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Posts Tagged ‘videos’

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!

Today I made my way to the Sports Center to borrow a few silks from Xiao Yu (just helping some friends out with something).  I had to get there before they left for the train station since today was the day they were going to catch the train to Hangzhou for the competition which starts on Monday.

I made my way to her dorm room and hung out with her and Zhang Yang as they finished up their packing.  She was nice enough to give me a copy of the schedule for the competition events so I thought I would share it here with all of you.  One interesting thing is that they moved Changquan to the 3rd day.  Usually they have it on the morning of the first.  Anyway, here it is:

DATE	TIME	CARPET 1	CARPET 2
April 5 (Monday)	08:00	Women’s Daoshu (38) Women’s Qiangshu (34)	Men’s Daoshu (69)
	14:00	Men’s TaijiJian (43)
	19:30	Women’s Nanquan (30) Men’s Nanquan (41)	Men’s Jianshu (43)
April 6 (Tuesday)	08:00	Women’s Jianshu (35) Women’s Gunshu (38)	Men’s Gunshu (66)
	14:00	Women’s Taijiquan (42)
	19:30	Women’s Nandao (26) Men’s Nangun (37)	Men’s Qiangshu (43)
April 7 (Wednesday)	08:00	Women’s CQ (48) Men’s CQ (58)
	19:30	Women’s Taijijian (43)
April 8 (Thursday)	08:00	Men’s Taijiquan (43)
	14:00	Women’s Duilian (15) Men’s Duilian (16)

I’ve highlighted the events I definitely want to attend with red.  The ones in blue are ones that I would like to see, but may not get much footage of, either because they are concurrent with a preferred event on another carpet, or because I might not be there.  (Those 8 AM sessions are brutal).

Also, there is a slight chance that I might not get there until Monday afternoon, in which case I would be missing the Monday morning events.  I’ll have a better idea once the weekend is here what my status will be.

Anyway, I hung out with Xiao Yu and Zhang Yang for a bit.  Pretty soon Xiao Yu’s best friend (who’s name I forget) come in the room to help them bring their luggage downstairs.  She’s super nice and also from Shandong, Dong Ming.  A Sanda athlete who is apparently pretty good because she has her picture up as one of the athletes who were “celebrated” upon her return from the All China Games.  Don’t know if she medaled, but she probably got at least top 8 in her division.

She mentioned that she has a Sanda competition coming up in Anhui on April 8, so she will be preparing for that.  If any of you are in Anhui you can be sure to check it out. (She also mentioned that I’ve lost weight, so what she says MAY be subject to interpretation.   )

Wu Ya Nan met us at the bottom of the stairs and then we walked over to the bus.  As we were walking he said “I haven’t seen you in training much lately” and I mentioned that I had been in Hong Kong for a week for work.  But he’s right and I’ve been reflecting lately about my lack of attendance in the wushu guan.  Once I get back from the competition (hopefully rared up and motivated from watching lots of good wushu) I really want to revamp my commitment to my training.  I need to get in the gym more.

After a while the rest of the taolu athletes came and loaded themselves on the bus.  I took video of the whole thing so you don’t need too many details from me here.  Sufficeth to say it was neat to see them get the send-off for competition.  Now I kind of wish I had been able to go with them on the train, but it is good that I have a few days in Xi’an still since I have a lot to do.

Here is the video for you to enjoy!

 

One good thing about today was that I went running in the morning.  I was meeting James and Adam at their place so I decided to make it a run and hoofed it over.  Here is the map and distance:

So, not a super long distance, just 2.1 km.  But it felt good to get out on the road again.  I walked back as well, so I guess that is another 2.1 km of walking I can add to that.  I’m going to really try to do more running during this week away in Hangzhou / Shanghai.  Actually, I have a commitment with James and Adam that we each will go running every day for 2 weeks, so that is extra motivation for me to do it as well. 

Thats all for today.  There is some wushu classes at the Sports Center, but mainly just a few straggling kids.  I think I would rather focus on getting some of my projects finished so that when I come back to wushu after the competition I can really go at it full steam ahead.  Until then … lots of running!!

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.

As I mentioned before, I have a trip to Hong Kong planned for this week.  Actually, I’m sitting at the World Famous “Flying Pan” restaurant in mid-levels as I write this.  But first let me start at the beginning …

Leaving Xi’an

Inspired by my last trip to Hong Kong where I did a poor job of packing, I made sure that this time around I was the epitome of efficiency.  Everything I needed for a 6 day train trip to the South of China was in one small bag strapped across my back.  More on that later, but first a little bit about the trip from Xi’an.

