wushuzilla

Posts Tagged ‘yuan min’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who am I kidding.  This is my life.