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Posts Tagged ‘shaanxi wushu team’

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!

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.

Tuesday I didn’t make it to practice, so I went on Wednesday instead.  But it turns out I might as well not have gone since it was a pretty light day.  Here is my training vlog.  Enjoy!

As you can see from the title, I’m going to do a bit of an experiment this month and instead of writing out these super long blogs (which actually don’t take THAT much time) I’m going to try to use my small camera to record more in-the-wushu-guan vlogs (video blogs), which I can just put up quickly.   This one is actually a little long because I took a few different clips and had to string them together, but if I can get things working right it should make the process much faster in the future.

A few things that aren’t on the video …

1. My nanquan section run-down for today: 4 x 4, 3 x 4, 2 x 4, 1-2, 3-4.  So, 12 single sections and two half sets.  Considering that I felt like crap most of the class, thats not too bad.  I actually noticed my endurance and recovery was markedly improved from the previous week. 

2. Xiao Yu mentioned that their commissary (lunch room) has a card system for non-athletes.  You can buy a card and put money on it and then just use that to buy various ala carte items from their food offerings.  I might try that out some time and put up a vlog about it so that you guys can check it out. 

3. Today Zhang Laoshi wasn’t there so Han Laoshi coached us.  He gave me a few “Ma Ke! (Mark!)” which was nice.  He actually remembers my name now.

Enjoy the video, and let me know what you think.  Do you like this sort of thing or do you prefer to read the written word.  Leave a comment! (BTW, if you have been having problems logging in, it isn’t you. My site is a little wonky and I haven’t had time to fix it yet.  Until then you can go here to login.

 

For those on alivenotdead and facebook, be sure to visit wushuzilla.com to read this blog in its entirety, with the full glory of videos and media!

I entered the wushu guan a little late on Friday thinking that the athletes would already be running around and getting warmed up. But when I walked in only Xiao Yu was on the carpet rolling her ankles and wrists.  I looked at her inquisitively and she shrugged her shoulders.

“Its just me!” she offered.

Oh right.  Fridays were light because most of the athletes in my group had school (or something) going on so it was just the non-school-attending professional athletes that showed up.  Today that was just Xiao Yu, Yuan Min and myself (sans the “professional” part).

To warm up Zhang Laoshi and the three of us played a little game of keep-away soccer.  On the other carpets were the taiji group as well as the kids from up north.  I also noticed that a few very young kids were training on the far side.  3 new children that I hadn’t seen before, 2 boys and a girl, probably around 7 or 8 years old.

While they were stretching out I noticed that the three of them were pretty flexible, but I thought that wasn’t particularly unusual.  But when the little girl did her front stretch kicks I had to pick my jaw up off the ground.  They were really, really impressive.  Whoever has been training her is doing a bang-up job because her zheng ti tui was spot-on.  Her other kicks need a little work, but she has that unique combination of power and flexibility that eludes a lot of younger kids.  You will see kids that have a lot of one or the other, but it is hard to find someone who can use both effectively.

I was doing my own training so I didn’t get any footage of her front stretch kick, but I did manage to get some of their other basics training.  Here are some of their kicks for your viewing pleasure.

 

For myself, I spent most of the class working on my choreography.  I worked through the rest of my nangun form, fine-tuning it and working out all the sections.  I now have something I can practice, which is nice.  I just have to be sure to keep it up so that I don’t forget it.

While I was training I also managed to get a bit more footage.  The benefit of it being a light day for me is that I can capture footage of other people training.  Here is a young woman practicing some taiji jian.

The wushu youths from up north were hard at work too.  Their coach (Coach Zhang’s assistant, who’s name I’m not sure of.  And for some reason he calls Xiao Yu and I “Garfield” –- ironically the same name that Han Jing called me back in 1999 in Beijing … Do I really look like Garfield?  No, wait – don’t answer that.) has really been giving them their money’s worth and they get tons of pointers.  Here is him giving them some pointers.

And here are the same youths running through some sections at the end of class.

And finally here is some footage of the wushu kids.  After their basics, but before they started conditioning they took a little break on the side of the room so I captured some of that.

And I also got some of their conditioning too. 

And that is pretty much it for Friday’s class.  I have already posted up my vlog and have prepared the blog for Monday’s class (2/1) so you get a double-dose of wushu blogginess today.  yay!

NOTE: For those of you on Facebook, you will want to visit my YouTube Channel to view all of the videos, since Facebook’s lame importing functionality doesn’t allow for embeded videos.

