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.

Feeling stuck? Train something you "already know"

Training Yin Style Bagua is hard for a variety of reasons. One reason is the sheer physical demand. Another is the amount of material that demands attention. A third is the intense mental requirement to get the techniques right. Another still is that all of this creates a nice, sticky web that tends to make training get really, really stagnant sometimes and tends to make progress feel incremental at best and invisible at worst. If you're stuck in one of these stagnant phases of training, what can you do? Go back to something you "already know" and haven't trained in a while.

Notes about sparring--a two-edged sword

Yin Style Baguazhang does not spar as a functional part of its training. Some folks might try to paint this as a black mark against the art, believing that "pressure testing" in the ring is the only way to make or prove a fighter, but this is incomplete thinking. I'd like to elaborate on the topic of sparring a little bit here, then, to give a more complete picture, one that illustrates sparring as a training method that has two edges that cut both ways.

New blog, odds and ends

I've created a new blog for the Yin Style Baguazhang, Knoxville, study group specifically, so I can turn this blog back toward being one about my personal journey instead of one about our group. Follow the linked words to check it out.

That said, I can give some little updates on my own training, specifically on my circle-turning goal, which has occupied my attention far more than it has space on my blog! Details after the fold.

Mental discipline, turning the circle and other grinding

Because of my desire to improve that aspect of my Yin Style Bagua training and the resultant new year's resolution to turn more, I've been on the circle this week far more than what has (shamefully) been average in the last while. That, of course, has me thinking about turning more, and, for the purposes of this blog, that has me thinking about the challenges related to turning. Of course, these lessons are far more broadly applicable than this particular useful, if esoteric, practice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Snow day! Train hard!

The other day I posted some training tips for training in cold weather, notably after we trained out in some cold. Today, something relatively rare happened in East Tennessee: it snowed and stuck. I took some advantage of the opportunity to test out some of my tips with a short training session outside (and even got a picture for you, although it's posed, from after some of my training). After going out today in snow and ice, I have a couple of things to add to that previous post.

Training tips for cold weather

After reading "When Cold......", by George on the Beijing Yin Style study group's training blog, I decided to put together some of what I have to say about training in cold weather, which is, obviously, appropriate for the season for many practitioners right now and will be again soon enough for our Southern Hemisphere friends. Definitely check out George's post on Y.S.Behind Enemy Lines when you get a chance, and take his advice to heart since it's solid information. It's also a poignant topic for us right now since the Knoxville study group trained this week outdoors in 25-degree Fahrenheit (-4 Celsius) for a couple of hours while damp snow fell lightly on us.

Flat back

A flat back... I have one.

At this year's successful seminar series, in which I was glad to participate in two tour stops, it was made literally painfully clear to me that I have an overly flat upper back, and that I am to work hard to correct this issue.

Armchair Training

Training in an armchair? What the hee-haw? Before anyone salivates like I'm about to throw out some crazy awesome secret tip for how you can achieve development without having to get out of your comfy lazy-boy recliner (such tips do not exist in real martial arts or development practices of any sort), let me point out to you my predicament and the reality of this. I'm injured in a way where standing and walking are kind of out for the moment, except for bare-minimum requirements. It's absolutely amazing how much pain and impediment a toe can cause you, let me just say that.

So I have this rule: never zero that I've talked about before. How can I hold myself to "never zero" if I can't really even move around? Standing postures? Nope, not with this injury, at least not in full. Standing with wide legs or toes digging into the earth (especially that second one) is blinding pain right now. That's out until I'm healed up.

Well, while development is considerably lower, there are modifications of lots of the exercises that can be done while sitting. I even trained the saber! Several of the isometric postures with the saber can be trained without having to get up if your feet, knees, or legs are in no shape to let you train properly. Please note: this is not a substitute for proper training, you hee-haw, this is making the most of a crappy situation. While holding your body in an active, upright posture, the saber can be held out in a variety of ways to strengthen various parts of the arm and hands. Here are a few examples:

• Hold the saber overhead as in "green dragon shoots to the sea;"
• Hold the saber out in front, as in "black bear carries the mountain on its back" or "rooster stomps into battle;"
• Hold the saber out in front or directly out to one side as if completing a chop or stab;
• Hold the saber in front vertically, as in "monkey king offers incense;"
• Slowly move the tip of the saber from horizontal to vertical by flexing only the wrist, usually done out in front;
• Slowly rotate the saber from pointing left to pointing right, and vice-versa, using primarily the forearm;
• Hold the saber extended and turn the blade over without moving the saber much, as if working a screwdriver, as far as it will go one way and then back the other, trying to keep the tip stationary.

