A note on negative feedback loops in training motivation

I've been in a real trap as far as my training goes lately. I've been keeping up with it, but it's been forced, and it's been weak. There are a variety of reasons this negative feedback loop--and that's exactly what it is--got started, and unravelling it by studying some classic motivation theory seems to have done the trick to get me back on track.

What are you training for? A Catch-22

In any martial art, but particularly (from my experience) in Yin Style Bagua (though this might be more broadly applicable to internal martial arts), there is a certain Catch-22 to good and effective training. It really comes down to what you're training for.

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.

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.

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.

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!

An hour a day... Turning training tips for beginners: Getting your time up

Turning practice is difficult, and to follow Yin Style Baguazhang's demanding schedule for maximum development, it is a goal of all serious Yin Style practitioners to turn for an hour a day on every day that their schedule permits (particularly if there's a seminar or intensive coming up!). If you've ever turned, particularly the way we turn in Yin Style, then you know that an hour is a long time to turn.

New Yin Style Baguazhang links on my blog! Oh, and awesome tips to gauge your progress in a martial art like Yin Style Baguazhang

So I did a little hunting around and decided to add some links to my link list since the world of Yin Style Baguazhang is growing steadily, and my blog should probably reflect that.

No reasons to cut corners

Maybe it's the weather, or maybe it's something about my cultural approach to training that I just can't shake, but at least a couple of times each year, despite things that I might write (and mean and stand behind) in high-press articles, I get all into researching "other" forms of "complementary" exercise. I'm not even sure why, and after doing it the other day and realizing something, it just seems kind of futile.

As far as cross-training goes, it can be a benefit to training in Yin Style Bagua or any martial art. The proper proportions, as indicated by those in-the-know are suggested by the following: Train what you are training for 2 hours for every 20 minutes of cross-training that you do. That way you can keep your focus on your training -- where training implies more than just working out, getting stronger, or getting in shape. Training implies skills-building. The thing is, with a martial art like Yin Style Baguazhang, I'm left strongly with the feeling "why bother" in regards to cross-training exercises when I really think about it.

You see, Yin Style Baguazhang is a very, very complete art that is very, very well thought-out. Not all arts are. The upshot of this completeness and intelligence in design is that YSB has everything in it that is needed for great development. You can add weights, stretching routines, cardio, caveman workouts, or what-have-you to your regimen, but the training is designed so that you don't even have to consider it, a major contrast with many arts.

Here's what got me the other night. I was hunting around on the web, researching wrist strengthening exercises since I and many other folks that talk with me seem to injure their wrists on the rock that is the bagua dadao. I've currently got some tendinitis (in the other wrist this time), and it's pretty common. If you've never hunted around for wrist-strengthening exercises, let me save you some time: not much that goes on in the gym does a whole hell of a lot for wrist strength. You can do forearm curls one way or the other, you can roll up a rope with a weight on it, you can rotate a dumbbell back and forth, and you can hold heavy things, particularly heavy things with thick bars. That's about it.

I was kind of pissed that all I could find about gaining wrist strength was a bunch of crap that I already knew that clearly didn't help with what I was needing help with. Then I thought about it for a minute... the saber's already perfect for this. Then I thought about it more. Do a hard seizing-palm-strengthening posture with one hand and feel the tendons and structure in the wrist with the other. I think we have a winner. Then think about grasping palm posture and all of the ox-tongue palm postures and all of the closed-fist postures. Compared with the silly stuff I was reading on the internet, the case was simply closed. YSB FTW.

So... pick your favorite exercise-related goal... think about it for a while. Yin Style trains that. You want stronger shoulders? stronger legs? stronger back? stronger arms? more endurance? more cardiovascular health? weight loss? (muscular) weight gain? enhanced tendon strength? functional strength and fitness? better grip? improved health? better balance? deeper flexibility? ass-kicking skills? to impress people with a giant-ass sword? Yin Style Baguazhang trains that, probably better than much else that you can find. One word comes to mind: superior.

Should you complement your training to develop certain goals more quickly? Sure, in relative proportions and if you really enjoy those complementary exercises and/or feel like you get a lot out of them. If you want a reason to avoid doing complementary exercises that you don't care for that much (or hate... read: running), then here's your excuse -- you can better use that time training something that Yin Style Bagua already offers and do it even better than you could with your complementary stuff.

New Year's training resolutions 2010

I feel like I should start this off with some classic New Year's resolutions words that seem to spell disaster: "This year's going to be different...." Well, hopefully it is. I've been thinking an awful lot about my training over the past month, not least because of my stupid toe that was making doing much training outside of a seated position (yeah, right) quite difficult if not impossible. I'm back on the horse full-tilt again now, though, and here are some of the things I think make good New Year's training resolutions. As usual, feel fully free to make comments to add some of your own!

Do _______ more consistently (fill in the blank per your needs)
For me, what this one comes down to mostly is standing strengthening and turning. Those two aspects of training either end up being the main component of my training or almost evaporate completely, and those two situations seem to occur cyclically in a-few-months-long intervals. That's not good. Some standing; some turning; every week. I'm not sure that doing some of everything every day is that good of an idea any more. Then again, perhaps I'm just not training enough.

Be more balanced and organized in training
It's really been an easy trap for me to fall into to focus almost all of my training on the saber: when I first got it I was nuts about learning the entire Nine Dragon Saber form and being strong enough to be able to get through it all in one go; later, I went completely ape with some basic drills. Like weights, the saber gives quick, obvious results. The price of falling into that trap has been a decline in the amount of other exercises that I do, many of which were daily staples in the past.

Move more
Maybe I'm just a turd like this, but I tend to notice that doing moving-step striking drills and forms, some things I really should be doing a lot of, kind of get ignored all too often for standing-in-place methods, which are great but a bit limited in terms of developing use and better coordination (both being highly sought training aims). I'm going to try to up the moving-step this year significantly. If you're not brand-spanking-new to the art, you might consider it too, based at least on what JB had to say about it last summer.

Be organized/have a plan for your training
Note that this point applies to any martial artist or even any active person, so if you read this and don't practice Yin Style Bagua, keep this one near the front of your mind. This is perhaps one of my weakest links in developing a solid training regimen. I tend not to be very organized, to my own chagrin, and I'm sure my potential development suffers for it. Usually, my method is that I get up, think about what I might like to do that day or something that I haven't done in a while, and then I just do some of that. Since it's easy to get into ruts, I tend to do those things repetitively for a while and then either get stuck doing them far too much (to the detriment of other training) or end up fizzling out. An organized weekly plan seems like a better approach.

On that note, an organized daily agenda would also make a good addition to my training program -- here are the times that I train, and I stick to those times and train during them. Furthermore, I tend to do very well if I develop curriculum for myself (subject to my recurring downfall -- curriculum is easier to write down than it is to execute). Spending a little time each week or month developing curriculum and then choosing specific daily exercises to do along those lines would greatly benefit me.

