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).

For our Monday-night group-training session this week, we sought out a park now that the weather is getting substantially nicer and now that there is another wave of new interest coming. We had been working out in one of our yards, but it's too much of a mess to have so many people over, particularly people we might not know yet. Thus, we're glad to have found some neutral territory, so to speak, to train in. We decided to try a nearby park where there are a ton of community soccer fields, but since it had just rained (as it is wont to do in the spring in Knoxville -- and the early summer and late fall and all winter), the fields were swamps. We decided to practice in the parking lot, which is about two hundred yards (180m) long with a packed gravel surface. Having such a long, straight area to train in, we decided to do the line-stepping, a.k.a. one-step, a.k.a. zig-zag step, drilling method on basic strikes until we got tired and round it out with some forms drilling.

Doing line-step drills for approximately two hundred yards is a different sort of activity. That's a pretty decent distance. The method: start at one end with a strike, do it all the way to the other end, take a short break (about 1 minute), and then return with another strike. We repeated this through the dodging strikes (Phoenix), some hooking strikes (Lion), and some extending strikes (Phoenix) before it had been about an hour and a half and was getting dark. We used the last minutes of daylight before the park closed to review the four Lion System forms to be trained in the Beijing/Huairou intensive this year: windmill seizing, lying step seizing, turning the back grasping, and holding and lifting grasping, which we drilled vigorously last week. It wasn't a very varied workout, but it was a damn good one.

Now... the long-awaited "heavy metal" or "heavy weapons" workout. I'd call it the "Heavy Weapons Master" workout if it wasn't for the fact that I feel like I suck at the heavy weapons. Here are my two heavy weapons:

1. The bagua dadao, which many of you are familiar with. In case you're not, it's our large saber (Chinese-style dao, or broadsword) a little over five feet long and eight pounds heavy (3.5kg), used one-handed for turning, standing strengthening, basics, and a monster of a form that takes about 8-10  minutes to complete at normal pace.
2. My iron staff, which is a round steel bar six feet long and 7/8 of an inch in diameter (1.83m long by 2.2 cm in diameter), weighing just short of 14lb (6.3kg). I don't know any "bagua staff," but I learned a lot of bo staff basics when I was training in karate, so I use those techniques for conditioning and many of the same kinds of goals as the dadao provides: using a heavy thing, coordinating movement and body with the heavy thing, getting power out, strengthening and conditioning, etc.

This "workout" is pretty amorphous. Typically, the idea is to take the saber, drill a few sections of the form a few times through, and then do something physical with neither weapon in hand. Sometimes lately, this has been yard work, but it also includes running sprints, drilling empty-hand forms, drilling basic strike, or some sort of calisthenics. Grip training often sneaks in there because of the compound effect the two weapons and a grip-training routine have on the forearm muscles. After the "saber form" phase, I drill three or four basic techniques with the iron staff. Then I usually do some more "other stuff" and come back to the saber, alternating turning in some posture with basic drills. After that, more "other stuff" happens, and then I do a few other drills with the staff, sometimes repeating some of the previous techniques for a double-burn. So, the basic idea is:

• Drill form-related stuff with the saber;
• Drill anything martially useful with the iron staff;
• Drill basics and turning with the saber;
• Stay physically active during breaks from the weapons.

It's pretty damn hard. The staff is significantly heavier than the saber, so it has the odd effect of making the saber feel light at first, although the fatigue sets in very quickly with the saber after using the staff. The staff, since it's based on techniques from linear forms, seems very awkward and weird to be drilling, but its contribution to strength can't be questioned. It's very exciting, like with the saber, to be increasing the speed and power with which I can swing the staff. In fact, I've become so used to the iron staff that I'm not sure I can use a wooden one any longer. They feel like toothpicks! They're ridiculously light by comparison and therefore somewhat hard to control.

Anyway... happy training! Keep it up!