chaoyang day 1

Related posts:

1. Chinese New Year in Chaoyang with Wu Di 吴迪

Enjoy! And If you’ve got any questions you want me to ask him, please message me on twitter.

No related posts.

Designed by an artist friend in Xi'an

So, it’s been a little while and you’re probably wondering what happened to me.  Or .. perhaps you don’t care and are just wondering where more wushu videos are.

Well, a couple things have been going on so let me give you a quick status update:

Wushu Hiatus

As you remember from the last WTV, Yuan Min told me that the kids were all going to Cheng Du for a traditional competition and told me to wait for him to call me when they got back.  Well, it was 2 weeks ago when he said that so he should have called within the past week.  So I’m going to contact him today to find out what is going on.  My inclination is that he just forgot or got busy or forgot.  Or .. he might have forgotten.  In any case, I’m going to reiterate to him that I would like to really have my training taken a bit more seriously.  I figured out a competition that I would like to try for next year so I have a specific goal to work towards.  I just need someone and someplace to help me get there.

I’m going to write up more about my November wushu plans and goals in the next few days.

Website revamp

The current theme you see on the site is temporary.  Lately I’ve been realizing that if I want to have the site I want, I’m going to have to just build it myself from scratch.  So, I’ve been studying up on building wordpress themes and thought I would blog about the process here so that you all can know what is involved and, well, because I just felt like it, really.  But if nothing else it will give you an opportunity to chime in if you think of something that you’d like to see, or you see me working on something that you think is unnecessary.  Not that I will follow your advice, of course.  But I might.

Old blogs

I have a ton of old blogs sitting on a database that I never get around to getting integrated with wushuzilla.  So I’m hiring someone to do it for me.  Lazy?  perhaps.  But at least it will get done. And then we can have all of my previous content here.  My goal is to integrate all of the blogs I’ve written since back in 1998 when I first started writing wushu-related stuff online.  Remember? Back when I had wushu.net?  Wow .. that was ages ago.  I probably shouldn’t have let that domain go …

Guidebook

I still plan to have the guidebook going, and as you might recall I hired an intern this past year to collect a lot of the data.  In fact, I have a couple hundred sitting in an excel spreadsheet just waiting to be utilized.  My plan is to integrate the guidebook in to the new website projects so all of you can have access to it.  Will you need to pay for access?  Maybe? I haven’t really decided yet.  But I do know that I want the content to be available online.  My thought is that it could be a combination of a guidebook and a review site.  So that when you go to these locations you can post up your own review, thoughts and media (photos, videos) about the place so that everyone can get a fuller picture of each location.  Of course, integrating a guidebook into the website will be some additional work, but I think it will be worth it in the end.

So, that is what is going on in my neck of the woods.  Work is busy, and I’m learning a lot.  My CSS skills are slowly coming back (did I ever have them to begin with?) and I’m becoming more comfortable in the environment.  Actually next week is my 3 month-iversary and my probation will be officially over.  I’ll be a real, live boy here at Active Network.  At long last I can get some PTO.

Related posts:

1. A quick update

In case you didn't know where you were ...

Earlier in the week I was inundated with work at the office so I had to cancel my Monday and Wednesday practices with Yuan Min.  Just as well since it took me about a week to recover from that last training session at the track.  By the time I got back to the Sports Center on Friday I was really raring to go.

As I pulled in to the facility I called Yuan Min on the phone.  He said they were at the track so I putted over there (actually, my scooter is electric.  buzzed?  hummed?) and met up with them as they were finishing up their training.

That’s right.  5pm was my call time, which meant that I wasn’t able to train with the kids.  Such is life.

I did some quick warm up and stretching and then started jogging around the track.  I actually made it a lap and a half before I had to walk.  That is pretty good for a guy who could barely run a single lap just a week earlier.  Yuan Min told me that for the day I would do the following:

• 5 laps around the track
• 5 x 50 jump ropes (I did 100.  50 didn’t feel like enough)
• 5 x 10 pushups (I put my feet up at an incline to make them harder)
• 4 x 1 min. horse stance

Honestly that didn’t seem like that much.  Especially after a week off for recouperation.  I was ready for more.  But his reasoning was that, because I had a week away from training, I should take it easy.  Clearly he didn’t realize that it took me a week just to rebuild my body to be ready for a hard core training session.  Such is the way with young people who heal quickly.  For someone his age or younger, if you take a week off you start to slide downhill.  For someone like me, a week off means you are ready to work out again, harder than before.  That might not make sense to you youngin’s out there, but trust me.  Its the way my body works.