Set speficic, measurable, realistic, attainable, short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals (Another note for everyone)
In that same vein, I really need to do better with my goal-setting. First, goals need to be specific, measurable, realistic, and attainable to work. That means:

• Specific - "I want to get in better shape" or "I want to be able to do xxxx technique better" would be very vague goals that are hard to meet. It's important to be specific in goal-setting so you know what you're working toward and when you've met that goal. "I want fluid, solid body movement in xxxx technique" is more specific and easier to attain.
• Measurable - In training Yin Style Bagua, this one is the rub. Measurable is easiest in terms of doing things by the numbers: "Turn for an hour," "Do 1000 of xxxx technique without needing a break," etc. Those kinds of goals aren't really great for internal arts (but are awesome for supplemental training activities). What's needed instead are measurements that are more subtle: getting lower in your stances and maintaining them longer; turning well for an hour; routinely turning well for 10 minutes before needing to change sides, etc. Doing xxxx activity at least ##% of the days this year is also good.
  
• Realistic - Setting a goal like turning for 1000 hours in a year might not be a realistic goal -- even if you have that kind of time, putting in almost 3 hours a day on average might be outside of your body's ability, particularly if you can't turn well for 3 hours in a day yet. Set goals that are realistic if you want to attain them.
• Attainable - "I want to be able to levitate." Cool. I think most people would get excited about developing that skill, but it's probably not attainable. Many people that practice martial arts, internal arts in particular, come up with some ridiculous ideas about what they'll get out of their training. Try to keep your goals in the "pretty clearly attainable" box, and you'll probably have a lot more success.

Goals also come in a variety of time scales. Generally speaking, shorter-term goals are more realistic and attainable, although longer-term goals can be more driving. Since this is an article about 2010 resolutions in training, I'll keep my longest-term goals at around a year.

1. Short-term goals: These are best set in the weekly-to-monthly time scale, depending on the goal. "Short-term" monthly would be in terms of development, and weekly might be in terms of hitting a particular variety of exercises or spending a set amount of time training or working on particular activities or techniques. These should be very attainable, which means there should only be a little bit of a change (in the positive direction) as compared with what you can do now.
2. Medium-term goals: These are best set in the monthly-to-quarterly time scale, again depending on what you're talking about. Learning a particular set or group of exercises or seeking out a noteworthy degree of development in a particular technique or method ("finding the force," for instance) would make for good medium-term goals.
3. Long-term goals: In the context of this article, these would be quarterly-to-yearly in length. You might be looking for a dramatic change in coordination, agility, flexibility, endurance, or strength on this time scale.
   

A little warning: I used to be very good about developing specific numbers-oriented goals in all three time scales, but they became a bit of an obsession that I'm now sure was detrimental to my development overall. I frequently pushed myself beyond my capacities (good, but only to an extent) and cared more about doing 2000 of xxxx technique by next Tuesday than I did about getting better at xxxx technique. Not good.

Quality first and then quantity
Based on my previous goal-setting line, let me admonish you that the easiest, most realistic and attainable, most clearly specific goals always involve numbers. Remember that for real development, you have to get it right first and then ramp up the numbers, so if you decide to attach numbers to your training (do X repetitions of activity xxxx, or do activity xxxx for X minutes), make absolutely sure that you don't count poor-quality. Your main focuses, I think, should be on doing things well and getting better at those things. If you're not meeting those goals first, then all the numbers in the world don't matter.

Another little warning here: numerical goals are an awesome way to ensure some overtraining issues will develop. Some that I've done or seen done in the past and now consider to be a bad idea are:

1. 100,000 pushups in a year (before I was doing bagua). That's a lot of damn pushups. I did it, but my pushup ability turned to crap. I could do a lot of sets of small numbers of pushups, but doing a large number in one go was right out. I'm not sure what kind of fitness that is, but it's certainly not optimal. I also was not getting stronger after the initial phase of the training.
2. 6,000 tracing the saber in a month (in each hand) -- originally conceived as 200 in each hand per day. I actually did 7000, for the record. This was specifically a test to see what that kind of training would do to my body. The result was similar to the pushups experiment because to keep up with the numbers, I felt like I really needed to trace the saber every day to do it. I think that caused some overtraining issues, though I definitely am stronger now that I did it.
3. 100,000 strikes in a year. Back before I knew anything about training (the first year and a half or so), this is how I approached doing lots of strikes: try to get some thousands of each one every year. I did a lot of poorly executed strikes and got in pretty good shape. I also got a bunch of injuries and didn't get a hell of a lot better at the techniques I was working on.
4. Turn for at least 30 minutes a day (on average) for a year (~180 hours or ~10,000 minutes). This was good for getting on the circle more, but it turned the practice into a serious chore that I started to dread. It's also really easy to get behind when work gets busy, and then it gets really easy to beat yourself up over it.
5. Run 4000 miles in a year. I didn't do this. F*** that! I have a friend that did it, and I can't imagine anything good coming out of it. This didn't have much to do with anything in the post actually; I just really like telling people that I know someone that ran 4000 miles in 2009 (on purpose).
   

Build the group
Most training in Yin Style Bagua is individual, and that's fine. A lot of good stuff comes out of training together: obvious need for curriculum, bringing new people to the art, comeraderie, partner practice, help and corrections, motivation to keep working, group accountability and encouragement, a sense of family and group unity. For us in Knoxville in particular, I really hope to see 2010 as a year in which we really build up the group aspect of our training: more frequent and regular meetings, more folks, more curriculum, a good location, etc. This is our group's roughest challenge, I think, and a big goal for us this year is to make our group a little more solid.

Overtraining

This is a martial art that I'm training. Martial arts bring up the idea of boot camp, as do the seminars that we go to in Yin Style Baguazhang. Boot camp is a popular notion these days (see over a million pages on Google about "weight loss boot camp," probably the latest craze in the fad-driven weight-loss program industry), and I think folks training in the martial arts like to envision themselves in a boot-camp like situation in which they come out highly trained, skillful, and chiseled. This mentality, unfortunately enough, leads to the easy potential for overtraining, which I think I'm suffering from to some degree right now despite a relatively low number of total (physical) training hours in the last month (about 35 since Nov. 1). You can check out some of the signs and symptoms of overtraining syndrome here.

