Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Sam Harris weighs in on self-defense in an excellent article

I almost never do this. In fact, I don't think I've ever done this on this blog before, but this blog post by Sam Harris (of The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, all New York Times bestselling books, and being one of the so-called "four horsemen" of the New Atheist movement fame) is about practical self-defense. It is very good, and anyone interested in martial arts or self-defense owes it to himself to read it, as should their family members. Anyone stumbling upon this site looking for something to do with African cats should probably read it too.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Knoxville, Tennessee, Yin Style Bagua seminar with He Jinbao, Success!

This is just a quick post to follow up with the rest of the commentary on the Yin Style Bagua Facebook page regarding the Fall Tour workshop in Knoxville this year. More details on a personal level are to come. In the meantime, interested parties should check out the Facebook page and see the photos from our awesome workshop.
Knoxville, TN Workshop - Day 2

First circle walking was trained to improve footwork and agility. Three foundational direction changes - or strikes carried out while circling around an opponent for position - were taught. The moving with the force chopping and enfolding hooking strike combination forms were taught; the objective being to combine various types of body movement and footwork with strikes. These combinations were then applied in partner drills to reinforce accuracy and gaining advantageous position when fighting. Kicks and their setups were trained to finish out the day.
Knoxville, TN Workshop - Day 3

Six foundational attacks from the Lion system seizing and grasping grappling attack methods were taught. Each technique was drilled to develop body coordination, waist power, and tight integration with strikes during use. Partnered applications of the holds and locks were then trained to develop accuracy and smoothness in technique during combat. We finished out the day with a variety of kicking drills.
Knoxville, TN Workshop - Day 4

First circle walking was trained to improve footwork and agility. Three foundational direction changes - or strikes carried out while circling around an opponent - were reviewed. The holding & lifting seizing and turning the back grasping attack combination forms were taught; the objective being to combine various types of body movement and footwork with grappling attacks. These techniques were then applied in partner drills to reinforce accuracy. A form showing set ups for knee attacks was trained then applied in partner drills to finish out the day.
As always, I'd like to extend a huge thank you to He Jinbao and Matt Bild for making it happen and doing such a great job with it.
For everyone out there that wasn't here, you really missed out. You need to make your plans now to attend next year and see to making it happen.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Yin Style Bagua Knoxville seminar with He Jinbao, Day 1

This is lifted from the Yin Style Bagua Facebook page. Check it out if you haven't already. Anyway, our first day was awesome, as the post indicates! Local fighters and martial artists, come see what all the fuss is about and train hard like a superman!
Knoxville, TN, Workshop - Day 1

Isometric strengthening postures were trained to develop improved circulation and muscular strength. Three foundational strikes each from the Lion system chopping and hooking strike attack methods were then taught. Each technique was drilled to develop body coordination and waist power when striking. The strikes were then paired with various types of footwork and drilled for power while moving. Partnered applications of the strikes in various combinations were then trained to show changes in technique during combat. Emphasis was placed on tight integration of footwork to set up proper position and support technique.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

He Jinbao and Yin Style Baguazhang International in Knoxville next week!!!

By this time next week, some of the toughest men and (hopefully) women in Knoxville will be finishing up with dinner and getting ready for an early bedtime after one of the hardest days of martial arts training in their lives. Yin Style Baguazhang International is coming to Knoxville again, for the third year in a row, and the workshop taught by incredible martial artist He Jinbao kicks off bright and early at 8:00 am next Thursday, October 20. Local martial artists that haven't yet decided to take advantage of this awesome opportunity to improve their fighting skills are highly encouraged to do so! If you live near enough to Knoxville to be able to make it, then don't miss it!

Friday, September 23, 2011

Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour 2011: St. Petersburg, FL, Oct. 27-30

Although no one needs an extra excuse to visit beautiful St. Petersburg, FL, this year's Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour, 2011 edition, tour stop, taught by He Jinbao, gives us all one more reason to head to the sub-tropics. This U.S. Fall Tour stop this year by YSB, International features the  Lion System at an intermediate level, like the seminar in Knoxville the week before, featuring different material so that those with the opportunity to hit both stops definitely should!

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour 2011: Knoxville, TN, Oct. 20-23

I hold a special place in my heart and on my blog for the Knoxville, TN, visit of the Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour, 2011 edition, taught by He Jinbao! It's home! Our U.S. Fall Tour stop this year by YSB, International features the  Lion System at an intermediate level. In Knoxville, though our training will actually take place in Maryville, just south of Knoxville, we look forward to a great seminar this year. Any and all are welcome! Definitely come see us and train with us! I'd like to extend a special invitation to any and all martial artists in the Knoxville area that want to experience real baguazhang, want to deepen the fighting arts they already practice, and that want to learn practical fighting techniques of awesome effectiveness... plus all the ones that really like hard, old-school drilling for skill.