Other things you can do don't require the saber if you can't get on your feet but are otherwise healthy and able. For instances:

• Focus on other activities like strength training (using weights) or stretching (preferably both);
• Watch some YSB instructional videos and make notes. If you're training properly, this is an activity that is usually hard to make time for (if you're like me, you're more time-limited than anything else in terms of what limits your total training);
• Review your notes from previous training sessions, video viewings, seminars, or intensives. Reviewing them can mean compiling them as well, which is harder but very useful;
• Train your mind. Try to do techniques, particularly combos, forms, and applications vividly in your mind. Research shows that this kind of training is nearly essential for greatness in a skill. The mind should be central in your training anyway, so if your body is telling you that you can't train any other way, train this way;
• Do modified versions of exercises that accommodate your injury. For instance, standing normally isn't too bad for me now that I'm on the mend (but not fixed), so I can do isometric standing strengthening postures without putting any hard effort into my legs, and this practice isn't causing me pain. It is, however, giving me some development in my upper body and building skill in doing the exercises correctly on that half.

As I'm learning, letting yourself heal from an injury before pressing foward is critical or you'll lose more training time than you would by doing a bunch of halfed training sessions. I learned the hard way, when this injury was initially on the mend and got to "mostly feeling better but still injured" that doing a hard session too soon on an injury makes the injury worse. Instead of having to take another day of careful, controlled stuff like I mentioned above, I made things way worse and have lost nearly a week of good training time. One workout isn't worth losing six or seven (or more, depending on the injury)!

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.).

Training Through Stagnation

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working crazy-busy hours trying to prepare for my academic/work demands, and so my training has suffered a little in the meantime. I've been keeping it up with little bits here and there, drills and standing and other quick things in between long bouts with the (rather boring) math book I wrote (but won't be getting published). In the last few days, however, I've been doing less and less of that, despite the fact that I don't feel "ready" for what's in front of me yet. I'm stagnating with it.

This is putting me in a position that I'm sure is unique but not unique to me. I keep finding excuses not to work on my stuff that I'm supposed to work on (yet while remaining productive) and yet I'm not doing the training that I could be doing with the spare time because I'm "not supposed" to be training because my focus is supposed to be on this math. I get like this sometimes, and it's silly. Basically, I feel guilty for not working on the math and then somehow manage to "waste" a bunch of time doing little piddly (but important enough) things not working on what I'm supposed to be doing and still not feeling willing to use that time to train because I somehow feel like I'd be doing something I'm not supposed to do. It's weird. I know that just about everyone that gets serious about academics (and probably any career, particularly ones that don't really end up being "left at the office" at the end of the day) has times like this. It's a trap.

I broke out of it today. After spending an hour or so staring at the thing I'm supposed to work on next and then not working on it for more than about five minutes of that time, I decided I was just going to shake myself up and get unstuck. I went out for about 90 minutes and trained, hard. It did the trick. I felt great to have trained. I felt great to have exercised. I felt great to have done something different, and I came back in from my little workout feeling great about getting back to work on my mathematics, which I actually did for a while before making dinner. Still somewhat enthused about it (now that I feel unstuck), I'll be getting back on it once I finish this post, which I'm taking time to write partly because I want to and partly because I'm so excited about getting unstuck and know there are probably lots of folks out there that read this (meaning a fair proportion of my small readership) that could benefit from the following advice: if you're caught up with a lot to do and feeling a burn to train or to just do something different, get unstuck -- go train.