My problem comes directly from deciding to focus almost exclusively on one or two things, which rapidly builds the potential for overdoing it in those one or two things. In particular, I've been overcooking myself with the large saber, committing myself to hundreds of repetitions of tracing the saber each day (nearly 7000 in each hand since Nov. 1 actually... I kept track) in addition to a fair sampling of the other basic drills that I know whenever the weather permits. Here are some of the symptoms I've noticed:

• I can do way more tracing of the saber per day now than I could at the beginning of the month (400 in each hand each day isn't a ridiculous request on myself now), but the first few sets are literally painful until I'm "warmed up" and the number I can do in any given set has actually decreased over the month. Near the beginning of the month, I'd do mostly sets of 50 with an occasional 60, 75, or 80 thrown in there (and 100 straight once!). Now, a set of 50 is very hard, but I can do 6 consecutive sets of 40 or 30 with relative ease. I'm not sure that's how I want things to be going. To my mind, both of these numbers should be going up over time.
• Turning with the saber, particularly in bear posture (one that's relatively easy to do regardless of working a lot or bad weather because it fits in a relatively small space with no special ceiling needs) went from being hard to easier to really hard. After an initial increase in both total number of go-arounds I could do without having to stop/switch hands and an increase in total number of go-arounds I could do in a workout, switching hands as needed, I've seen a marked decrease in both of those numbers over the past few days (I've only been doing this one daily for about a week now). That can't be good. I'm seeing similar results with turning in the dragon posture (from the form) because I'm doing it kind of maniacally and daily right now too.
• Other drills with the saber are kind of similar. I've had tendinitis in one of my wrists for a while, so a good many of them have been kind of on the back-burner, but as I've gone back into doing them, I'm seeing similar results with the ones I do essentially every day. I'm getting cooked by them so that each subsequent day is worse than the day before it.
• I'm showing a number of the "stagnation" kind of symptoms given on that list of overtraining symptoms from above plus some compulsion to do tracing and to do it a lot.
  

I keep pushing myself thinking that I'll train through this, or more specifically, that if this was real military "saber camp," I'd be picking that thing up for hours a day and sucking this up big-time or else. The thing is, while I'm feeling stronger in lots of ways from the workouts, I'm blatantly less able to do them now than before. Boot camp mentality or no, that's simply not how this thing works. Days off aren't just important, they're critical, at least for my physique.

I'm thinking that taking days off of using the saber completely isn't actually necessary, but a more complementary set of exercises should be arranged so that the same kinds of things aren't being done day after day after day. Besides the dangers to the tendons in some of those exercises (chops and stabs, in particular, for us little-wrist people), overtraining syndrome can eventually actually cut into baseline performance so that we could end up worse at what we're doing for having done a lot of it, basic skills improvements aside. The two things I've seen suggested to help deal with overtraining issues that aren't "put it down," which is the main advice, are to intentionally do "light days" as well as to shake things up by doing things that are completely different on different days. That's the plan, I think.

The funny thing is that with an art like Yin Style is that the drive to really get good at things through heavy repetition and single-purposed focus creates the compulsion to overtrain so strongly that it can put you in the problematic situation where it somehow feels inappropriate to train something different to "shake things up." Ironically, this occurs in an art in which there is certainly enough material in it so that many practitioners mention at one point or another that there's "too much stuff" in the art to give full attention to. Doing something else, some of that other "too much stuff," is just what's needed, though. I think this is probably how it has to be: Train a few things very dilligently and primarily, but incorporate other things for variety, interest, and to give your body something to work on while you recover from your primary training goal(s) (which should, of course, change over time and with changing interests). You must respect that your body will need time to recover fully from each exercise you do, anywhere from 12 to 72 hours depending on your fitness, your genetics, the muscle group in question, your diet, your level of hydration, the amount of sleep you get, and a multitude of other factors. Yeah, it's that complicated (actually more complicated than that!), and it can be different for each muscle group or system in your body!

The basic truth of how your body reacts to exercise as an adaptable organism is as follows: You have a starting level of fitness that I'll refer to as your "starting point." When you exercise or train, you stress your tissues, which takes away from their full capacity for a time for a variety of not-fully-understood reasons. This time is called the "recovery" phase and takes an amount of time that is very difficult to determine from the list of above factors. Following the recovery phase, your body adapts to the stress by elevating the particular tissues involved in whatever you did to a level that exceeds their original level of fitness. This is called the "supercompensation" phase. The supercompensation period decays exponentially back to your original "starting point" over a time period that is influenced by all of the above factors (including the myriad that I didn't mention).

The thing is, to sound smart and technical, that your tissues kind of deal with this sitaution in a Markovian way, in other words, when you workout again is something like your new "starting point." You enter a recovery phase that drops your level of fitness temporarily based on the intensity of your workout (harder workout; bigger drop). That, in turn, causes an overcompensating swing into a supercompensation phase (bigger drop swings to bigger peak, it appears). Thus, this is all about timing. If you work out again before you get "out of the woods" of your previous recovery phase, then you're starting from a lower point on the curve than if you would have waited a little while longer. If you work out again during your supercompensation phase (particularly near its peak), then you reap maximal benefits. If you wait too long, then it's essentially, in terms of your tissues (not your developed skills), essentially like you never worked out the first time. The tough part is that these time periods are very difficult to determine and variable on about a bajillion variables. Thus... be pragmatic: If you feel overtraining symptoms setting in, back off, slow down, and cross-train; otherwise, keep on keepin' on.

Some ideas for shaking things up include:

• Putting the saber down for empty-hand practice, if you're overdoing the saber;
• Picking the saber up if you're not doing so much of that;
• Turning more (always good?) and/or in different postures (try the various strengthening postures or what you know of different animal postures);
• Changing palms if you're focusing on a certain palm or small number of them;
• Picking up a new form (from the videos) and drilling it;
• Hit the gym or go running (worked for me yesterday... shook me up out of my normal mentality of how I "have to train" and had me moving at the same time -- plus made be suck wind like I ran an f-ing marathon even though I only did a rather slow 800m);
• Trying something out from another animal system (if you have the videos) for a couple of days to vary things up;
• Training the same stuff with intentionally and markedly lower intensity, focusing on some different requirement(s) of that technique or mentally "using it" more than just drilling it in the body;
  
• Something else that you've thought of that I'm not right now (leave a comment!).

To put things plainly, I suppose, the science says that if you're exhibiting symptoms of overtraining, more training will not make you better. If you're really lucky and really determined, you might improve in skills while you deteriorate your physical ability to improve, but more than likely, the built-up fatigue (unfinished recovery) will cause you to be sloppy and less precise than taking some time off and coming back to it another day. If you're less fortunate, you could actually end up simultaneously developing bad habits, getting weaker, and even possibly seriously injuring yourself (tendinitis, tweaked joints, repetitive movement/stress injuries, etc.).

The Invisible Saber

Hopefully I'm not going to get flamed for this or start some kind of ridiculous trend of sissiness in the ranks of my loyal followers.