As I mentioned before, I had gotten permission from Zhang Laoshi and Han Laoshi to have a couple of my 外国朋友 (foreign friends) visit the wushu guan to check out the professional athletes doing their thing.  James and Charisse, along with Ruhi, jumped on the bus with me at the crack of morning and we made our way to the morning class.

Of course, what you are really wanting to know about is whether or not Ruhi was able to take any videos of the practice.  Well, you had best throw some appreciation towards the wife because she got a ton of really good footage which I am still organizing and editing to put online for everyone to watch.  Of course, by the time you read this I should be done, but just pretend that you had to wait an unreasonable amount of time, okay?

James even brought his camera along and was nice enough to toss his photos my way for posting online.  So, you can also throw a few “谢谢”over to him as well.

First up are some basics.  You might notice that I intentionally cut my own basics out of the videos.  I figured that (a) you don’t want me wasting precious bandwidth and resources with my sub-standard jibbengong and (b) it wasn’t something that you don’t probably see in your own wushu guan all the time anyway.  Not to worry, I will have a video of my own wushu later on in the blog …

It turned out that this particular day was a heavy nandu focus for training.  All the athletes had to do full nandu combinations many times.  So, of course that means we were able to get some pretty good nandu footage of the practice:

On the far carpet, as you can see from the previous two videos, there was a group of younger athletes training.  I mentioned them before – they are the ones from Northern Shaanxi.  It seems that they are here much in the same way that schools from the U.S. come to China for a month in the summer to train in Wushu.  The main distinction is that these kids are from China so there is no language or cultural barrier, and they are all much better than kids their age in other countries.  But the idea is sort of similar, since they are currently on a break from school so their coaches brought them to train with the “professional” wushu athletes.  Here is some of them:

And, as I mentioned, James was nice enough to snap some pictures of the practice.  Here are a few from the basics and nandu training:

 

 

 

He managed to take some pretty nice shots, huh?

Anyway, after basics and nandu it was time for forms.  Yuan Min told me that we were going to do 16 sections, so I decided to run through 3 of each of my nanquan sections, for a total of 12, and then go through my first section of nan gun 4 more time to flesh out the full 16.  I actually ended up doing something a bit more like this:

1 x 3, 2 x 3, rest 1 rotation, 3 x 3, 4 x 3, ng x 3

I really needed to take a short break in the middle there.  I’m not quite up to the endurance required for 16 sections in a group of just 6 other people.  The turn around is about 2 – 3 minutes for your physical recovery so it is pretty intense.  Not quite as intense as that SCWA practice in 2001 where I had to do 8 full forms in a rotation with 3 other people … but it was almost like that.

Here is some of the athlete practice media.  First up is Yue Xiao Yu.  You can see some really good intensity in the video of her nanquan.  I also like some of the pictures James took of her:

 

 

 

After her we’ll watch Yuan Min’s video.  i really like how his nan gun form is shaping up.  As you might recall, 2 weeks ago he taught me his nangun form.  Then a week later he proceeded to rechoreograph almost the entire thing and make himself an even cooler form.  So I’m stuck with his outdated hchoreography and he gets to look bad ass.  I don’t really mind though.  Even his outdated choreography is better than what I could have come up with on my own.

 

He was giving me a few pointers in that last picture, although the suggestions he gave me during class were way out of my ability level.  Some day though …. some.day.

Here are two more southern athletes.  One is a younger man who’s name I don’t know (practicing nan gun) and the other is Tian Jing Fang doing some nanquan.

 

 

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a wushu practice if someone wasn’t doing a bit of chang quan in the room.  Here are two athletes demonstrating a bit of that. The younger man in the first video is actually practicing with a wrapped ankle, so that is why he is sort of taking it a bit easy on some of the moves.

 

 

While we were doing our wushu thing, the taiji group was practicing over on the left side of the carpet.  Ruhi managed to get a bit of them doing some taiji.  So here is some of that.

Recently after practices the coach has had us do some stretching together in a circle.  A new development that I am actually rather enjoying. 

After class I asked James, Charisse and Ruhi what they thought of the class.  For James and Charisse this was the first time they had ever seen wushu, so it was nice to hear a fresh perspective on things.  I’ve been around wushu for so long that it is sometimes hard to remember how it felt to discover wushu for the first time.  As a bit of background on them, Charisse has around 10 years of dance/ballet experience and James did crew (rowing) at Stanford, so they both have an appreciation for physical sports and exercise.

And, as promised, here is a video of my nanquan practice from Thursday.  I will just say right now that my form needs work.  But it is at least better than it was before, and I am hopeful that it will continue to improve in to the future.