Believe me, you'll end up getting more done. I think this is like the people on diets that deny themselves cookies and can't stop thinking about them. I denied myself proper training so I could "focus on my mathematics," and I found that I wanted to train WAY more than I wanted to do mathematics and therefore thought way more about the training I wasn't doing (and wasn't willing to do). Stupid. Set some time aside, and go train.

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?

My Wrist, By Request: Trigger Points and Tendinitis

The dadao can really wreck your wrist if you're not careful, as can some of the other practices if you repetitively overdo them like I apparently did in London. My left wrist, which I've mentioned a couple of times already, has been unduly sore and less training-worthy ever since I got back. Since I got asked what I've done to help it, since I have helped it a lot, I decided to make a post about it.

The culprits that cause joint pain in the wrist are usually limited to three or four things: broken/dislocated bones, torn ligaments (sprains), tendinitis, and trigger points. I suppose you could do those first two with the saber or training, but I see those as being more likely by doing applications irresponsibly than by doing the training regimens. The last two, however, are more common, and luckily, one is easily treatable. In fact, if you have tendinitis, it's a virtual certainty that a fair proportion of your limitation in movement, discomfort, (abnormal) weakness, or pain is caused by trigger points in some nearby muscles as well. Treating those trigger points can relieve you of some of that trouble. Since all you can really do for tendinitis (if it really is just tendinitis) is ice it and rest it, eventually starting some stretching after time goes on, there's not much to say about that treatment. It is the case, however, that as often as not (probably more often, actually) trigger point issues create symptoms that are nearly identical to tendinitis that doesn't really exist.

I'm not going to detail tremendously here what trigger points are or how they arise, but knowing a little about them helps quite a bit. Essentially, if you overwork or misuse a muscle in any way, the potential to develop a trigger point is there. Even excessive resting can cause them, particularly if the muscles aren't taken through their natural ranges of motion (sitting is an example of this which causes many trigger points in the iliopsoas muscles --which cause stiffness and low-back pain-- just due to the fact that sitting in a chair naturally shortens those muscles and lets them stay that way). Trigger points are like tiny bands of contracted muscle fibers within your muscles, and they almost never resolve themselves on their own. They do, however, have two phases: active and latent. In their latent phase, they slightly restrict movement and have a high potential for becoming suddenly active, though they don't usually hurt much. In their active phase, they create tremendous discomfort. More often than not, the following truth should rule your thinking about trigger points: trigger points almost always refer pain to a place other than where they are, i.e. the problem isn't always where it hurts.

How can you get rid of trigger points? There are a few methods, none of which are fun: certain doctors can inject them with salene or procaine, they can be made very cold and then stretched (under the supervision of a trained professional), or they can be massaged (for free at home!). The massage is quite painful. In fact, you can identify where a trigger point is in your musculature because it's a spot that is inordinately painful ("exquisitely tender" is the term used by Davies, an expert in the field -- this book is almost a must-buy for anyone that does anything remotely athletic or abjectly unathletic). Once you find the spot and make it hurt with the massage, you have to hold onto it until it doesn't hurt. Basically, the process sucks, but you're looking at a few minutes of rather big discomfort to cure you of possibly months or years of increasingly degenerative discomfort and restriction in range of movement. The choice is pretty clear.

For the wrist, most of the time the problem isn't in the wrist, although it can be. It's usually reassuring to poke around the area that hurts and see if anything local is causing the problem. Depending on what hurts, it very well may be (the ligaments in the wrist can contain trigger points as well, notably the one between the thumb and the radius bone). More often than not, though, wrist pain arises further up in the forearm in the muscles that flex and extend the wrist and fingers (flexors, extensors). If your symptoms more strongly match "tennis elbow of the wrist," then your extensors are more of the problem. If your symptoms more strongly match "golfer's elbow of the wrist," then your flexors are more of the problem. In either case, rather aggressive, deep-tissue massage (typically using tools like balls or sticks) on the bellies of those muscles as well as (especially!) their attachments near the elbows will help. The massage is painful and slow, so you might need to set aside ten minutes to a half an hour to do it, and you should do it at least twice daily for a week to see really big improvement. After massaging, whenever possible, it is extremely helpful to ice the areas that you massaged for a few minutes.