Due to circumstances somewhat out of my control, the time of day today when I really wanted to work out with my saber left me limited and unable to do so. I did some tracing with it because I can do that in the house without fear of wrecking things, but that's pretty much where the indoor saber line is drawn other than standing practice. Thus, I did a bunch of empty-handed stuff, mostly of the striking variety, and some calisthenics for about an hour and a half for my workout earlier.

In the process, because I wanted to do my saber and work on some of the fundamental drills, particularly some of the ones I feel less good at and a few that I've decided I really like at the moment, I started going through the motions of them without a saber in hand. Some of them only went okay, but on others, I really got a depth of understanding of the movements that I don't think I've had before, particularly in the use of the waist to drive the saber and generate power and economy of movement with it. Some of these "drawing back" and then "bursting forward" or "secretly marching" kind of techniques are particularly benefited, at least in my practice tonight.

I might encourage folks looking to build their ability with the basic skills of the saber to throw this kind of drill into your saber training. When you're working with the sword itself, being that it's a bit heavy and awkward (until you're ninja-good with it, like Swedish-powdered-steel good), it's more difficult to focus on the body movement. With it laying nearby, awaiting to ride the improved ride, you can refine your technique with otherwise difficult to access precision and attention to detail -- looking for the proper way to move the blade. Then you can wrestle the huge blade up and apply what you learned with almost surprising results if you've sought the movement carefully and honestly until you're pretty certain you really found something.

Of course, more time with saber than without is my advice for getting good with the saber, but as with anything: training means refining.

Training Buddies and Borrowing Ideas

Get a training buddy.

You can have one in real life that you actually get together with, but it's not necessary. People tell me frequently how lucky I am that I have my faithful sidekick (who is better than I am) Bradley to get thrown around by. Reality is that I'm only a little luckier than everyone else because of this cool get-up called the internet which in some ways makes the globe a bit like a neighborhood, at least in terms of communication. Cell phones with nation-wide calling plans condense the areas we live in even further.

My training partner and I trade off "I did this today" stories frequently, and if one of us lagged behind the other in terms of time invested or difficulty of the drills we worked, as often as not, we pick up our sorry tails and do some more whenever time and life allow. I know that personally it's committed me to a lot of training I wouldn't have done otherwise. There's no reason this kind of relationship wouldn't work electronically, though, since most of what my partner and I do is talk. We only usually see each other once a week, maybe twice (at the group get-togethers and occasionally otherwise).

We're also borrowing an idea from the increasingly popular program Cross-Fit. Our goal isn't to replicate their kind of workout so much as it is to kind of keep each other going. While grinding techniques for raw numbers is usually a bad thing, as can be turning to the clock, it makes a nice little motivator to set up a workout (we take turns) and then both, separately, try to meet it as our daily minimum: maybe it's turn at least for x minutes or to make sure we do at least y repetitions of some saber drill. Perhaps it's more ambiguous like "hit chopping strikes hard and seriously." Maybe it's a combination of these kinds of things or several others.

This kind of accountability is great for keeping motivation up. It catches the phasing "eh... I'll let training slide today because..." right by the tail and helps us both get more out of ourselves than we might have otherwise. It also solidifies our relationship.

Maybe in the future we can get some kind of system like this set up more formally and in a more widespread manner. Who knows? If you have a great workout to suggest, though, leave a comment!

When Time Is Short: Training Ideas for When You're As Busy As I Am Right Now

I'm crazy busy right now. In fact, the only reason I'm typing on this is because I temporarily have a mental block on what I'm working on: preparing to defend my thesis. I've been given the task of preparing the entire defense by November 9, which is barely over two weeks away. I think usually people have the date pretty well narrowed down a few months in advance, so I figure this can only go "well." In any case, the posting will be a bit lighter than usual during this time, but when I'm kind of burnt up for the moment (as now), I'll find time for this sort of thing when I'm not squeezing in some training, which seems to help unknot my fatiguing brain.

I know a lot of folks are crazy busy much or almost all of the time, and so I think this is an appropriate topic, even if left drastically incomplete. As usual, I invite folks training other martial arts to comment and add in ideas, though I'll focus my post on what kinds of baguazhang-related training I squeeze in when my time is short.

Generally speaking, I think when your time is short, you're going to get the most out of picking one or two basic things and drilling them in bursts during your free time. Perhaps you really want to get better at a technique or a movement, nothing as large as a typical "form" or "kata," unless you practice something like Yin Style which has just short of a billion very short forms in its canon. You also want to choose things that provide a lot of bang for the buck, which means that you're taking time to carefully master one fairly complex movement or you're blasting your body with an exercise that can provide a lot of benefit in a short period of time.

In Yin Style or any other traditional art, for me the exercise that fits the "bang for my buck" bill the most powerfully is standing strengthening, which admittedly I usually go a little short on in my overall training profile. Standing strengthening practice, one of the four pillars of Yin Style training, is by necessity a shorter-duration exercise than most of the other practices. It's difficult to get a good, worthwhile session of striking training in a five- or ten-minute break between other obligations. Five to ten minutes of standing strengthening is a pretty solid set of it for most folks. It also requires a minimal amount of space since very little is in motion: just the space of a yoga-mat-sized area is needed to really rock out some standing strengthening, and those fit just about anywhere. Unlike many of the other practices, as long as you're a bit discrete, standing strengthening is easy to "sneak in" in places like your office with less likelihood of being noticed (or having security called on you thinking you're an escapee from a mental ward -- true story of a member of our group) than doing something "absolutely ridiculous looking" like turning practice or strikes. Thus, when I'm in hard-academic mode, like now, I end up quadrupling (or more) the amount of standing strengthening I do while dropping almost everything else so that I can have back-to-back fifteen-hour work days for weeks on end (weekends included).

Drilling something complicated that I want to get a basic hang of is another favorite. I do this a lot (in my house or on a quick jaunt into the yard for some fresh air and breathing space, though behind a closed door can work too without drawing too much attention) when I'm trying to gain a new skill. The back-step drills that came out of Beijing this spring are a notable example: often enough I'd have time to really go drill them and other things, but right about then, I got academically slammed and had to hang a bunch of training up for a while. When I wasn't standing, I was trotting across some room in my house (en route to the kitchen for refreshment, bathroom for relief, or back to the office for more toil) going through those back-step drills as a means of locomotion toward my destination. I might only get 6 or 8 reps in each direction, but I got a lot more comfortable with the stepping pattern and coordination in the process, and since I'd take breaks about once every hour or so, usually with three runs of this kind of thing involved, I actually ended up with a fair number of repetitions in a day, 6x3x10=180 to 8x3x10=240, which is far more than I would have had if I just gave up and said I was "too busy" to train.