The curriculum will be on the chopping, hooking, seizing, and grasping palms of the Lion System, and as mentioned before, it will be at an intermediate level, so while it isn't required, some familiarization with the Lion System will be very helpful. Consider getting the foundational videos to prep yourself, which can be found on a link on this post of mine about getting started in Yin Style.

Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour 2011: Berlin, CT, Oct. 13-16

The Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour, 2011 edition, is coming to Berlin, CT, near Hartford! Like the other seminars on the 2011 tour circuit, it will be taught by He Jinbao. It makes the fourth U.S. Fall Tour stop this year by YSB, International and features the Phoenix System at an intermediate level, getting into some of the deeper material including the subtle and effective transforming palm striking methods.

Like all of the Fall Tour stops, the Connecticut stop is open to anyone and everyone that is interested in attending. The curriculum will cover the dodging, extending, shocking, and transforming palms of the Phoenix System, and as mentioned before, it will be at an intermediate level, so while it isn't required, some familiarization with the Phoenix System or Yin Style in general will be very helpful. Consider getting the foundational videos to prep yourself, which can be found on a link on this post of mine about getting started in Yin Style.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour 2011: Haverhill, MA, Oct. 6-9

The second visit of the Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour, 2011 edition, to Haverhill, MA, just north of Boston, taught by He Jinbao, is less than a month away! This third U.S. Fall Tour stop this year by YSB, International features the  Lion System at an intermediate level. Here practitioners will have a great opportunity to deepen their understanding of the foundational system of Yin Style Baguazhang.

Like all of the Fall Tour stops, the Massachusetts stop is open to anyone and everyone that is interested in attending. The curriculum will be on the shocking, blocking, seizing, and grasping palms of the Lion System, and as mentioned before, it will be at an intermediate level, so while it isn't required, some familiarization with the Lion System will be very helpful. Consider getting the foundational videos to prep yourself, which can be found on a link on this post of mine about getting started in Yin Style.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour 2011: Boulder, CO, Sept. 29-Oct.2

The Boulder, CO, Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour, 2011 edition, workshop with He Jinbao is right around the corner now, starting in just three weeks! The Tour stop in Colorado is the second U.S. Fall Tour this year by YSB, International, and it features the Phoenix System at a foundational level. That means that people that are new to the art or that want to expand their training outside of the Lion System need to be looking toward the Rockies to get a taste of this fast, whirling animal that emits whip-like power from the shoulder.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Volume ladder training protocol for massive development

There is a particular key to training a martial art well, and that key is repetition. In Yin Style Baguazhang, things are no different, and as every practitioner knows, massive repetitions of the basic drills and exercises are expected and required to move forward. Of course, these repetitions cannot be performed blindly if development is desired; there must a be a constant endeavor to improve coupled with smart training techniques and constant refinement. Still, doing huge numbers of repetitions is a daunting task that can begin to feel like grinding, possibly leading to burnout, stagnant training, or frustration. A bodybuilding protocol called the "volume ladder" can be implemented, however, to help with this situation.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour 2011: San Fancisco, CA, Sept. 22-25, 2011

The San Francisco, CA, Yin Style Baguazhang Fall Tour, 2011 edition, workshop with He Jinbao is less than a month away, and it will officially kick of the U.S. Fall Tour this year by YSB, International. Those people interested in experiencing real baguazhang first-hand and doing so with the lineage holder of a very respectable system in the art should pay close attention to this one. Not to make it sound too much like an advertisement, if you've had interest in baguazhang, Chinese martial arts in general, or Yin Style in specific but don't know the first thing about it, this is the seminar for you!

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Yin Style Baguazhang International U.S. Fall Tour 2011, Knoxville and beyond

He Jinbao of Beijing, China, with assistant and translator Matt Bild of Yin Style Baguazhang International are coming to the United States again in 2011 for the annual YSB U.S. Fall Tour of long-weekend workshops (including Knoxville, TN, for my local folks). If you don't know what Yin Style Bagua is all about yet, then you're missing out. These workshops offer a very rare opportunity train in real baguazhang directly with an absolute and recognized expert in the art, the lineage holder of Yin Style Baguazhang, in fact. Start here by checking out the official brief introduction to Yin Style Baguazhang video that showcases a bit from all eight animal systems, including He Jinbao demonstrating awesome fighting applications on some brave British volunteers.