I realize this was a few days late but hopefully the abundance of wushu videos made it worth your while.  I have some more footage from Friday’s class too, which I will try to post up tomorrow if I have any time, including a pretty amazing little girl that has some pretty killer basics.  I don’t know who she is, but if she is up for adoption I might have to put in a bid.

Stay tuned for that in the next blog! 

Today’s practice was brought to you by the number 3. As in the third section of my nanqan form, which is what I was spending most of my time working on today.

The first part of class started off like most others. Warm ups (led by Yuan Ming), stretching and basics. Then it was time for sections. I started with my 4th section and went through it 4 times (I guess today is also brought to you by the number 4) but when it was time for me to start on the 3rd section I realized I didn’t really have it fully figured out yet.

Some of the athletes, like Xiao Yu, were on the other carpet working through their stuff, so I joined them and spent most of the class trying to fix the things that didn’t feel right with my 3rd section. Part of what I was working on was utilizing some of the suggestions that Gao Song had made regarding my movements in Hong Kong. But utilizing that feedback requires me to really retool some of my form.

Actually, most of my form.  He sort of shifted my paradigm a bit so I need to go through each movement and re-evaluate how I do it and whether or not it fits in with my personal style of wushu and nanquan.  A daunting task to be sure.

Anyway, after class I needed to pick up a memory stick that Xiao Yu had borrowed, but since she had left it in her dorm room she said I could go with her to check out what the living conditions are like for the athletes.

Actually, I had a few surprises.  Which I suppose I shouldn’t have had since I’ve seen the dorms before, albeit a different building.  Back in 2008 during the China Nationals in Xi’an, Wu Di and Zhao Qing Jian were living on the same campus while training with the China National Team for a demo in Taiwan.  I got to visit their room then.  In fact, here is a picture from that:

Anyway, the dorms are pretty much as I expected them to be.  Think post-industrial concrete meets pre-modern industrial.  A little utilitarian, but still quite livable.  The one thing that I was really impressed with was that each room only housed two athletes (unlike the 6 person rooms back in Beijing or the 4 person rooms in Shanghai) and each room had its own bathroom.  Thats right!  No communal toilets.  Rather nice.

Yue Xiao Yu’s roommate was Zhang Yang, who you might remember from this blog entry.  Xiao Yu is also quite the entrepreneur.  I remember when she came to my house a few weeks back, she mentioned that she would take the bus (1 RMB each way) to the train station to buy candies and various 点心 and then bring them back and sell them in her room.

The store at the school sold them for a little more than she did, so the students would prefer to buy them from her since it was cheaper and she was closer than the store located in the next building over.  She made a small amount of money because her costs were lower than she sold them for.  Not a ton of money (we’re talking a few mao per sale) but it was still pretty industrious of her.

Fast forward to today and I got to see the operation in action.  Actually she stopped doing it, but she still has some stock left over from her last trip to the Train Station so until she sells out she can keep selling them.

One of the little kids (from this blog entry) came in while I was there, clenching a 20RMB note in her hand ready to buy some candies.  It was pretty cute.  One of the Taiji athletes came in as well and bought something to eat.  It was mostly candies, crackers, chips .. that sort of thing.

While we were there I tried to show her my alive.tom.com blog (since it is the only place my photos are viewable in China) but her connection was super slow so it didn’t load up.  In the meantime she showed me her QQ page and the little girl also used her computer to check something.  I got some pictures of them here:

One of the things we talked about was a few questions I had related to having foreigners come and train with the Shaanxi Team. I’ve had one or two requests for specific information related to training here (mainly for people wanting to come during the summer) so I was doing some investigating.

I have to say that, while I enjoy having a professional wushu team all to my self, I realize that this is a pretty nice situation and a decent facility and that some other folks out there might be interested in knowing more about what it would take to come train here too. Especially since planning for your summer China training trips are probably in the works.

The other nice thing about this location is that it is probably the only city in China that has a richer history than Beijing (or at least pretty darn close), and some of the greatest tourist sites in the country. Add that to the fact that it is sooo much cheaper than training at Shi Cha Hai (but also keeping in mind that it isn’t a fancy 5 star hotel either — in case that sort of thing is important to you), and I personally think that it is a nice option for those who might be interested.

In any case, I’m not a travel agent, but if you want some information feel free to contact me through my website’s contact form and I will keep you in the loop with whatever I find out regarding training options in Xi’an.

Next practice … Wednesday morning!

Today was just my second wushu practice this week.  Which meant two things:

1. I wouldn’t be too sore during practice since my body had been given some recovery time after Monday’s practice with the Hong Kong Team.