Weights are a temptation in tight times. You can feel like you get a lot of effect for very little time input (pick up your nearest 25-pound dumbbell and do 20-30 bicep curls straight with it, it only takes about a minute and a half and your arm puffs and cramps up like it's going to explode, split, or fall off). The downside to this is that while you get a little strength training out of it, you don't get any martial training. Since you're not going to have enough time to really bust out some seriously good routines of either sort, I think it's better to do an exercise like a drill that builds up a skill over time rather than something that just gives me a little pump in my arm or leg, although squats are a great way to revitalize you when you've been sitting for too long (so those get thrown in sometimes anyway just to get the blood pumping quickly). Standing strengthening really seems to be a better choice, though, another reason I like to hit it hard and often in these busy periods, because it seems to really open the body up and get things (Blood and Qi) flowing and moving smoothly. Weights never do that for me, and standing strengthening is really an all-body kind of activity, so it feels a lot more complete for that short amount of time (working your whole body in 10 minutes instead of two muscle groups, for instance). If I'm in the market for something heavy to balance out my desk job, five minutes of basic drills with the saber (if I'm working at home!) usually is enough to get a fair sweat going and make it feel like I've done something -- something martial!

Speaking of having a job that keeps you crazy busy, you might not have one like I have that keeps you sedentary while you're working. If you do, then these kinds of exercises are perfect and great. In fact, they're pretty much necessary. The sitting still really starts to take a toll on your body, mostly in terms of circulation and muscular tension, after thirty or forty minutes. Your brain gets sluggish after that much time of relative inactivity also because of the less smooth circulation of blood (and Blood and Qi). Getting up and doing something that promotes its flow on at least an hourly basis (I've been told half-hourly by several reputable sources) is almost a necessity, so don't think of it as taking away from your work to stretch out and move yourself around a little.

If your job is more physical, and you're crazy busy, then you're probably too tired to train much. What you need, though, is something that puts you back together. Ironically, if you can put the heart into it, standing strengthening is great for that, as is "running through" drills, focusing more on the mental aspect of mastering the inherent skill rather than the physical aspect of putting in power and ferocity (like "learning speed" practice). Another option, one that I frequently employ even as a mental worker at a desk, is to get up and do some stretching. It's just nice for opening up the flow (again of Blood and Qi) and making me feel better kind of all over. It's not as directly martially beneficial as training would be, but being physically wrecked makes for a difficult push into some training, even if it's light.

Finally, when time is tight, there's a time that everyone has free: just before they fall asleep. Even though you're probably tired by the time you hit the pillow, on days that I'm crazy busy, I usually am a bit wound still when I lay down. This is a prime time to be opting for visualization of the techniques, skills, combinations, applications, forms, and other practices in the art, which is a very valuable constituent of good training. Even if there's no time, energy, or will to get up and really stand strengthening in between job requirements, it's quite easy to get yourself thinking about your training and training in your mind. That, my friends, is better than nothing when you're really strapped for time.

That's some of the stuff that I do when my time is tight: more standing strengthening, more running through "confusing" drills in slow/medium-motion, a couple of sets of saber basics (when apropos), stretching, and visualizing. What do you do?

Training Anchors

Training the martial arts, particularly Yin Style Baguazhang, can be very dry and very challenging at the same time. That's a recipe for making it very difficult to pay the full attention to the practice that you need to in order to develop well. With physically demanding practices that have to be done repetitively a large number of times, it is very easy to "check out" mentally and just let the process become one that is mechanical until the body points out that it's just too much to continue. That's pretty much the last thing you want if you want to get real development in this (or any) art. So how can you avoid it?

The easy answer is "mental discipline." Forging your will to your practice (one of the internal harmonies). Unfortunately, that easy answer is tough to act on when you're pounding out hundreds of repetitions of something and starting to feel the wear on your body that those repetitions bring or when you suddenly have all kinds of interesting ideas for what to do next, later, or in a way entirely unrelated to training while you're training. Those ideas come up often enough on their own and distract the mind even during training. Something I've found that helps in those kinds of situations are what I'm referring to as "training anchors."

A training anchor holds you to your practice. I'm going to take it as a given that unless you're an absolute Superman with an unnaturally disciplined and tamed will that during longer training sessions, you're going to check out sometimes. The goal isn't so much to prevent this naturally occurring process, which will become a distraction in its own right, as it is to pull your attention back to the training at hand. Like an anchor for a ship, which doesn't keep it fixed in one place, it holds a slightly drifting ship close to where it's supposed to be. We all know, if we train Yin Style, that we're supposed to be putting certain attention on several things at once while we drill: proper hand form, proper alignment, proper execution, proper breathing, proper body use, proper motion of the waist, proper speed, proper timing, proper standing, proper generation and emission of force, proper harmonies, proper etc., etc., etc. We also know that it's frickin' hard to do it the whole time and that our minds wander. If Jinbao was watching us train when that happened, he'd tell us that we need more spirit in our training and have to keep our minds on the task.

So when my mind wanders, I've found a number of "anchors" that help me bring it back to task. For me, one of the best anchors is the feeling that properly making the hand-form gives me. In the ox-tongue palm shape, it's the stress in the opponens (thumb) muscles that I can most quickly and easily turn my attention to when I catch it wandering. When I'm making a fist, it's on keeping it as hard as rock. From there, I can do one better and, since my mind is already on my hand: I set my new anchor as double-religiously watching my hands as I practice. For some reason, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on my hand opens the door to being able to focus again on something more subtle, perhaps the tension in my waist properly generating and emitting force, without the desire to close my eyes and just feel it happening. This same kind of attention works great for me during standing and turning pratice as well as during striking and forms drilling.

When I turn, I have massive amounts of mind-wander that sometimes (frequently?) overcomes my ability to think about the hand and settle everything into that first as a gateway to running through the checklist of proper form. Often, I find myself thinking over-much about my feet to the exclusion of attention on my upper body. When that happens, I redouble my effort, usually pulling harder with my thumb (which makes it hurt) to force my attention to that area until I reaffix my gaze and mind to my whole-body experience.

I don't know what anchors other people use and am curious, though. If you've got something to share, particularly something more effective than the "think about the stress in your thumb and then watch your hand" that I use, I'd love to hear it!

Turning: Tips for Starting Out

Turning is definitely a cornerstone practice of baguazhang. In fact, as has been mentioned countless times before and bears repeating countless more times, it is fair to say that turning the circle is probably baguazhang's most basic and yet most profound practice. It is easy enough to do, and yet it is very difficult to do well. Because my circle was hit by a truck and then found to be too big for my purposes, I've got to embark on the process of turning without my anchor all over again, and I've developed some tips in the process. For the record, I just started my real new circle today, and I would have pictures to show you except that my wife is off having an awesome time with our camera right now.