Now that you've seen what you could be training at the seminar, continue reading below to get the key details about what's new in this year's series of workshops and for what is going on in each of the stops. This year's workshops will be presenting material out of the Lion, Phoenix, and Monkey Systems, as well as a continued introduction to the baguazhang jian (straight sword).

Monday, July 25, 2011

Training tip: How to improve your endurance for circle turning practice

It's been a long time since I've posted. This is because I've begun, hopefully professionally, another writing project that more or less consumes all of my interested-in-writing time on any given day. My apologies to those of you who expected better.

That aside, I've been experimenting with another method that beginners can use to really improve their endurance when it comes to turning the circle, although this same method should work with some modification for any practice requiring endurance, including the other aspects of training Yin Style Baguazhang or any other martial art. I've adapted this method from the one that I used to study for my doctoral qualifying exams and have found it very useful in a number of regards. The chief benefit is that one can find steady, marked improvement without ever falling into the dangerous trap of over training, which even with practices like turning the circle can result in a net loss in valuable training time in the long run. The method employs incremental improvement from an intelligently chosen starting place. The idea is that each training session is taxing without being overkill. The result is remarkable, quick improvement.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Training tip: Train to a theme

Really, this post could be filed under "Ask Dr. Jimberly" since it stems from a question I got out our study group's training session last night, but I figured I'd file it under "training tips" instead. The basic gist of the question was on how to focus training properly to get a lot of benefit. Since this is a topic that we have experimented with quite a bit before seeking wisdom on the matter, largely due to training in relative isolation for quite a long time at first, I figure we've got something decent to say on the matter. It seems that in any martial art or skill, but particularly in Yin Style Baguazhang, it pays off for your time to "train to a theme."

Friday, April 22, 2011

Ask Dr. Jimberly: Starting your own Yin Style Baguazhang study group

As promised about ten days ago or so, I would get around to writing a second installment to an "Ask Dr. Jimberly" post, this time addressing the question of how to go about starting a study group for Yin Style Baguazhang in your neck of the woods. Here's the link to the original post, answering "Why the Lion System?" for those that are interested. Of course, these questions are overlapping to some degree, as I indicated in that earlier response. For reference, here is the text of the email that I was answering again:
I started with the lion dvd's several years back as that is what was recommended by ATS, but I am far more interested and physically inclined to the dragon system, so that's been my focus for the last year and a half or so. Also, I am trying to start up a study group in my area - what do I need to do to make such a group recognized by the YSB association at large?
In this post, I'm addressing only the part of this email indicated in italics, as the rest has been dealt with previously.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Beast Mode: Coming to a close and facing reality

If you've been following the blog lately, then you know I did something of a month-long tribute to the 2011 Beijing Intensive, now at a close, by upping my working out and training regimen to what I termed "Beast Mode." In all, it must have been fairly effective: in the process, I've lost about eight pounds and dropped from 21% to 16.5% bodyfat, according to my scale, which probably isn't very accurate on either of those points. So... I improved significantly in my fitness via hard training coupled with hard conditioning workouts (and a fair amount of hard yard work). How'd my bagua go? Well... that might be another matter.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Ask Dr. Jimberly: Why the Lion System?

Some time ago, I received an email from someone with the following in it:
I started with the lion dvd's several years back as that is what was recommended by ATS, but I am far more interested and physically inclined to the dragon system, so that's been my focus for the last year and a half or so. Also, I am trying to start up a study group in my area - what do I need to do to make such a group recognized by the YSB association at large?
I'll address the second question in this inquiry, about what needs to happen to start a study group, at a later date so as to keep this post as direct and on a single topic as possible. If you're interested in starting a study group in your area and don't have the foggiest idea of what to do, hang on tight for the answer! I'll probably get to it within the week or thereabouts. In the meantime, check out this related post on getting started: A Yin Style Baguazhang Beginner's Guide. Much of the info overlaps.

The reason I'm focusing on the "Why Lion?" question now is that it came up again for me. This week at our study group's weekly get-together, one of the newer members asked me point-blank why we study the Lion System first in Yin Style Baguazhang. I figure this is probably a pretty common question, and so I'll be happy to include the response to the email I got and kind bolster it with what I told our training buddy.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Beast Mode: Post-burnout workout, promised and delivered

It's only been about three hours since my last post (which will challenge you if you're a one-a-day kind of reader). That post was about burnout keeping me from maintaining my Beast Mode status so well over the last week. It also suggested some tips for you to beat and overcome your own burnout issues when training too frequently and too hard gets you down. This is a continuation, delivering on my promise to update you with another Beast Mode workout that I'm using to improve myself and celebrate the ongoing 2011 Beijing Intensive for Yin Style Baguazhang.