My basic suggestions to anyone with wrist pain is that you search thoroughly in your forearms (extensors are on its back and flexors are on its front) for tender knots in the muscles and then press them hard, especially if they reproduce your wrist symptoms in any way (those are the main things you're looking for). That's not the whole ball of wax, unfortunately, for wrist pain.

You might find trigger points further up that cause pain in the wrist as well. Some examples of places to look might surprise you. This list isn't exhaustive, but here are some suggestions: brachialis, brachioradialis, pectoralis minor, subclavius, and the scalenes. You might also check the musculature of the thumb and, again, the local tissue in the wrist. The best massage technique I've experienced is to press hard enough so that the pain index (scale of 1-10, 1 being essentially no pain, 10 being unbearably excruciating) hits between 6 and 8 and then hold it long enough so that the pain diminishes to the 3-5 range. It seems like that will probably never happen, but it will... just keep breathing and trying to relax, and eventually your muscle relaxes and the trigger points let go. After treating and before icing, stretching those muscles is also advisable, though stretching trigger-point-afflicted muscles without massage first tends to make the problems worse, not better. You may find many, even dozens of such spots in your forearms if your wrists hurt. Sorry, but that's just how that works.

A last note: you will probably try to guard against the invasion of the massage tool (tennis balls and golf balls are particularly good, placed in a sock and then leaned upon against a wall). That's natural, but you want to try to breathe, focus, and let those muscles relax. Guarding will not help you as much and can create other problems (trigger points in other muscles). Also, you may bruise from the treatment, and if you do, then you should not continue pushing on that spot until the bruise goes away. Finally, don't interrupt the blood flow in main arteries or push hard on nerves. The first is identifiable by feeling a very strong pulse and then when you let go a flood of warm liquid inside your skin. The second is identifiable because it causes a lot of local pain (usually) and distal numbness. If leaning on a ball is making your fingers go dead-numb, that's bad.

Good luck and happy hunting!

Don't Let Your Training Get You Down

Yin Style Baguazhang is a tough art to train, as are many, though this one in particular is described as having "rather dry" training methods that make it difficult to learn. It's also a very deep art that requires a serious commitment to become skilled. Because of how its presented in seminars, because of the immense size of the art, or because of the seemingly endless layers of complexity in the techniques (just properly "finding the forces" of the techniques is said to take three to five years of serious investgation!!!), it's easy to start to feel like there's more to do than we have time for in this art if we really want to get it. To compound that, there's life, which seems to interject an awful lot of stuff into our days that just put the block on training. Piled even on top of that are words we've almost all heard that go like this: "you have to stand/turn/practice/etc. for a long time to get development." Putting all of that together is a recipe for discouragement in training in the real world.

Here are some different words to remember: "Five minutes of training is more training than zero minutes of training."

Sure, you're not going to get a whole lot of development in five minutes, but if it's all you have for your training today or this week, then you're going to get more development in those five minutes if you use them training than if you don't. Maybe you could stand strengthening. Standing strengthening for five minutes with real effort is pretty hard and can get you some development. Maybe you could focus carefully and intently on the mechanics of a particular strike that you either really like or really feel deficient on. Using your brain at full power for five minutes on feeling the mechanics of a strike can actually bring about a real change in your understanding of that strike as long as you follow up on that with some solid training later when you have more of a chance. For me, at least, that follow-up is 100% easier to talk myself into (sometimes I have talk myself out of it so that I can work or do chores or some such) if I've investigated the strike and renewed my interest in it, even if only for a few minutes... like I've whet my appetite and can't wait to find out more. Five minutes of turning isn't a great way to get development, but it is a great way to use five minutes if it's all you have, particularly if you put your training intention on the right things: focus very intently on one particular aspect of posture or mechanics, like the proper use of the legs in stepping or the proper way to lift the crown and tuck the tailbone while still managing to walk "naturally."

The thing is, it's just too easy with an art like this to feel like you're not giving it, or the opportunity you have to train in it, the attention that it is really due. Then it's easy to beat yourself up about that, and that's not why anyone's training: to feel like they have another obligation or something to be disappointed in themselves over. You have to get over that and train when you have time to train and take what you can from that time. Having only five minutes that you could use to train and then not training in those because you just deem that it's not long enough to do anything is the only way you're really shortchanging yourself. Having a life that presents you with only five minutes that you can train on a particular day is just that: having a life (and we all have them!).