The first thing I think I can tell you fairly enough about turning is that it really helps to have a place that you do the vast majority of it... a single place. I've spent the last couple of months without such a place, though I have a variety of acceptable locations that I've been using, and every one of them has something wrong with it. First, I want it to be outside. I have an indoor turning place, but it's definitely not my preferred spot and is reserved for times when it's really wet out or really cold. I particularly don't like cleaning up the floor when I'm done turning inside, and I keep this slight fear in the back of my head that I'm going to wreck the floor eventually if I keep it up. Second, it has to be comfortable. Here in East Tennessee, f-ing everything is a hill. Even the hills have hills on them. I thought I had the only flat-enough place in my yard to turn, which is the one that I've forsaken. Luckily, I found another one. It also needs not to be too exposed. It's a bit uncomfortable turning in a spot that directly faces a road. I've been videotaped and photographed who knows how many times (vidoed twice, actually, but I don't know about the pictures) turning in a spot that directly faced my street at my old place, which wasn't even busy. It's okay to turn in a public place, but it's nicer when it's a bit more private. There are fewer distractions to contend with.

The real benefit of finding a good place to turn is that the location becomes significant, even though it really isn't. It's easy to become attached to that place, which of course is not so good except that it becomes a place that is almost sacred in a way, hallowed ground for the practitioner. Like other "sacred" spots, that allows that space to serve the main function of sanctity: reseting your mind to focus on the task at hand, which in this case is turning. If you turn anywhere and everywhere, good for you, but there's just something about having your spot to turn on that really makes you feel like it's time to get down to business doing just that one thing. Eventually, you'll have to let that place go, but that's alright too.

Here's how to go about finding a space and "claiming" it. First, take your time. Wander around the area you have to work with and take a look-see and see what you see. Does this place or that look good. Stand and turn around a little. How do things look now? Then go try a couple of other candidates if you can find any. Do the same thing. Then you can pick your favorite: the one that resonates with you and your personality best. Once you have that, you might want to turn on it right away for about three to five minutes. I did that today and immediately found that the place I picked wasn't as good as I thought. At first it seemed perfect, but as I got into turning, I could feel how lumpy the ground was there and that it was less level than I suspected. Moving over to my second choice turned out to be a great thing to do. Don't be afraid to move around a few inches or feet in any direction to find the best place in your little area. Little annoyances now will be big annoyances fifty miles around the never-ending bend. Once you've settled on a place that you're pretty sure you can be happy with, turn on it. Do it for a good while. If it's in grass, go until you've made a pretty good mark on the grass. Not only will that make you feel like you've accomplished something and get a decent turn in for you, it will also help to mark the spot so that next time you turn, you can find the same place much more easily and beat it into even better submission. That's like a feedback loop, and besides, the desire to go beat your circle into a beautifully formed sight is maybe that little bit of extra motivation that gets you turning for a half an hour more a week or so than you would have otherwise.

Once you've got a circle, you can get into your turning. Even if you don't have one, however, or if you want to follow the above guideline, you've got to start your turning somewhere. This next list of tips is really helpful for beginners as well as more experienced people that really want to focus their training and development.

Start Simple and Build Up
You don't have to dive directly into some esoteric, hard posture and turn with it. In fact, it's best if you don't. Start by feeling the natural curve of turning, trying to maintain your circle. When you feel good, put more attention in your legs and try to develop your stepping a little, making it more formal. When that feels good, add weight to your legs and try to sink. Do all of that before you even lift your hands from your side. That might be your first few weeks of turning practice, as a matter of fact. You want to get good at this, so you don't have to be in a hurry. Eventually, adopt a posture with your arms, but don't worry about strength or tension. Get used to the change in your body and alignment and slowly add strength over time. Eventually try to bring it all together. For a beginner, this might take six months. That's fine. For a more established practitioner, taking the time to redo this might revamp your attention to details you've been missing, so taking a week out of your normal routine turning to refine various aspects of it can have a major benefit on your practice.

Be Consistent
Turning a little every day is much more valuable than going all-out today and forgetting about it tomorrow and the next day. They say you need to turn for a while to really get development, but you don't have to turn for a long time to get skill and to stay connected to the practice. If you do it all in the same place (whenever possible) the building effect of this suggestion can have an even bigger impact. You might want to try to turn for an hour a day every day, and if you have it and the ability, good for you. If not, do what you can but try to make it a daily habit.

Do the Best You Can Do Today
You turned for an hour and a half yesterday and kept really solid focus and attention and did a great job with everything and were totally stoked about it and then today it pissed you off big time when you couldn't seem to get a clear head and your arms were as limp as dishrags? Cool, welcome to being normal. Your job is to do the very best you can with turning every time you turn, realizing fully that you're a different chick or dude every time you hit the circle. Some days, turning just works great. Some days, it's a chore. Some days, it sucks outright and hurts like hell. All days, do the best you can with what you've got that day.

Do Not Measure Your Performance Against Others
If your mom can turn for an hour and you can only turn for twenty minutes, don't get all mad at yourself or at your mom (n.b. your mom here is standing in for "someone else"). You should only measure your performance against yourself over time -- not even against "yesterday." Are you turning better than you were a month ago? Six months ago? Two years ago? (Are you even still turning after two years?!? If so, then freaking good for you!) As long as you're seeing improvement over time, then you're doing alright. If you're six or ten months down the road and not really improving, then you might need to soul-search and find out why. Maybe something's standing in your way? Maybe you're not putting as much into the practice as you should be? Maybe you're in a major rut for whatever reasons life might have thrown at you?

Do Not Base Your Turning on a Clock, a Number of Revolutions, or Some Other Crap that Isn't Worth a Damn
Yes, you can use those methods as a measuring stick or motivational tool, so don't throw them out, but realize they aren't the goal of the exercise. This is a statement of quality must outmatch quantity. If your body today only has ten good minutes in it, get those good ten minutes, push for a little while longer, and let that be how it is (always push a little past what you think is what is great and you'll get better over time... no stress = no improvement, usually). The real goal is improvement over time, not five hundred go-arounds. If you're more worried about a clock or number of revolutions than the quality of your turning, then your turning is going to be crap. If you're forcing the exercise, you're not doing it right. You should be pushing yourself, sure, but not forcing things to the point where the posture or stepping are failing.