The long road to wushu progress ...

Before he took off (that’s right.  I was left to my own devices) I talked to him about a few things.

First, I asked him if the reason I was working out at 5pm was a problem with the coaches not wanting me to train with the kids.  He said it wasn’t anything like that, but he didn’t give me a specific reason why I had to come at 5pm now.  I told him that I didn’t mind making a formal training arrangement with the Team’s manager to train with the athletes, and that I had rearranged my work schedule a bit to accomodate the 3pm training slot.  I also mentioned that my intention was to train with the team and prepare myself to compete next summer.

I asked him if he thought I would be ready to compete.

“What is the competition?” he asked.

“I don’t have a competition in mind”, I more-or-less communicated in my broken Chinese, “I just want to be ready to compete.”

“What events?” he asked.

“Nanquan.” I said, adding “and maybe nangun.”

He seemed to think I could be ready by then.

But unfortunately for my training schedule he was going to leave for Cheng Du and a traditional wushu competition (fanzi, ditang, etc.) during the following week so there would be no training for me.  He told me to just train on my own and that he would contact me when he returned to figure out what to do next.

I have the feeling that there are things going on behind the scenes that I’m not aware of.  In fact, I sort of feel like that most of the time in China.  But more so with this situation.

And now that a new month is upon us, I have to reflect on the goals I’ve made and see where I am on my path towards my 5 year plan.  (Read this if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)  It is also time to post up another Monthly Ma, which I will try to do this week.

Someone on facebook had asked me to tell them a bit about the Sanda guan.  I have been meaning to post up video of the sanda guys training, but I’m never in their area and it is a little intimidating to just walk in to a room full of a bunch of people learning how to pummel each other.  So I haven’t gotten around to it yet.  But here is a quick picture from a year ago to give you a general idea of what it looks like.

Sanda Guan -- Ping Pong Optional

I also decided to make a video showing a bit of the area around the campus. I really need to do a proper tour of the place, but this will give you a general idea. Granted, it isn’t anything you haven’t really seen before, so you might not think this is very exciting. But here you go anyway.

Related posts:

1. WTV #12: Condition: Dead
2. WTV #5: Keeping in iTouch
3. WTV #6: 3pm Nanquan

Qi lai! Qi lai!

Yuan Min had contacted me on Tuesday with a message to let me know that I would have to come to practice at 5PM the next time around. I wasn’t sure if something happened with the other coaches, or maybe the team is preparing for something specific? Sometimes there are weird political things that happen. Hard to say. But at least he remembered to contact me so I sent him a message to let him know I would see him Wednesday at 5PM and he said “ok”.

Fast forward to Wednesday. Since he had contacted me the day before about training at 5PM and had also confirmed attendance I didn’t bother to send him a message. My mistake since he wasn’t there when I showed up at 5. When I walked in to the wushu guan the last group of long fist kids had just left and the whole place was empty.

Well, I didn’t worry too much about it so I went ahead and warmed up. I realized that he probably had forgotten. I decided to use this chance as an opportunity to do some self-training on my own. Plus it was kind of neat to have 4 whole professional carpets all to myself.

I did my warm ups and stretching. I tried to spend a bit more time on this because I was still extremely sore from Monday’s track workout.

Kids playing and warming up

After that I started in on my basics training. 4 lines of warm-up kicks and then I did 50 each of various kicks. Front stretch. Side stretch. Inside. Front Slap. I did 10 kicks per line, 5 lines of each, so a total of 200 kicks. But by the time I got to 200 I was extremely tired and my legs were jello-ized so I decided to move on to something else.

Horse stance. I knew the best way to work the lactic acid soreness out of my legs was to work the muscles and flush the stuff out. So I did a line of horse stances in one direction, then in the other. I did 40 mabu but after that it was time to stop as my legs were really feeling it.

