, as well as the stopping power to hold a stance effectively.  One of the biggest problems you see with beginners doing stances is that they tend to lean forward too much into their stance.  How many times have you seen a coach slap someone’s back to straighten up?  And how many times after holding a stance for a while do you find yourself slowly learning forward and bending at the waist?

Building up your core is, I think, the second part of having strong stances.

The last part of having strong stances (well, the last part that I’m going to talk about) is actually flexibility.  Most of my personal stance problems stems from not having the full range of motion in my joints or muscles to hold the stance in the right way.  if you look at a beginner’s stances, most of the reasons they aren’t able to do them correctly is that their hips can’t open up wide enough yet (hence the funky chicken horse stances and too-high bow stances).  Or having proper ankle flexibility also prohibits a lot of people from being able to fully get in to a drop or empty stance. 

My stances are always much more stable when I’m fully stretched out and warmed up.  I can’t hold a decent cold horse stance to save my life, but after an hour of training and stretching, my horse stance is almost human looking.

So there you have it.  My personal three-step approach to improving my stances. 

1. Transitions

2. Core Strength

3. Flexibility

And if you had asked me a year ago how to build up stance stability I probably would not have said any of them (well, maybe “transitions”, but not at first).  Just goes to show you that even after 15 years in wushu you can still learn new things and make new distinctions in your training.

Before I used to think that wall sits and holding stances was the best way to get strong rock-solid stances.  That is probably a result of my time training with He Jing De, since he was a strong proponent of the wall sit.  And wall sits are good for building leg strength, especially after a knee injury where you might not be able to do a full stance yet.  But now I realize that it is all the stuff you do around the act of holding a stance that really builds up your stability, as well as your power.

Today’s Class

And that brings us to today’s class.  Because it was in the midst of one of the most intense workouts I’ve had in a while that I came up with these new found distinctions.

Wednesday afternoon is pretty busy in the wushu guan.  Chu Feng Lian is there with her 2 dozen wushu kids, the taiji group is doing their power training, and the wushu group is in full force too.  I got there a little early today and watched the earlier kids classes that are there before 3:00.  It really is fun to watch 100 kids doing basics in a 4-carpet wushu guan.  There is always something interesting to watch.

But soon enough it was time to train.  Our group was doing the usual competition preparation (60 minutes of self-warm up followed by full sets – just like at the tournament.  something I’ve actually been meaning to blog about in more detail but haven’t had time yet) so I went on the side with the non-competing athletes (i.e. the”kids table” at your cousin’s wedding).  After a quick warm up and some stretching the kids got some staves and were going to do kicking practice.  I opted instead for stance training, as per Xiao Yu’s recommendations.

10 lines of 10 mabu-gong bu transitions = 100 mabu-gong bu = jello quads

After that I did some horse stance holding (feeling much stronger today!).  I would hold horse while doing 100 quick grabs with my hands (quick clenching and unclenching of my hands – helps build forearm power) and then hold the stance for another 30 seconds.  Did that 3 times.

3 x 90 second ma bu with quick clenches

I also did some kicking practice – holding the bar while the other arm is out and doing quick front stretch kicks.  I did 3 x 10 for each leg.

Next I went in to the weight room and did 3 sets of “pop squats” at just 40kg worth of plates (i’m a wuss), followed with 3 sets of quick calf hops with the bar and weights on my shoulders.  After each set I would go out to the carpet and do some deep knee hop ups – 5 or so. 

Then I did 3 sets of 10 – 15 bench presses.  Again, not too much weight, focusing instead on developing explosive power. To be honest my arms were SUPER sore from Monday’s class.  It took me a good 15 minutes of swinging my arms around and stretching them out to get some of range of motion back.  Just goes to show you how much I need it.

After that I worked on my abs.  I did 3 sets of 20 leg lifts and 3 sets of 20 situps.  My abs were pretty sore after that (I haven’t been doing much ab work, as you can tell) and then I went to a bar near the window and did calf raises.  3 x 30 with legs together, then 3 x 30 of each leg individually, almost to muscle failure.

By this time I was pretty tired.  But Xiao Yu told me to do more ma bu – gong bu transitions.  This time I was told to do the same exercise that I saw the kids at the track doing the previous week.  You can see it in this video at around 1:40.  I did 5 sets of 10, so 50 total of the hopping mabu-gong butransitions.  I have to say that they are way harder than they looked when I saw the kids doing them at the track.