2. I would most likely be wiped out after class.

But when the athletes showed up there was just 3 other people in my group.  The taiji group was all there (and working hard as usual) but in Coach Zhang’s group it was just Yuan Ming, Zhang Yuan Biao and the young girl from Zhejiang who always wears a purple jacket.  It turned out that everyone was in school, and even Xiao Yu, who is usually there, was off taking a driving class. (Beware pedestrians of Xi’an!)

We started off with a light game of keep-away soccer, which actually helped me build up a suitable sweat.

But the class itself was pretty much a self-study class.  The Zhejiang girl went off with Coach Zhang’s assistant coach on the far side of the room to do a bunch of basics, but the rest (3) of us were told to just work on our forms and choregraphy.

I saw Yuan Ming pull out a nangun from the storage room so, remembering he told me he would teach me his form I asked him “When would you be able to teach me your nangun form?” to which he answered “Right now”.  I rushed in the storage room and grabbed a nangun for myself and then met him on the carpet.

He showed me 3 sections of his form (basically the form minus the nandu) in about 20 minutes or so and I spent the rest of the time working through the details on my own.  I incorporated some of my best/favorite moves from my previous nangun form and used them to fill in some of the gaps from his.  I spent the better part of an hour just working out my choreography.  It was, for me, a good class, because I needed to develop a decent nangun form and the one I had developed on my own wasn’t so hot.

From this point I can take what I have and slowly evaluate each area to find weaknesses and determine if I need to swap anything else out.  This is the part that is interesting, since I get to really work on the meat of the form and fine tune the details.

In case you forgot what his nangun looks like, here is a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbKVqStQQtE

Naturally it is going to take me a bajillion years to make it look half-way decent, but at least I have something besides nanquan to work on.

I think later in the spring I’m going to work on retooling my nandao form too.  But for now, this is plenty.

Monday work was super busy so I didn’t go to wushu. So my first day of wushu this week was Wednesday (today). And it was pretty brutal.

Not so much because it was super hard, but because the atmosphere was super intense. Coach Zhang wasn’t there today and so Coach Han, the head coach for the Taolu Athletes, was coaching us. And like I said before, he doesn’t take any prisoners.

If you can imagine the achetype of the Chinese wushu coach that barks out orders, has a constant scowl on his face and strikes fear into the hearts of young athletes, that would be Coach Han. I’m sure he’s a super nice guy outside of the wushu guan, but inside he’s 100% business.

The class started off with a lot of running. It was the usual set of running, but a bit more than usual. I had to stand out towards the end because my knee was twinging a bit, but it certainly helped me work up a sweat. Which is good because it was pretty cold in the wushu guan today.

Then we did basics. Again, not so many more than usual, but much more intense than usual. During nandu I worked on my horse stance basics — about 5 or 6 lines of them — and then worked on revamping some of my choreography. The “Ask the ‘Zilla” from yesterday got me thinking about my choreography so I tried to fix a few of the areas in my form that I wasn’t happy with.  I like the new stuff much better so I’m glad I spent the time doing that.

Tian Jin Fan and Yue Xiao Yu were also sitting out of nandu and working on their choreography on the side so at least I wasn’t alone.

But soon enough it was time for 分段 (sections).  We were supposed to do 12 sections so I decided to do 4 of each of my last 3 sections — which are the ones that I was trying to fix.  But after the 10th we switched to something else so I ended up doing the following: 4,4,4,4,3,3,3,3,2,2.

And what was it we switched to?  3/4 forms!  Thats right.  3 sections together.  I did 2-3-4, but I sure didn’t finish strong and was huffing and puffing afterwards.  I was happy that I was able to do it though.  My endurance is definitely improving because I would have never been able to do 10 sections plus a 3/4 set a month ago.

One nice thing during class was that one of the athletes gave me a compliment and a critique.  He said that my form looks good.  And he also said that I should work on my eyes.  And he was right.  My eyes have been a little lack-luster lately.  I used to focus on that quite a bit more so I think I need to start upping the eye-work and bringing the intensity back.

So, intensity was the theme for today. And it is something I need to work on for myself too.  While Coach Han is pretty brutal, I don’t mind too much and can really appreciate that level of focus during a class.

In any case, class ended and I headed home.  This afternoon Yue Xiao Yu is going to take Ruhi and I to meet a professor/teacher at the Xian Sports University (i.e. 西安体育学院) to talk about their programs for wushu and Chinese.  I’ve been wanting to find out more because I’m thinking about going there for a study program in the spring — mostly for Chinese, but it doesn’t hurt to get the lay of the land.  Also, it is a relatively close school to where I live.

Next class is Friday and then I am heading to Hong Kong for a few days again.  This time I’m going to try to go meet up with Gao Song and possibly get in a workout with the Hong Kong kids class which meets in the evenings out in Ma On Shan.  Wish me luck!