I decided to use this time by myself to figure out some choreography for myself. I tried to figure out a new opening for my form. Didn’t really come up with anything I’m happy with, but at least thinking about it and playing around with some ideas gets me in that mode.

The Wushu guan at night

Around this time some kids started filtering in for the 7 PM practice groups. It was closing in on 6:30 so I thought it would be good to wrap things up. I sent a message to Yuan Min to let him know that I had trained on my own (just so he didn’t worry, in case he remembered that he was supposed to be there). Then I packed up my things and headed out.

I received a message from him later that night to say sorry and tell me to send him a message or call him the next time. No problem. I could do that.

When Friday came around I sent him a message earlier in the day to confirm if I should come to the 3PM training or not.

No answer.

Around 2:30 I sent another message: “hello?” Again no answer. Another message later “Are we not training tonight at 5PM?”. Again no answer.

So, I figured he decided not to meet up, or just didn’t get my messages. He had told me to contact him, which I tried to do, but since I didn’t get a reply I thought it would be a good chance to do some personal stuff.

Around 10:30 pm I got a message from him saying “did you get my message? I waited for you from 5PM to 6PM but you didn’t show up. Next time please let me know if you won’t come.” Whoops! I checked my messages again and I definitely received no reply from him.

I sent him a message back apologizing and saying that i would definitely call him next time to confirm the details. It seems like the two classes were a couple of missed communications. It happens, although it was a little embarassing (for both of us, probably).

So, now I know what I’ve always known about living in China. Communication is key. You have to confirm and re-confirm things over and over here. Not just with wushu but with everything. It is one of the hardest parts to get used to when living in China. You can’t take anything for granted or make any assumptions.

So, Monday I will call him and talk to him in person to confirm my training for that day.

The day off was good though. My legs feel nice and rested (and bigger) today and I’m glad I was able to let them breathe. Two practices this week instead of 3, but that is okay. Next week is another week and I will take things one day at a time.

I need to write up a Weekly Wu one of these days too. Not so much for all of you, but to help me remember what I’m supposed to keep up with on my plan and goals.

Here is a little video of some kids doing warm ups before their 7PM practice as well as a couple girls in the gymastics hall doing a bit of conditioning. Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. WTV #12: Condition: Dead
2. WTV #14: Alone at the track
3. WTV #10: A tumblin’ we will go

Qi Peng Hui on a nice sunny day

I’m becoming more familiar with the schedule with Yuan Min’s class so i knew without even checking that they would be at the track today. Luckily today’s weather was beautiful: blue skies, not too hot … not too cold … just right.

As I pulled up to the track the kids had already started jogging around. I waved to Yuan Min who was jogging around with the older nanquan girl and after parking my scooter and locking things up I walked to the track. He told me to warm up and then go 5 times around the track. There were quite a few groups out today, mostly sanda kids going through their conditioning (they must have the strongest lungs in the world) or doing drills of punching or kicking pads, or just getting brutalized by their coaches with endless amounts of body-breaking activities.

So I did my ligament stretching and joint warm-ups and got to jogging. I was able to jog for 200 meters to start, but after that I had to pace myself, so I would jog the straights (100m) and walk the curves (100m). So, 2 KM of that, which isn’t too bad. I haven’t run in a long time and it felt good to be back on the track.

Gratuitous shot of an athlete's six pack

In fact, I don’t think I’ve been on a track since sometime in the spring. At least 6 months ago.

By the time I had finished my 2 KM jog/walk, the rest of the kids were already neck deep in to their conditioning exercises. I did a bit of stretching to work out some stiffness in my calves. While I had been going around the track I noticed them doing calf raises along the fence, so I thought it good to do those as well. 4 sets of 50 for a total of 200 calf raises. After I finished with that Yuan Min told me to join the group.

They were doing lines of conditioning exercises. About 10 meters back and forth in an endless parade of motion. When I joined they were doing low walks — sort of like a duck walk but your legs don’t go below 90 degrees — quite brutal on the quads. They did 5 lines of that. Then 5 lines of bunny hops. They repeated that whole rotation about 5 times so a total of 25 laps (or 50 lines) of each (100 total lines). I joined them in on their 3rd pass so I only had to do 2 and a half rotations, but even so the bunny hops really did me in. Especially after 200 calf raises. By the end I was only able to do about 20 bunny hops before walking a bit and then continuing with another 20.

pushups at the track

A bouncy bunny, I am not.

