Serious leg workout: Yin Style Baguazhang style

I seriously wonder if there is a leg workout out there more effective than the lying step?
Monday, at group training, we focused on lying step, building up to and showing the new guys (yea! new guys!) the lying step sweeping form. We did the form a few dozen times, and we took a bunch of drills out of it and some of the others to practice the lying step technique. A few days later, I'm still pretty well convinced (by the lingering soreness!) that the lying step might be the best way in the universe to get strong, fast legs.

Here are some lying step training ideas for you to work in:

1. Go the distance: find a long, relatively straight distance to cover (a driveway, a gymnasium, a hallway) and do a lying-step strike, kind of one-step method, turning either forward or backwards, all the way down (and back!). Do it several times and feel your legs shuddering for days! From the Lion System lying step forms, these kinds of steps could either be the ones in "moves 3 and 5" or in "move 1," which gives you two very different drills and very different ways of frying your legs;
2. Box it up: Do your lying step drills (like "moves 3 and 5") in the box-stepping method, one advancing, one retreating.
3. One-two-three: You guessed it! Try doing the lying step drills (like "moves 3 and 5") along a line in the three-step drilling method. We tend to step on "one" by drawing the leg back and then extending it before the weight shift, but you could just do a weight shift there. It depends on your training and use goals.
4. Lying-step squats: all the fun of regular squats except that you keep one leg straight out in the lying-step position and do all the work with the other leg. This isn't strictly martial, but it turns your legs to mush.

A goal for development and training can be to get deeper, lower, faster, and stronger lying steps. You can facilitate the first two of those goals using side lunging stretches (drop into a lying-step position and use it as a stretch with your hands on your knees or the floor for support and safety... add strengthening and balance when you're better at it and more confident by lifting your hands). Other wide-leg hamstring and leg adductor stretches are helpful too. To facilitate the last two goals, try doing a smaller number of each drill and really pushing hard, trying to get some explosiveness in the technique (i.e. make it pliometric).

Of course, the real point is to be able to use it as well as to do it, not just to get a workout in. Be sure to combine in your strikes (see the forms for ideas if you need them) and to do this a lot. For it to be usable, you have to have excellent balance and the ability to place your foot precisely in an instant. You also have to be strong enough and flexible enough to get your leg and body into the correct positions for use, so while you stretch, drill, and strengthen, think about the uses!

Been Meaning To

I've been meaning to post again, I really have. I just haven't had much time. I've been desperately trying to figure out what else to do for my dissertation (without hearing a peep from my adviser, which is making me nervous again) and therefore chasing wild tails that go nowhere but take a long time, doing tremendous side research because my wife's planning to have a surgery in May, and, of course, training. Thanks to a little "detox" tea (involving senna), I have time right now that I can't use for training, I figure I've researched up enough for my wife, and I just don't know what else to do for my dissertation. Thus, I'm finally posting.

Here are some of the posts I wanted to make but didn't:

• Turning With the Saber: After finally getting access to the saber basics dvd, I learned to do this properly. What a tale.

• Proxy Saber Under the Worm Moon: I went outside near midnight on the night of the full moon this month and turned in the bright, pale moonlight, carrying my proxy saber. Then I did some drills with it. Then I turned without it, but only for a few minutes. It was late.

• It's Not Cold Now, You Pussies: Now that spring is arriving, I was considering changing the small online ad for our study group to include this line based on the fact that our group has grown essentially none through the cold months, though some interest was expressed until people found out that we practice outside (even that one night when it was 12 degrees F out, which kind of sucked).

• No Sleep Till Saber: I'm feeling the itch and burn for the real saber I'll have in hand in about three weeks, after Bradley comes back from Chink-a-Chink-a-China. In the meantime, I'm burning up my proxy to prepare for the training I want to do that will do justice to the Silver Snake once I have it.