One thing I have to say is that Xiao Yu has been really helping me out.  She pushes me to work on the stuff that we talked about and is always giving me suggestion on what to work on.  If she sees me not doing something, she’ll suggest something for me to do.  Coach Zhang doesn’t really provide much feedback (which is fine with me since he’s got bigger fish to fry and it is sort of our arrangement) so I’m very happy that Xiao Yu is being so helpful.  I’m going to have to invite her over for another home-cooked meal next month!

Oh right … you don’t know about that, do you?  Xiao Yu and another friend of hers from DongMing, Shandong – a sanda athlete) came over for my home cooking a couple weeks back.  I made tu dou ci and suan la bai cai.  (That’s right folks.  The ‘Zilla can cook.  Being Brandon’s roomate actually paid off. )  This year I’ve been making a concerted effort to learn some local dishes, which has proven quite popular with some of the Chinese folks who come over to our home.  Plus, these are my wife’s favorite dishes so I’m scoring some brownie points at home too.

Anyway, I did take some video.  The first one is of the athletes after class.  Some of them were hanging out, some of them were practicing some random things.  You can take a look for yourself …

And then is my wushu training vlog, but to be honest it isn’t very informative because I was way too wiped out after class to form any coherent thoughts.  All I could get across was that I was tired.  Here is that:

Tomorrow I have to take care of a few things in the morning so I will go to the afternoon class again – at the track.  My plan is to run, but I also am going to practice the stance and power training while there.  It will be good training to get me used to doing that sort of thing outdoors when I’m down in Hong Kong next week and don’t have a wushu guan to hang out at.

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:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
15 7p – wushu (forms)	16 run	17 3p – wushu (power)	18 9a – wushu (forms)	19 run	20 9a – wushu (forms)	21 run

 

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!

As per my plan from yesterday’s blog, I strapped on my 361 Running Shoes, loaded up my iPod with some tunes and headed out in to the drizzly, damp weather to get my jog on.  My general plan was to just go around the block.  This being the High Tech Zone, the blocks are pretty darn big so at the end of the run I had been out for almost 20 minutes and had travelled just over 3 km.  i did up a map so you can see the details:

This part of town is so new that the road i jogged on doesn’t actually show up on Google Maps yet.

it felt good to get out on the road and run.  Well, not good exactly.  But its been a while since I ran on my own so I suppose you could say it was nostalgic. (natsukashii, deshou?)

Tomorrow is wushu, in the morning I believe.  The tricky thing about Monday is that I don’t yet know what the schedule for the week will be, so I sort of show up on blind faith since they almost always have training on Monday morning.  Then I will be able to figure out the rest of the week’s schedule when I get there.

My next run is on Tuesday and I will probably go off in another direction just to explore a bit more of my surrounding area.  I’ve never been to the North West of where we live, so I might venture in that direction ….

Today it was back to the wushu guan.  I arrived a little early and no one had shown up to unlock the door yet so I wandered over to the 2nd floor over-look for the gymnastics area.  As I mentioned before, in our building there is Sanda below us, rhythmic gymnastics next to them, and then (non-rhythmic?) gymnastics across them them.  But you can see the gymnastics rooms from the 2nd floor because they have some windows (in need of cleaning) that allow you to look down and see them training.

I captured a bit of video, which you can see here:

Anyway, back to the wushu class.

Since the main wushu team is competing in 3 weeks they were doing competition preparation full sets (which are a little different than just doing full sets during a practice).  Instead of that I went with the non-competing wushu people (about 5 of them) and did basics on the side.  The people competing were given 30 minutes to warm up on their own and get ready for a full set – just like when they compete.  After their full sets they also each did a few half sets.

At one point Xiao Yu suggested that I join them for full sets, but I said that I wasn’t quite ready for that yet.  But even as I said that I felt like it was sort of a cop out.  Well, maybe not, but I felt like I was being lazy.  Of course, I have only trained twice in the last month or so, and I don’t have the endurance built up for full forms (which I could definitely tell as I was going through basics) but the truth is, if I have any thought of competing at CMAT (still a possibility) then I should really get my act together and start pushing myself a lot more.  She even suggested doing a half set, which I also said no to.