After that it was time for a different routine. This time it was some fast high-knees and sprints. We would take turns standing next to Yuan Min doing high knees as fast as we could. After a few seconds he would clap his hands and we’d have to turn around and sprint as fast as we could for 25 meters. Then walk back and do it again. There were 9 of us so by the time you go back to where he was you only got about 15 seconds to rest before you had to go again.

We did about 10 or 12 of those. I paced myself again. Every 4 of so I had to take a break for 1. So I did 80% of them, which I felt was pretty good considering my physical condition.

After that it was time for more running. He split everyone up in to two groups of 4 (he told me to sit out this one) and had them do 400 meter sprints (one lap) around the track. After their first rotation I felt the need to participate so I ran along with the little kids group when it was their turn. Of course I was way in the back, but I actually ran the whole 400 meters, which surprised me. But y’know … a good surprise.

Two of the kids had to run a LOT

As a group they did about 4 of those, or about a mile of sprinting. While they were running around I spent the time walking through my choreography and cheering them on with a lot of jiayou‘s.

Two of the kids apparently weren’t doing too well, so he had them keep running 400 meter sprints for the rest of the class. He had the older nanquan girl monitor them. She would start them off on their run and when they got back she would give them about 5 minutes to rest and then have them run around the track again. This continued for about 40 minutes. It didn’t look very fun.

One of them, Xin Rui, (the nanquan girl who I embarrassingly thought was a boy for a long time) was running almost as slow as me, so I think it was meant to improve her endurance and stamina.

Meanwhile the rest of us got to do some work along the fence. First hand-stands, holding ourselves there for about 2 minutes. I couldn’t last that long but I did as many as I could. 5 sets of those. Then we did some pushups with our feet elevated. I opted for planks instead, but I was still shaking quite a bit with those. About 3 sets of them, while the rest of the kids did their pushups for 5 sets. Actually, after my 3rd set Yuan Min told me to take a break.

Little nanquan girl running sprints while another boy walks back to the starting point.

Then we were told to follow Yuan Min to the starting line for the 100 meter dash. He had Qi Peng Hui stand at the 30 meter mark. We were told to do frog leaps for 30 meters followed by a long step sprint (hard to describe) for the remaining 70 meters. Since the long-step sprint was hard on my ankles he said I could just do a normal running sprint.

Let me tell you … running a sprint after doing 30 meters of frog leaps is no picnic. (30 meters is about 30 frog leaps, in case you were wondering.) The first time I was spent, but still okay. The second time, however, I could barely walk back and my feet were dragging as I walked back to the start of the line. He told me to take a rest and I didn’t feel compelled to argue with his logic. Truth was I was sucking some major air so he probably realized I was close to the end of my rope.

The rest of the kids did 5 rounds of that in total.

Then he walked down to the end of the 100 meters and had Qi Peng Hui join us at the starting line. He was going to have us run 100 meter sprints. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, but I didn’t want to just stand around, so I joined in with the last little nanquan girl as she did her run. I was able to keep up with her, but probably only because she had been working waaaaay harder than I.

His body language says it all

When I made it to the end of the 100 meters Yuan Min told me it was 5PM and I could go. But he was also nice enough to say “You did good today”.

“I still have a ways to go, but I think it’s better than before.” I replied.

“Compared to the first workout” he added “you have improved a lot.” and then we both chuckled at the thought of how out of shape I was just 6 weeks ago.

As usual, I could only snap photos and videos when I was able to take a quick break, but you can see a bit of the scene here. Some of the pictures turned out nice since it was “magic hour” and the sun was about to set.

After I went back to my office I realized that my legs had really gotten worked hard. Harder than I think I’ve worked them in many many years. Walking required me to keep my legs straight, because if I bent them too much my quads didn’t have the strength to hold my body up and I would start to fall forward. Almost total muscle failure. Its really going to be sore on Wednesday!