• Yijing: This would have been the exciting emotional rollercoaster that tells the tale of how I spent a long time compiling a nice list of how the sixty-four hexagrams of the Yijing might correspond with or lend theory to each of the forms in YSB, even though I'm totally ignorant of the vast majority of those. It was long, it was interesting, it might have been worth something (or not), and my computer ate it after I finished it. All was lost. There was almost crying, but I laughed and let it go instead. I might redo it piecewise (instead of all at once) in a more secure way.

If I gave a different title to today's post, it would have been along the lines of "Kicking it Up and Branching Out." Besides the increased practice with the proxy, loving some of the drills from the video (and hating others!), there's been a general increase in all things training. There has also been an increased emphasis on practicing three-strike drills with applicability and intent foremost in our minds, some of which are borrowed and some of which are o.g.'s (i.e. original), designed particularly to help our new guy (note: singular) develop with the Lion basics. That covers the "kicking it up" part.

The "branching out" is partly in reaction to the posted curriculum from Beijing and partly in reaction to something I read on our forum that indicates that a stronger feel and understanding for the Lion system comes from tasting the other animals a little. Since I have all the basic-drills videos now, the idea was to start learning some/all of the basic strikes from the Dragon, Phoenix, and Bear systems, though not making those a foremost part of our practice. I've only done so up until now with one palm in the Dragon and one palm in the Bear, but I have four palms total (2 Dragon and 1 from each other) that I want to look at this week. The new drills are making me sore in new ways and forcing me to think about emitting force differently, which is interesting. It's also already changing my approach and thought about the Lion System, which is rocking cool, though slight at this early hour.

Another post I might have done today might have been "The Fifty-Six." Bradley and I have decided that it's high-time that we sat down with the videos (figuratively sitting) and learned all 56 Lion System forms. At our peak, we knew roughly 30-35 of them, but we've forgotten most because we didn't know how to train them properly and didn't make time to practice all of them frequently enough (we often wonder how it is that one is able to do all of the training that we should as well as "maintain" 56 forms while drilling certain ones really hard to get good at them.. then we realized that there are certain forms that we'll probably never forget now and are getting better with.. realizing that what made that happen is intense drilling with intention and analysis). We've realized we can probably intensely drill two or three forms at a time, maybe per week, which should get us all fifty-six within a reasonable amount of time. We've also conjectured that we can speed this up and benefit more (win-win or two-for-one) by focusing on one attacking method at a time and working those, since in theory, at least, there should be some overlap.

That gives some idea of what's been going on and what will be going on. With luck, I'll have time to keep updates on here. With more luck, I'll graduate soon and no longer have the fear of a dissertation hanging over me and will have more time for all things good. In any case, Bradley leaves for China in less than a week, and so I'll have to figure out how to deal with my separation anxiety while he's gone. So ronery....

Worldwide Readership and No Time to Post

I've been meaning and wanting to post for a while, but finishing (please, please let it be true) a Ph.D. sucks sometimes. My teaching (read: grading) load has been abnormally intense lately too, so it comes down, frequently enough, to get in 30-60 minutes of training or type on here for a few minutes. I think it's fairly obvious which I've been choosing and why. I wish I could include a sweet example of the kind of crap I spend my days doing, but it's apparently a bad idea to publicly display any of one's thesis before it's done. Besides, I'm not sure how to load up the sweet math text into this thing anyway without pulling some screen-shot business. I'm digressing.

My newest bit of research into the art has been going well and is very interesting, at least to me. The thing is, I don't know if it's a good idea to be doing or not, but as I seem to be deriving benefit from it and am keeping it in its proper context, I don't think it will do any harm. I've been studying the forms, actually just two of them in-depth, and running through them while turning for nearly my entire practice time (30-60 minutes, usually) other than a few minutes at the beginning when I do a little static posturing. I also, of course, have a background-noise level of studying the basic strikes, popping out a few and trying to use what little mind I have while I do them, maybe for a minute or two here or there while someone else needs to use this box, preventing me from typing for a bit. In any case, I'm digressing again, which is what makes my writing so much fun to read.