After class was over I came up to her and asked her for her advice on the things I needed to work on the most; basically asking what the main deficiencies/problems were with my wushu.  She really hit the nail on the head with her advice.

The main problem was my lack of power.  My technique is good, and my movement is right, but I don’t have enough power behind my motions, especially hand strikes and punches.  She said the best way to overcome this is to do more strength training, especially the “push-out” plyometric exercise with the weight bar.

And related to that is the problem of my legs.  She recognized that I had bad knees, but said that I’m not able to step with enough force, and that ends up affecting the power of my movements.  For this she suggested doing a lot of mabu-gongbu transition work and really trying to push the power through my legs and in to my hips.

And the third problem was that I needed to lose weight, or more specifically she said that my body was not at its highest capacity (which is a much nicer way to say it).  That it was keeping me from being fast and light enough to execute a lot of the movements to full power.  She said that for this I should do a lot of running.  Any day that I’m not training, I should be running at home.  She also said that this will help with my endurance.

And finally she said that I should be more consistent with my training.  I should come to the wushu guan every day to train, not just a few times a week like I’ve been doing.  She also recognized that I have work to do besides wushu and that it isn’t my full time job, but she said that daily training was important in developing all of the areas of my wushu that need work.

So, all in all a very astute observation from Xiao Yu, and I think all four areas are definitely what I need to focus on.  In that vein, I’m going to redesign my approach to wushu training this month to better incorporate these things she has brought up (or rather, reminded me of, since I knew this stuff already – but sometimes it just takes a person telling you something you already know before you’ll recognize its existence).

My wushu schedule for this month I already worked out, but it is a build up of days over the course of the month.  It looks like this:

MON	TUE	WEB	THU	FRI	SAT	SUN
8	9	10	11 Wushu	12	13 Wushu	14 Run
15 Wushu	16 Run	17 Wushu	18 Wushu	19 Run	20 Wushu	21 Wushu
22 Wushu	23 HKG (Run)	24 HKG (Run)	25 HKG (Run)	26 HKG (Run)	27 Wushu	28 Wushu
29 Wushu	30 Wushu	31 Run	1 Wushu	2 Wushu	3 Hangzhou	4 Hangzhou (Run)

So, as you can see I am building up my wushu each week. Unfortunately I will be going to Hong Kong for 4 days at the end of the month for a business/visa trip and since the Hong Kong Team is training in China right now there isn’t anywhere for me to workout.  On those days I will do my non-training day runs.  My runs aren’t 10Ks like the athletes do, but it is important for me to at least get out on the road and put in some distance as that will help my endurance.

As you can also see from the schedule, I will be going to Hangzhou on the 3rd.  This year’s qualifiers will be there and I’m going to travel with the Shaanxi Team to check it out.  They will be there until the 8th, but I’m not sure I can stay for that long so I might come home sooner.  I’ll probably have a better idea after my trip to Hong Kong.  I might even take a day to drop by Shanghai since I have a few things to do there as well, and it is only a couple hours by bus.  Again – something to be figured out at a later date.

I did get a bit of footage of Xiao Yu giving me her suggestions, so I edited that together for you to watch too.  Enjoy!

And there we are.  I’m actually pretty sore from training,but that is to be expected.  I hope that running tomorrow can help work a bit of that out of my system.  I’m not sure how far I’ll go yet, but I’ll be sure to blog it up so you can see how (poorly?) I do.

EDIT: Oh, and I had noticed that Zhang Yang wasn’t around much these past couple classes.  It turns out she is in Guangzhou training with the National Youth team in preparation for … a competition, I assume.  She will be back in 2 weeks before we head to Hangzhou for the competition.

EDIT: Also, I found out that the National Men’s Sanda Team is currently training right below our wushu carpets on the 1st floor preparing for the East Asian Games.  Apparently this means that the food in the cafeteria is much better than usual.  Most of the local athletes are hoping that they stay for a bit longer.  The women’s national sanda team is apparently in Shanghai training right now.

EDIT: I also heard that in the morning some of the National Taolu Team Coaches were at the practice observing the athletes.  It seems they are scouting for whomever will be on this year’s China National Wushu Team.  It’d be cool if one of the Shaanxi folks made it on.