Oh, by the way, I got a message from Wu Ya Nan who is on his way back from his first place win in Taiji Jian at the World Wushu Games in Turkey. He’ll be back tomorrow and so I will hopefully see him around on Wednesday in the wushu guan. I haven’t seen that guy in over a year so it will be nice to reconnect.

Until then … jiayou.

Related posts:

1. WTV #13: Solo Practice
2. WTV #14: Alone at the track
3. WTV #10: A tumblin’ we will go

Pardon me. I can’t help myself.

A really nice sunset over the sports center.

So, today was day 3 of the week for wushu.  My scooter is still out of commission (will get it fixed this weekend) so I cabbed it up to the wushu guan, arriving as they were finishing up their jog around the carpet and preparing for a game of wushu tag.

While they did that I did my own warm up with the jump rope.  A thicker rope this time, which turned out to be quite the challenge and really good for the forearms.  I’ll have to do that one again.  Just 50 x 5 sets of those since my arms started to burn a bit.

Then it was stretching and on to basics.  We did 6 lines of loose kicks, and then 3 sets of the quick kick relay races I mentioned a while back.

10 continuous front slap > run down the carpet > 10 continuous inside kicks > run back > 10 continuous outside kicks > run again.

I was pretty winded and my stamina isn’t quite enough for the last set of kicks so I did 8, 8 and 5, which means I barely kept up with the little girl who was my partner for this exercise.

After that they moved on to jumps so I did my horse stance training on the side.  For sure my legs are getting stronger because these are getting easier.  I was able to do 8 sets of 10, or 80 mabu and then followed that with bow stance holding, about 30 seconds x 6 or so.

I know what you’re thinking.  “Bow stance holding?  huh?”  But actually holding a good and proper bow stance for a while isn’t all that easy.  Holding a crappy bow stance is pretty easy, but a full extended and deep one?  Not so much.  But it helped open up and stretch out my legs.

Then I followed all that with some wall sits, horse stance position. Maybe 3 sets of 45 seconds on those.  Not too bad, but my legs were getting worked by then.

Another, only slightly different photo of the sunset. Yup. No wushu-related photos today.

Around this time the kids finished jumping around the carpet and moved on to combinations from their form.  I would say we did about 15 lines of combos before my time was up.  Or around 50 minutes total.  That is a whole lot of nanquan.  They were still going when I left around 5PM to go back to work, and I managed to snap some video footage as I did some cool down stretches.

One thing I wish I could have take video of was the A team’s demo practice.  They were preparing for a demo, and their full performance was around 20 minutes long.  It included lots of traditional styles (the usual suspects), taiji jian (now home of the world champion Taiji Jian athlete!) and was great to watch.

But while they were doing their demo I was doing my endless lines of nanquan combos so I couldn’t take any footage.  Plus they are on the far side of the room so it doesn’t make sense to run and get my iPhone and then run over and take video of them.

So, that happened, but you will just have to take my word that it was fun to watch.

After class I headed back to the office to finish up some work.  My body is pretty sore, but after 3 classes this week that is to be expected.  I think a massage is in order and probably some serious sleeping in as well.

Next week I am going to focus on a few things, but I will leave that information for the Weekly Wu, which I shall write up over the weekend.  Keep your eyes peeled for that while I get this video uploaded.  Oh, look!  Here it is …   Enjoy.

Related posts:

1. WTV #4 – Yuan Min and I
2. WTV #8: Nanquan Basics
3. WTV #6: 3pm Nanquan

I sent Yuan Min a message around 2PM to let him know that I would be a little late to practice as I had a few things to finish up at work.  When I got there the kids had just finished their stretching so I quickly got my stretch on and warmed up.  When I was ready to join they had started working on so

Our youngest nanquan girl

me tumbling lines.  Mainly forward rolls, which I joined in on.

They would do 3 or 4 lines of each various type of tumbling basic.  Forward rolls.  Backwards rolls.  Dive rolls.  A few other things.  And then when it go to some ground falling stuff like the toss back on to the back of your shoulders — I guess we call it a “break fall”?  Then he had the kids bring some pads out to practice those.  We did a bunch of them, then moved on to the straight body back fall from ditang quan.  A bunch of those too.