A long time ago, I was given two pieces of advice about training in Yin Style that apply more generally, and I still think about them on a regular basis:

1. "Five minutes of turning (read: training) is more than no minutes of turning (read: training);"
2. "At every point in your life, you have three directions to choose from: you can do something that moves you forward, something that keeps you still, or something that moves you backwards in whatever you're working on. It's up to you to choose which one of those you want."

I think a lot of folks that train in martial arts, particularly Yin Style Baguazhang or other internal arts, have this idea that the only way to get great development is to train for hours on end most of the days of the week. To become a total expert like a lineage holder, that might be true. Honestly, though, essentially all of us will not become "lineage holders" without doing something idiotic like making up our own lineage, so that's kind of moot. The truth of the matter is that the only way to get great development is to train as much as your life and circumstance allows you to, which includes and allows for your interest in cooking, having a family, wanting to go to Cancun and lay out on the beach and do nothing for a few days, or whatever else. If you decide you really, truly want more development, then you'll find yourself reorganizing your life around fulfilling that want, but the measurement is entirely personal and therefore that kind of change isn't required or even expected.

It's tough to keep your chin up, but remember what I remember: "Five minutes is more than no minutes," and you'll progress. If you do five minutes and find that you suddenly have ten, then great. If you do five minutes and find that you're running late, then at least you got five minutes.

Growing the Group

One of our major goals here in Knoxville, TN, is to grow our group, and we're finding it very difficult. Of course, we want to do it ethically, which makes things a bit harder. Here's a little bit of our group history along with the trials and tribulations we find in growing.

A Good Beginning
When I started training a few years ago, we had a facility and some folks. I think my brother and I made the fifth and sixth members of the study group, actually, when we started. The facility was pretty good: spacious, matted, and well-lit, if a little exposed to the elements for an indoor place (it was a warehouse at a martial arts supply company, so if it was hot outside, it was hot inside, and if it was cold outside, it was cold inside). It was also free, which was pretty good, due to connections that our founding member had (and no longer has for a variety of reasons, half of which are good). The group grew pretty steadily, if slowly, there to a maximum of about eight or nine, even though some people (like my brother) left the group over the course of that time. Things were actually pretty promising back then, and it looked like we would have some real growth over time, reaching our goal of roughly 15-20 serious members in relatively short order. Then we lost the facility, and things basically went to crap.

The Dark Year
This year wasn't really dark, and it actually lasted almost eighteen months. In fact, I think some of us made some huge progress in the year that followed losing the facility, although 90% of it was on a completely individual basis since we couldn't find another facility for the same very reasonable price (free). A few of the most serious among us still got together from time to time, but the "students" at that point mostly started to vanish. By the time we found the place we're training now, which isn't really that good, the group had dwindled essentially to the three of us that now form the "core" in Knoxville, one of whom has a lot of family and work-related issues that have hindered his training of late. It was up to us to start growing again.

A New Place to Train
While out on a walk with my wife one night last year, I found a pavilion behind a school that satisfied a few of our most important criteria: lighted (we meet in the evenings), covered (it rains a lot here), and free (it's in an area that is a public park outside of "extended school hours"). Awesome... except that it's in Maryville, TN (a town about thirty miles south of Knoxville), and it doesn't have walls (something people tend to look for in a martial arts school, it seems). It's also exactly the same temperature as outside, which is rough in the hottest and coldest months of the year, and there's absolutely no protection from bugs (mosquitoes, most notably). It hasn't been a huge boon for us in terms of attracting new members, but it's been better than not having a place at all. That's where we've been since sometime last summer, and it works more or less. We do, on the plus side, have some exposure... but no one really stops to ask us what we're up to (except the one guy that did, who trains with us now). That's kind of the history of the group, many details omitted. We technically have four official members now, which isn't really very many, and we really want to grow. Using our apparently unpersuasive talking skills, we've managed to acquire around a dozen people that claim that they want to come and train, but none of them have actually done that yet. We've also had our share of "tourists" as the London group calls them: people who come and train one to three times and then never come back.