Technically I’m writing this a few days late, but thats okay, since I come bearing gifts.  Specifically, wushu videos.

Ruhi had asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday on Friday.  My automatic answer was “Go to wushu”, so first thing Friday morning, January 1, 2010, we headed out to the wushu guan to get in a bit of wushu goodness.  She was also nice enough to film some of the practice for me, so you have her to thank for the footage.

Today seemed a little more serious than usual.  The head taolu coach (who’s name escapes me at the moment) was there and … well, actually he is always there.  But today he actually was coaching.  But fortunately for me he was coaching the group that I was not in, because he wasn’t taking any prisoners today.

At one point Ruhi heard him ask Xiao Yu, “Who are they?” (referring to Ruhi and I) and she answered “Oh, they’re always here”.  Which, I figured he should have known since he saw me there all the time.  But I guess today was the first day he bothered to ask someone who I was.  But its nice to know that I’ve become a fixture of the team.  Sort of like a mascot, I guess.

Basics were split up between the northern group and us southern folks.  Here is a video of some combination work.  You can sort of see me working on my horse stance in between the two carpets.  I try to do a few lines of these each class, usually while they are working on nandu.  But today they didn’t do specific nandu training, so I fit it in during lines of combinations.  For those of you who have trained with me in the U.S. you will notice that my horse stance is finally getting to a respectable depth.  Trust me, it took a lot of work just to get it where it is.  Got a lot more work left to get it just right … Especially during a form where I tend to come out of it more than I’d like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2U3bexOXKU

Anyway, after basics and combinations we split up and the southern folks, along with a few northerners (whom I like to call the “A Team”, for lack of a better designation) went to the NorthEast carpet (for lack of a better designation) while the “B Team” worked out on the NorthWest carpet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKX9VEMc3NE

I took a look at the schedule for today.  8 half sets!  Holy cow!  It was going to be quite the challenge … and as it turned out I was only able to squeeze out 4 of them before the end of class.  My sections were 3-4, 3-4, 2-3 and 1-2.

Before my last half-set, while I was sitting down and getting a drink, I noticed an older man in the wushu guan.  He didn’t look too familiar, so I walked over to Yuan Ming and asked him who he was.  It turns out he was the head coach for the entire wushu team.  Basically they guy that everyone else who does wushu or coaches wushu reports to.  The Wu Bin of the Shaanxi Team, if you will.

And of course he comes and stands next to Coach Zhang just as I’m about to go up and do my sections.  Ruhi heard him ask Coach Zhang who I was and asking him what was up with my stomach (i.e. “Why is he so big and what is he doing here?”)

Well, I guess he liked my wushu okay because after I went he walked over to Ruhi and started talking with her.  Then, after a while I went over too and he introduced himself to me.  Song Bin.  He was very friendly, actually, and spoke with us for a good 20 minutes while the rest of the athletes were doing some conditioning and stretching.  He talked about the phrases written on the walls, about using my waist more when I did wushu and he even exchanged phone numbers with Ruhi so that he could pass on some information about a traditional shadow puppet show for us to watch.

It was a little surreal.

After class I did a bit of stretching and then we headed off.  But like I said, Ruhi took a lot of video so I’m going to show a few of the highlights here.

She also took some footage of my wushu training, so I’m going to stick that in the “members” section of wushuzilla.com for anyone who is interested.

Zhang Yang – Spear: I like her long fist, but for some reason she was practicing spear today. But thats okay. You can still check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuyyPIdp4aA

Changquan: I feel bad because I can’t remember this guy’s name, even though I’ve been told it a couple times. I want to say his last name is Zhao or Zhang, but I’m just not sure. Anyway, he is definitely the best long fist guy currently training with the Shaanxi Team so I asked Ruhi to be sure and get some of his stuff on video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KsEP-aWoXE

Yuan Ming – Nanquan: I really like Yuan Ming’s nanquan. He is super quick and his fast twitch makes other people’s fast twitch look like cold syrup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRJ_JHDX8L0

Long Weapons Practice: A few of the athletes practicing some long weapons. I just grouped these together since I wasn’t sure of their details and it wasn’t really long enough to make 3 individual videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5Or0hu3TE

Yue Xiao Yu – Nanquan: She was actually really doing some serious damange with her nanquan on Friday, but we just got this one bit of footage of her. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB6P9gNuwXM

Don’t forget that Ruhi got some footage of my nanquan, so I put that in the Members section on wushuzilla.com. Registration is free and takes less time than it did to read this sentence.