Then we did the jump straight up to a double leg kick and land on your back.  I had never done it before but I was game.  It was actually not too bad.

After the cushion work we went back to the carpet to work on forward head-springs.  I was able to do some of those too.  Not very elegant, but I got myself over.

Resting between rounds of conditioning

Pretty much the whole practice was doing these sorts of ditan-esque techniques.  We did the black dragon roll-get-up thingee, a back hand spring and … well, a few other things I can’t remember

The whole time we were working on this the changquan group was also working on ditang stuff, but theirs was more related to long-fisty types of ditang stuff.  They even worked on some drunken techniques too.  I guess a coach needs to vary up the routine from time to time or else the class can get stale.

While the two youth groups were working on these the “A Team” was practicing their traditional forms.  Lots of fanzi, some baji quan, double hooks, double whips and lots more fanzi.  Well, Shaanxi is the home of fanzi and their coach is Chu Feng Ling, the 80′s Fanzi Quan champion of China, so they know what they’re doing.  Even some of their newbie fanzi kids are pretty good.

I was able to snap some footage of the practice and broke it in to three videos.  One is the end-of-class conditioning from my nanquan kids, the second is the chang quan group’s ditang tumbling practice along with one kid going through a section or so of his form, and finally a few people doing ditang, including a girl who you see close-up at the end of the video. She wanted to see her footage so i showed her.  The whole time she kepts saying under her breath how high her stances were and how poorly she had done.

Another of my nanquan compatriots

Sure, it wans’t amazing, but she’s only been doing fanzi for a little while.  It seems pretty good to me and my 1 month of fanzi quan with Li Jing back in L.A. 8 years ago.

After class and conditioning I headed out, but about an hour later I could feel soreness in my neck.  I was definitely going to feel some of those headsprings and kip-ups.  My neck muscles aren’t quite developed yet, but that will soon be remedied.

Oh, and since I didn’t have to run back to work right after practice I stayed a little while to figure out a beginning to my nanquan form.  I think I have a good one.  I’m trying to do some more traditional techniques in my form this time around.  Well, of course everything is “traditional” in some sense.  But when you watch my nanquan I want you to think “Ah .. Mark is going old school”.

One more practice and it is 3 for the week!  A new record!

Here are some videos.  First up, my Wushu Training Vlog for the day:

Second, you can see some of the changquan kids practicing tumbling and one of them going through his ditang quan form.

And finally, here are a few athletes doing their fanzi quan.

Related posts:

1. WTV #14: Alone at the track
2. WTV #12: Condition: Dead
3. WTV #5: Keeping in iTouch

Previously On …

Wu to the Shu

So, before stating my plan for the month of October I want to analyze how I’ve done on my program so far and make sure my progress is on track.

As you will recall my goal for the next year is to be competition ready by June 1, 2012.  That means that I have several short-term goals to get up to that level:

Month 1 (by October 1, 2011)

• Continue training with a private coach 3 times per week – focusing on wushu fundamentals.
• Continue conditioning on my own (flexibility, strength, endurance) 3 times per week.

Month 3 (by December 1, 2011)

• Training with the Shaanxi Wushu Team 3 times per week.
• Continue conditioning on my own (flexibility, strength, endurance) 3 times per week.
• Have initial choreography for my nanquan  nangun and nandao forms.

Month 6 (by March 1, 2012)

• Training with the Shaanxi Wushu Team 5 times per week.
• Complete “final” choreography for my nanquan, nangun and nandao forms.

So, for the goals due on October 1 I’m a little short.  I’ve been training 2 times per week, mainly waiting for my body to acclimate.  The first week I was sore for several days after the training, so having 3 – 4 days to recuperate was necessary.  But now I’m mainly sore the day after, but by day 3 I’m more or less okay again.  So, for October I’m increasing my training to 3 times per week.  Week 1 this didn’t happen, but it looks to be on track for week 2 and on.

Home away from home

The other area I’ve fallen short on is my own conditioning.  Mainly because I’ve been pretty sore on my off-days so I didn’t feel compelled to make things worse by working out.  But I really think that at least some stretching would be beneficial so I would like to make sure I incorporate that in to my routine.