Turn to Get Better at Turning
Do you remember my last post? If you do, then you know why you're turning (small scale): to get better at turning. Pay attention to details and requirements so that the goal is achieved. Like in the last point, if you don't get a really long time in, so what... as long as you feel like you honestly got better at turning or at least some aspect of the practice. This is where breaking the exercise down and rebuilding it from the ground up can really have a benefit even for established practitioners. Drop your hands sometimes and really check your legs out. Are you sinking right? Are you stepping correctly? Are you paying attention to all of the fine details of the footwork and body? Turn that way for a long time and see how things change over time. You might be surprised at what you need to work on. You can do the same thing adopting an easier hands-posture than Lion or one of the other animal postures (e.g. "lower posture," a beginner's/health-building posture). See what adding in the hands, even in an easier place, does to your feet. You might go through the whole process of adding your hands in to an animal posture loosely and then adding strength, spending some time in each place to see how it affects the whole. Refine, refine, refine! It's hard to pay attention to 100 things at once. You might also ignore the legs a little and focus on the upper body (but isn't that what we usually end up doing when we pretend we're training seriously anyway? ...no comment on my practice...). Eventually put it all back together and start paying attention to the more subtle requirements (if you know them). See what comes up! Most importantly, keep your head in this game!!!

Turn to Get Better at Baguazhang
Ah ha, now we've hit it: the real point of turning. Whatever your goals with Baguazhang are, they are enhanced by turning as long as your point in turning is to enhance your Baguazhang: be that as a martial art, a health-building practice, a moving meditation, or whatever-else-have-you. This has to underscore the entire practice because it is really the entire purpose for the practice of turning the circle: to get better at the art in which turning serves as a cornerstone. Keep that in the back of your mind while you turn and reflect on it while you wind-down afterwards. Ask yourself, out loud if you have to, "how did this benefit my bagua?" Try to find answers. If you don't have any, then you might need to break things down and look at the requirements all over again or listen more closely to the changes that should be taking place, slowly over time spent in a regular and dedicated turning practice, in your body and mind.

Train FOR Something: Skills-Oriented Training

I've mentioned this kind of thing before, but it bears mentioning again and again. When you train, go train for something specific, in particular to get better at something specific.

Here are two examples of exercise-related/training-related goals, phrased in a fairly generic sense:

1. I'm going to work this exercise until I can do it 150 times without stopping!
2. I'm going to work this exercise until I'm very good at it, trying to pay attention to find and learn the proper mechanics and execution along the way!

Obviously, the second goal is a superior goal for a number of reasons. The first goal, first of all, is easier to meet because it's very specific. That's great if you're totally new to exercise or just trying to get some cosmetic results, but it's total crap if you want to actually master a technique, which is usually the goal of martial arts training. Who cares if you can do a technique 150 times without stopping if you can't do it once correctly? If what you're training is martial arts, then doing something wrong 150 times (while somewhat better than doing it none) is not going to do you much good if the (hopefully) unlikely situation that you have to use it comes up. Granted, if the exercise is something like squats (great for strengthening the legs and butt), you probably don't have to "use" it ever except as an accessory to a technique you're trying to perform, but still, doesn't it seem to mesh so much more deeply with the idea of training an internal or even just an intelligent martial art to extend those ideas to everything we do, exercise included? Of course it does!

Making your goals skills-oriented makes for a harder, more rewarding road. If you work hard and honestly to get good at something, chances are pretty good that you'll be able to do it several or many times in a row, but you'll have obtained more along the way: a deeper understanding of the technique or exercise. It's a difficult goal to meet, however, because it's abstract and lacks a clear finishing point. You know when you can do 150 squats without stopping (body-weight squats, of course), but you cannot know when you've honestly mastered a technique fully. Of course, that can be discouraging, but for a mature, serious person (like a good martial artist has to be), it's more of an opportunity than an impossibility. "Cool! I'll always have room to develop in this practice!" is the way you can look at it instead of "Shit! I'll never completely get this!"

Basically, any exercise you choose to do as part of your training can have benefit. The question you have to ask yourself is how much benefit a given exercise per unit of time that you have to train. Dr. Xie Peiqi apparently used to say something like "we're all given the same twenty-four hours in a day, so what matters is how we choose to use them." Realistically, with jobs and family and living, most of us might have an hour or two a day on average to dedicate to our training, which really isn't much (ten or fifteen hours out of 168 in a week, i.e. less than 10% of our time). That means our choices on how to spend our training hours have to be optimal. No matter which exercises you pick: standing strengthening, turning, striking, drilling, forms, dadao practice in any of those dimensions, applications, or accessory training like cardio, weight training, stretching, or what-have-you, you have to look at your goals in terms of developing certain skills. Stretching might seem much more valuable if you're too stiff to do certain movements (lying step, anyone?), and weights might really help you if you're weak. Weights can help you if you're strong as long as you're creative and serious enough to focus your weight training on meaningful exercises and routines that actually enhance your training, determined enough to make sure you put your mind into those exercises, and mature enough to drop the silly, empty, bullshit exercises that make up the majority of what is done with weights in the wide world of exercise -- no matter what they might make you look or feel like if you do a lot of them (is bench press really going to make you a better fighter? I somehow doubt it...).

Most importantly (in fact, so importantly that I'm going to repeat it even though I already wrote it), put your mind into your training, even if it's not a martial technique. If you're jogging to increase your wind, then put your mind into your breathing while you're jogging. That's the reason you're jogging, right? If you're lifting a weight to increase your ability to hit hard, make sure that the exercise you choose somehow uses the same muscles that are involved and that you focus on feeling those muscles, imagining how their strength translates into striking power. If you're stretching, then put your mind into your body and try to feel your tightness... and then try to let your mind help you release it. Bring your internal to your external, and you can really maximize what you're getting out of your training time.

Fire and Ice

"Sometimes you've got to think about presentation; you've got to make it look good for people."

He Jinbao said that to us while discussing variations on the Nine Dragon Saber form in our seminar in London this summer, and the extra little kick thrown in by Matt was "You've got to think about fire and ice sometimes." Since I don't speak Chinese, I don't know if Matt or JB said "fire and ice," but I'm assuming for now that it was Matt. I could be wrong.

I do know that Matt made "The Billionaire" and I do a fire-and-ice drill one day, and today I brought that drill to Bradley. The drill itself is completely insignificant to this post and almost insignificant to training: it's one drill out of several dozens and probably one that most people that work the dadao are have done: stab forward and then pull back, squatting into a low stance and supporing the saber arm with the back of the wrist, using the waist to drive the movement, of course.

The point here is really that doing this fire-and-ice drill made a normally "boring" drill a lot more fun, in other words, it increased the excitement that we had for the drill and encouraged us to do more drills in a similar way -- more drills, in fact, than we would have done had we not walked down this road. The basic idea for "fire and ice" is that you and some partners get together and do the drills a bit like a synchronized swimming team, so to speak. For us, we stabbed directly at the points of each other's saber so that they ended a few inches or a foot or so apart (measured ahead of time). Then we moved in step with one another. This drill would be particularly cool with a larger group also. I know for sure that it drove me to do more of them and gave me something different to focus on while I was doing the drill, so it really pepped it up for me.