Beast Mode: Burnout and what to do about it

Beast Mode is wearing on me. In fact, over the last week and especially for the last three days, despite doing some decent workouts and training in that time, I definitely cannot call what's going on "Beast Mode" any longer. I hit burnout, which I could have predicted. It's beyond the problem characterized in my last post about not having enough to eat for my training (which I've decided is mostly because of my head injury leading to a wrecked sense of smell and therefore taste leading to almost everything currently tasting really bad, sort of like vomit). This is straight up "I've done enough hard workouts for now" style burnout.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Beast Mode and eating -- calorie intake and overtraining

So... Beast Mode is catching up with me, apparently. I haven't lost the mental fire and have kept pushing myself to do the workouts at my fullest capacity, but honestly, over the last several days, the physical gusto has just kind of been dwindling. This happened one day last week too. I noticed it particularly during last night's conditioning workout (details below) and in essentially everything I did with my training today. My body just feels tired and heavy, and the will to keep going is twice as hard as usual to maintain. I would figure that this is a symptom of overtraining, but I don't have any of the other primary symptoms of that issue right now (elevated heart rate upon waking, poor sleep, etc.). The problem is, I believe, undereating.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Beast Mode -- Heavy metal workout and line-stepping drills into infinity

Beast Mode continues! Much of the workout stuff is the same as the last several Beast Mode posts -- lots of turning and standing, then lots of striking and forms drilling, and then hard-ass conditioning workouts, pretty much every day. It's fun. Our group training session from this past Monday is worth noting, and I'll take this post to finally get around to describing my heavy metal (a.k.a. heavy weapons) conditioning workout that I toss in there every third day or so, usually before or after some hard-labor-style yard work involving a shovel and moving a lot of earth, mulch, and other yard rot (compost pile).

Friday, March 25, 2011

Beast Mode -- a much-needed rest and hitting it hard again

Apparently, rest days are important, even during Beast Mode training. Yesterday's training consisted only of a half an hour of turning, mostly Phoenix with some Lion, and a half an hour of forms at medium pace and power, kind of like amplified learning speed. Yesterday's conditioning was only a grip-training routine and 60 squat thrusts. Done, and done, because apparently so was my body. Today, however, I picked it back up.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Beast Mode continues, and you need a GymBoss!

So much for daily posts! The Beast Mode daily workouts have been continuing, though, and they're apparently going well enough because I've got a classic overtraining symptom: nearly constantly elevated body temperature. Here's some of the stuff I've been up to over the last few days.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Beast Mode, Day 1 -- Training to prepare for a lunar perigee Super Moon

First of all, just in case you don't know: the current full moon is occurring at lunar perigee (use Google or Wikipedia or something if you don't know what that means), and lots of hee-haws are calling it a Super Moon and predicting all kinds of calamity that is very unlikely to have anything to do with the lunar perigee, which happens a little more than once a month, just because it coincides with the full moon, i.e. the moon is on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun, a coincidence that happens roughly once every 18 years. The only calamity that I'm aware of is Beast Mode (what I'm calling my ramped-up training right now) Day 1, which was pretty hard.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Can't go to Beijing for the intensive? Ramp it up at home!

As any and all but the newest members of the Yin Style Baguazhang community are aware, this is the time of year during which the annual journey to Huairou takes place for the Beijing, China, Yin Style intensive. Attending this intensive is considered by many practitioners to be something of a Yin Style Bagua pilgrimage, if not at least a rite of passage. Fortunately or unfortunately (who's to say?), not everyone can make the trip to Beijing and on to Huairou for the intensive due to expense or work requirements or a variety of other issues that "real" life presents. Having to miss this year's opportunity in China, however, should serve as a motivator to train harder than ever rather than as a reason to shelf your training until it becomes more pressing for your own workshops!

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Sometimes zero!

If you've followed this training journal much at all, then you know of my golden rule of training: "Never Zero." To quickly summarize this rule, there is never a day where there is no training performed, even if it's brief or only in the mind. Well... for the first time in a few years, despite doing some mighty difficult things, I had a day with zero.

Monday, January 10, 2011

A Yin Style Baguazhang beginner's guide to what you need and what should you do with it

Suppose you're just starting out on your adventure in training Yin Style Baguazhang, or perhaps you've been at it for a while and want to be sure you've covered the bases. There's not a whole lot of stuff out there, as you've probably found, but there are some things. This post is meant to be a little introductory guide to what you need to get, a little commentary on that and other YSB material out there, and a quick note about how much you should train. Since this topic is potentially huge, I'll do what I can to stay brief with it!
"The most important thing when studying the martial arts is not to be lazy. These skills are not easily attained. For them, one must endure a lot of suffering." -He Jinbao