Advertising
I decided a while ago to try advertising on CraigsList, though I'm not sure why I continue it at this point except that I know it drives an awful lot of traffic to our group's website (which could use an update...). We've had quite a few e-mails from it and a few guys have actually come and tried it out (all tourists, I think). The general responses contain questions that underscore my essential reason for publishing this post (wondering what to do about these problems):

• "Why don't we get belts?"
• "Why is it free?"
• "Where do you get your training?"
• "Are you sure it isn't in Knoxville? Will it be soon/ever?"
• "Really, why is it free?"
• "I'm not going to pay for one class per week.; why don't you have classes more often?" (...it's free... ???)
• "No, really, why is it free? Is it really free?"

The main issue, apparently, is that people seem not to want one of my favorite parts of all of this: it's free. That's dubious. My latest experiment has been to post a new ad (today) to CraigsList that says "the first few lessons are free" to see if there's a greater response with an expectation to pay. I intend to misdirect people that ask about the money with "why don't you come try it before we worry about that...," a classic used-car salesman technique. Why the hell don't people want free stuff? I don't get it.

Potential Solutions
We've discussed the following plans: get business cards/flyers, market ourselves slightly more aggressively, and dupe people on the money issue. The first two of those are fairly straightforward and consistent with what's going on with HQ. The duping is funny and probably won't ever really happen. It would go down like this: "Classes are $X per month for the first three months, and then we'll discuss the more serious payment options if you want to stick with it at that point." Then, what we do is put all of the money those people pay into a box or an account until we have said discussion, at which point we tell them it's really free and hand back $3X to them because we're not interested in that (we don't have a facility, we don't have bills, and we don't have insurance... it's free). Everyone would laugh except the person that wants to know why (s)he didn't get told that it was free from the get-go.

Ethical Recruitment Concerns
There are a lot of martial arts schools in the area. I have a strong connection with one, and the other main members among us have connections with others. We kind of have a hard and fast rule that we don't advertise to those people at all. Stealing students is not something we're interested in. Something else, though, that I'd be interested in hearing some suggestions about are the following three situations, neither of which we've had to deal with yet but may have to eventually:

• A person that used to go to a school that we're connected with quits that school and then, via whatever means, ends up coming to us to train (mildly sticky); or
  
• A person that currently does train in one of those schools comes to us (under their own power and craft... we don't advertise to them!) and wants to come train with us (moderately sticky), and then
  
• Gives up on the school because of the awesomeness of baguazhang (very sticky).

I figure the first of those options is likely to happen at essentially any given time. People know us, and particularly in those schools have seen our growth in the martial arts realm since starting Yin Style. I figure it's the least sticky and not really an issue, though I bet "you're stealing my students" will still be an uttered issue despite our obvious attempts not to do that. The second of those scenarios might or might not ever happen. I don't know. I don't really want to find out. I figure that the people that migrate in that way, if any ever do, will either be tourists or fall into the third category pretty quickly (based on effectiveness + free = better deal than not free, as long as effectiveness is comparable). Some might be dual trainers, which keeps things probably pretty sticky, but it's really the third group that make me nervous.

Our goal is definitely not to steal students, but Yin Style Baguazhang has a reputation for having people start on its path and then forsake all other arts that they've trained to dedicate more to YSB. Our founding member is that way... he has literally renounced his entire karate background because of his commitment to Yin Style (wanting to have a belt-burning party before we talked him out of setting anything on fire because of the pointlessness of that).

Any suggestions on ways that might effectively help a small group grow are strongly welcomed, particularly if they include great advice on how to get past the "why is it free?" question (our usual answer is "because we love doing this and have no expenses in it, so we don't feel the need to charge for it"). Advice about the "ethical dilemmas" present in having a public study group that exists near commercial martial arts facilities are welcomed also. Locals that are interested in training or that know people that are interested in training are strongly encouraged to leave a comment indicating that to me or to contact one of us directly by finding our e-mails on either the local group's website or the YSB International website (see the sidebar for links).

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.