The thing is, group training in Yin Style is an interesting phenomenon. As far as I can tell, it has some very useful purposes:

• Introducing the art to less-experienced practitioners or helping to advance their practice;
• Group accountability/encouragement to do more and better drills;
  
• Commeraderie;
• The ability to see and be seen, primarily for correction's sake;
• Share ideas and training tips;
• Practice applications.

There are surely others, but making an exhaustive list of such a thing on the spot is difficult, particularly when you get familiarity blindness (meaning we all know the benefits of group training and are so familiar with them that it's hard to see and say those things clearly sometimes in an exhaustive list). One thing that is particularly good about Yin Style (although it's true for every martial art, even if it's not explicitly encouraged) is that solo drilling really takes center stage, and the hard truth of the matter is this: you don't need a group to do it or to do it well (although for the corrections/learning aspects it's really helpful). Thus, why use your group meeting times for focusing primarily on the things you should be doing at home, training on your own?

That's where doing drills with the fire-and-ice mentality comes in. The drills are the same, but they feel and look different. If we all stand in rows and just do them, that's fine, but it's very similar to what we are experiencing in our solo practice just with more people around (who might be added distractions?). Fire and ice gives a different kind of purpose and a certain novelty to the exercises, and it is certainly not something you can do on your own. As far as training practicality goes, more attention to distance and positioning are required for the drills, so those aspects of training become more realistic than when drilling solo, say out in the middle of your driveway (in case you don't want to tear up your grass or something).

Apparently, fire and ice can be applied to the form as well. In fact, it was mentioned, since we were doing the form in fours, how cool it would look if we all did the "boatman plunges his pole" maneuver so that our saber tips all pointed to the middle of the room at the same time. Then it was suggested that we should all think about our positioning and movement so that we could accommodate that goal. Then we didn't do it, not even once. Looking back at it now, I think of it as a missed opportunity. Putting some thought into these kinds of things, not as a center of your practice but rather as a peripheral sort of drill can add depth and fun to what otherwise might seem tedious, repetitive, dry, or even boring. Plus, when we do it, we get to look cool, and how cool is that?

What and Why Training Journals

One of the training tools that I've been experimenting with since sometime in May (and holding kind of close to my chest) is what I would call a "what and why" training journal. I'm not as good at keeping it as I should be, but that's partially because I have a tendency to become a little o.c.d. with journaling my training. Still, I think it is a very valuable tool to increase ability in an art that requires a large amount of attention to detail.

The point of the training journal is simple and explained clearly by its name: "what and why." Essentially, I try to write down what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. The basic ideas on the what and why are twofold, though. First, I keep tabs on what training I'm actually doing, sometimes writing it down before I do it to give myself a commitment to fulfill. Secondly, I keep tabs on what I'm doing when I'm training so I can pay attention to the requirements of the techniques along with He Jinbao's suggestion that we "should never train the same thing in the same way twice." In other words, I try to make things more palpable for myself in terms of what I'm doing and how I'm doing it so that I can refine my training more efficiently. Particularly I might make short notes about what kinds of things seemed to work and what kinds didn't.

The why part of the journal is also self-explanatory: I'm answering the question "why am I doing this?" There are two sides to that, though. First, there is what training goals or needs it is satisfying. For instance, for a while I felt very weak in my shocking strikes (and even wrote about it on here, I think). I gave them a low grade, so to speak, in terms of where I felt like I was with them versus where I thought I should be with them. Thus, part of the why for my shocking strike improvement effort was "to improve the quality of my shocking strikes, primarily in terms of output of power consistent with what I know about the shocking force." The other part of why is equally important: applications. These moves are martial. Why am I doing them? Obviously to improve my fighting skill, and so part of my why journaling is detailing what in uses I know or imagine these techniques could be employed. I believe this aspect is very important to coming up with useful drills, combinations, etc., as well as developing the technique appropriately. Even if all I care about is health development in my martial arts training, the inherent health development is wrapped up in the proper execution of the martial arts techniques. Thus, if I don't know how to use them, I probably cannot do them to full effectiveness and thus miss some of that health development. If I want to learn to fight, then focusing on this aspect of training is of obviously high importance, so I find this to be one of the most valuable aspects of the journaling process.

Another thing that journaling does to really enhance your training is it teaches you to think about things in terms of how you would write them down: in other words, you have to critically analyze and carefully pay attention to what you're doing in order to get everything you want out of them.

Maybe this won't work for everyone, but a "what and why" training journal has really helped me deepen my practice. I'm glad I shared.

My Saber, My Wrist, and My Remedy

Every person that does something physical needs this book: The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief, Section Edition by Davies and Davies. Seriously. Get it. Use it. Love it.

I'm not here to be a commercial; I'm here to talk about training. Well, as many of you have read, my wrist is still pretty well wrecked from maybe overdoing it a little bit in London (or being weak, however you read that). Well... I went out to work with my saber today and did a drill about forty times in my right hand (described below) and felt pretty damn good about that. Then I went to do it in my left (the wrecked-wrist side) and nearly dropped the saber in extreme pain on the first attempt, which was obviously piss-poor. That's not acceptable, and it's holding my training back. Then I tried tracing the saber back and forth. I did a bunch in my right and a whopping two in my left before I couldn't really hold the saber up any more. I'm secretly to the point with my wrist "right now" where I can't unscrew a jar (not a new, sealed jar, but one that's been opened many times) in the morning without some real difficulty and pain. That's screwed up. I can't do cutting strikes worth a crap, my standing and turning postures in Lion are a partial failure due to the external rotation of the bottom hand that I can't really do, and a number of the qinna strikes are also wrecking me or largely inaccessible. That is unsatisfactory.

I came directly inside after tracing and put the saber down earlier and picked up the book mentioned above. I re-read every page that related to wrist pain of the kind I was primarily experiencing and within about ten minutes had identified the most likely areas that are causing me trouble. I spent half an hour working hard on them (painful) after that, and function is improved probably by 60% in one session. I'm still not going to man-up the saber in my left hand until I'm more near 90-95% improved, but the jar is no problem, seizing and grasping seem to be much better, and cutting only hurts a little. External rotation: check. I did some standing strengthening in the Lion posture to celebrate. Nice.

We all get sore from training, and if we're training correctly, we're probably sometimes getting some repetitive-use injuries. Many of those can be treated by following the instructions in this book and enduring a little pain. That means we can train more, harder, longer, more frequently, and sooner if we end up injured. Awesome.

The drill: the first series of movements from the Monkey-King section of the Nine Dragon Saber form, up through TaiGong Goes Fishing, snapping the saber back into the Monkey-King posture after going fishing. Since I can't do that whole series forty times, I interlaced it with repetitions of turning around the circle once in Monkey King and doing the first movement (Fair Maiden ... Buddha), then stepping back onto the circle for another go around. I probably did the full-to-fishing sequence every fifth time, once facing forward, once facing backwards.