I had booked a train ticket (soft sleeper upper bunk) leaving Monday, March 22 at 17:06 from Xi’an train station.  Normally I would have caught a bus from home to there (1 RMB on the #14 or #40 bus) but I was running a little late so I opted for the taxi (23 RMB).  I made it to the train on time and settled in to a nice bunk along with my 3 other cabin-mates.  During the whole trip I took video footage from various locations so instead of giving you the play-by-play, but unfortunately the video from Xi’an to Hunan didn’t turn out okay.  But I was able to get some video of a good chunk of my trip, so here is the video for you to enjoy:

As you can see, I finally made it to Hong Kong and as I mentioned before I am sitting at the “Flying Pan”, I had a sandwich and I’m doing a bit of work while waiting for Pat to come home. 

Packing Light

But before I sign off I just had to show you my packing video.  This shows what I packed on this trip and how I keep my travel quick and light. 

To be honest, I think I could have packed even less (I don’t really need the book, since I have the audio book too, but I did end up looking at it a lot) and I really should have brought a different pair of shoes (can’t beat my waterproof merrill’s) but packing is a constantly evolving art and each time I learn something new.  Hopefully you find this interesting:

I pack differently for different types of trips.  This summer when I go back to the U.S. for 2 months I will most likely pack a bit differently.  And naturally at that time I’ll be sure to share all the details with anyone who is curious (i.e. you?).

Tomorrow I have meetings all day and I have some on Thursday too.  Thursday night I might cross to Shenzhen and stay there overnight so that I am not rushing too much to catch my train in GZ by 11:00 a.m.  But we’ll see how things progress and I’ll keep you all in the loop.

- Mark
Hong Kong, 1:47 AM

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!

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.

I know .. I know …

It has been forever since my last blog.  Well, that is because it has been just as long since my last training. 

Well, okay, maybe not “forever.  Technically it was 10 days.  But that is a long time to not be training.  Surprisingly today’s workout wasn’t too bad – mainly because it consisted primarily of running.

Normally running is a hard pill for me to swallow.  i get cramps in my calves and usually don’t have the endurance to go very far.  i presumed that since it had been at least a couple months since the last time I ran at the track that today would be no exception.  But for some reason today’s track run went pretty well and I ended up with a 3 mile total with the following breakdown:

(Run 1 lap, Walk 1 lap ) x 6 = 3 miles total.

Of course, all the other athletes were pulling in a 10k run.  And by “all the other athletes” I mean that it wasn’t just my class running but the Taiji group as well as the youth group.  And on top of that there were two kids wushu groups at the track, as well as a men’s and women’s soccer group, and then top that off with a couple sanda groups and you have one very crowded track. 

One of the reasons I haven’t been training too much is that right now is the Baha’i Fast.  Each year Baha’i’s fast for 19 days (which is one Baha’i month) from March 2 to March 20.  That means from sun rise (around 7:00 am here in Xi’an right now) to sun set (around 7:00 pm) we don’t eat or drink. 

So, I suppose that I was hesitant to try and go all out at the wushu guan when I knew I wouldn’t be able to drink or eat.  Today seemed like a good testing ground since it was a run and not a wushu class.  I brought a bottle of water just in case I felt dizzy or it felt unhealthy, but I managed to make it without any problems.  Back in the U.S. during the fast my classes were in the evening and I could usually get in a small bite or a power bar before I trained so it wasn’t as much of an issue.  But my training here is earlier in the day and a bit more intense – plus the air is rather dry – so I wasn’t sure how things would go.

My next class is on Saturday afternoon – this time in the wushu guan.  I’ll bring another bottle of water as a safety measure, but hopefully things go okay.

No pictures today, but I managed to do a quick little vlog from the track.  It includes a bit of kids wushu training and wind sprints.  I filmed this after the adult class had already left so this is mostly who was left after the first hour.  Enjoy!

 

Last night Ruhi and I had a wonderful dinner with Khalil and his mom at their home.  While there he showed me these videos he made that were quite funny and I thought you guys would appreciate the martial arts humor.  There are three of my favorites.  Enjoy!

I am still in Hong Kong and will return to Xi’an on the 24th.  I will blog and provide photos and what not from my trip once I have had a few days to reacclimate to home.

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.