Looking forward at my 3 month goals (due December 1) I realize I need to get myself in gear if I want to accomplish them.  I’m not ready to practice with the professional team yet.  Heck, I’m barely able to keep up with 12 year olds.  I don’t have any work done on my own choreography, mainly focusing on learning the form that Yuan Min has been teaching me.  But then, it says “initial choreography” so I mainly just want to have a framework for my forms.  Sort of a 80% finished situation.

Okay, so for October, what do I need to do in order to meet my 3 month goals?

Wushu Frequency

Wushu Kids, ready for action

First, I need to increase the number of times I work out each week.  Actually, this week (October 10-17) will be the first one in which I get to 3 workouts during the week.  Mainly because I’ve finally bitten the bullet and told my boss at work that I will be going to wushu during the afternoon on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Her response?  “I don’t need to know where you are.  Just make sure you get your work done and put in the time you need.”

Eeeeeexcellent.

And so far so good.  I left for 2 hours in the afternoon on Monday and was able to get in a good workout and still get in to work and finish up my stuff.  Actually, I usually get a little groggy in the afternoon so forcing myself to go to wushu in the middle of the day is a good wake-me-up.

As long as I can continue working out around 3 times a week (occasionally, due to work, I might not be able to get in all three workouts) I will be ready after 2 months to start training with the older athletes.

Although, to be honest, I’m not sure that will be completely necessary.  The truth is, I’m getting in some really good, focused nanquan training with the kids.  That is their focus, after all.  It might do my wushu some good to just keep training with nanquan kids and really get my fundamentals up to par.

But, that is something to consider when the time comes.  For now I will prepare for full-on professional training in December.

At-Home Conditioning

Next is my conditioning.  After some consideration, I’ve come to realize that right now, while I’m trying to re-build my strength and endurance, my body needs the time between workouts to recover.  3 times a week of intense wushu, strength and endurance training is probably okay at this point.  What I should really work on during my off-days is stretching.

The Wushu Guan

So, aside from my wushu classes, I will also incorporate a stretching routine in to my day.  I tend to find that morning is the best time for me to do this, as that is when I am tightest, and that is also when it does me the most good for the rest of my day.  I might throw in some kettlebell swings and pushups for good measure, but for the most part that is going to be my stretching time.

Once my body is stronger and I’m training consistently without any discomfort (relatively speaking) I will revisit the idea of incorporating some strength training and conditioning on my off-days.  Fortunately the wushu classes usually have these during the week so I might not have to worry about it.

Getting my Groove Back

And finally, the choreography.  I have to think about what sort of form I want to have.  Right now I’m focused on practicing Yuan Min’s nanquan form.  It has some challenging parts that are good for my mental exercise too.   So, for October, I’m going to focus on having a structure of a complete form for nanquan, based on his form.

Since almost all of our forms practice is just an endless array of combos, (over and over and over again) I have some good opportunity to work out the kinks in what I’m learning.  As you may have read in my last WTV, we did about 150 nanquan combos over the course of an hour.  Basically just 4 different ones.  So … yeah.  A lot of that going on.

Nutrient Density

That is some serious graffiti

One thing that wasn’t covered in my original goals was anything to do with nutrition.  And to be honest, nutrition is one area that I tend to shirk when I do wushu.  Part of me is thinking “well, I’m working out like crazy.  Why can’t I eat what I like?”  But of course, that doesn’t really make any sense.

Working out like “crazy” is actually when you need the most nutrient dense foods in your system so that you can utilize them for your workouts and recovery.

I have a good nutrition plan that I have followed in the past, based on the Slow Carb plan from The Four Hour Body.  It has gotten me some good results, but I’ve been slacking since starting back up with wushu.  Time to get back on that horse and ride it until the end of the year.

The benefit of that is that the increased weight loss will help my wushu quite a bit.

October-Fest

So, there we have it.  My October wushu plan. The Monthly Ma.

1. Maintain 3 wushu classes a week
2. Follow a daily stretching routine
3. Finish a structure for my nanquan form
4. Follow a solid nutrition plan

20 days left in the month, so it should be quite do-able.  Wish me luck!

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