After I do the form, with power, a few times, I'm investigating the techniques in it, including many of the transition techniques, sometimes on more than one level (different stages in the transition) by freezing and holding them in isometric tension as a static posture. I force myself to connect with the ground in a stable manner and feel all of the places I'm supposed to be applying force along with trying to recreate the sensation of an opponent being there to receive and be affected by that force. I then hold the position for 3-5 breaths and move on, slowly. Each time something significant happens, I try to hold that position and feel it and increase my strength and awareness of my strength in those positions.

For example, in Lifting and Holding from the Sweeping Palm, the first technique is the opener, so I hold that with strength, trying to imagine clearly that particular use of what is, in essence, an opening sweeping/rising sweeping strike. The "second" technique doesn't occur, though, until a bunch of things happen in transition. First, the opening hand changes, pushing forward and threatening while lifting the opponent's arm. I pause there and try to feel all of that clearly. Then the foot opens and the other arm comes in, lifting with the elbow. I pause there too. Then I execute the remainder of the transition into the "second" technique, sometimes pausing yet again at the point where I could conceive of my leg making contact or my hand/forearm of the top arm reaching the opponent's face, neck, or shoulders. Wherever I pause, I spend time and effort to apply the appropriate strengths and to imagine feeling and visualizing the effects.

Remarkably, I think it's helping develop my usage and development of power in the forms, particularly in that it seems to be really enhancing my ability to find out what I'm not doing well enough or fully enough and refine it. Usually I'll repeat the slow business once or twice to each side before going back to practicing the form in its usual, much more mobile design, trying to keep attention on all that I had put attention on by being slow and deliberate.

So, now I feel better that I've said something on here again. Now I can go back, I guess, to typing up things I don't really like typing up so that eventually I don't have to type it up at all any more and can turn my nose back to training much more seriously!

Don't Know Chinese

I keep getting all excited about the fact that I knew the Holding and Lifting forms are called "ping tua," as well as I could tell. My ability to hear Pinyin, though is about a 6/100. It's ping tuo, apparently. Ping means "to make level or even" and tuo means "to support with the palm or hand." Even if my Chinese isn't rocking, I am, at least getting better with the forms, I think. Fortunately or unfortunately (for who can say which), I think the English name is more clear in giving a methodological approach to the theory of the forms than the Chinese, but that may be because I don't really know clearly all the levels of meaning of the words. Hopefully the English name isn't misleading me, getting me to add to the form things that aren't there.

Since my back has been hurting, 90% or more of my training for the last week and a half has been done laying on my back in visualization. That's given me a lot of time to imagine going through the ping tuo forms on someone, and I'm really glad I took the time to do that instead of adopting an "I'm hurt" defeatist attitude. While I didn't get better at actually doing the form, I did get a pretty firm appreciation for how some of the techniques work and how some of the subtleties play an important role in making them work, and I was excited to play with those a little tonight at our (very small) get together, one in which I was mobile enough to do more than act the consultant. It was pretty interesting, to say the least, and I was sort of surprised by how clearly and quickly the techniques came to life for me after repeatedly doing them mentally for over a week. I particularly feel more confident in the "give them something to think about" technology.

One of the more interesting changes I've experienced since coming from Vermont really came to a point during this time too. I'm much better, I feel, at picking out subtle details and nuances of movement and usage from the videos than I was before this trip. It's absolutely amazing what a good teacher can bring out and change for a person in even a short period of time with just a little of hardly deserved attention. It underscored a lesson I've heard and even started to notice more clearly in my classroom teaching (math) job: if you attempt teach something to someone before they're ready to learn it, then they won't learn it (well?). So many things that I heard a year ago or more are suddenly more reasonable and accessible, in fact almost obvious in some cases, after seeing these things again with a new set of goggles on, so to speak. They were, of course, completely obscured to me before the change. It gets me very excited about what further changing and developing is available.

The update on my back is that it's *mostly* better. I spent a long day in a chair on Saturday and some time since then as well, and that's keeping it from being back to normal, which still isn't awesome. In any case, I've gotten to this point without the aid of a chiropractor or other manipulator. That is somewhat encouraging. Since I have an appointment for adjustment on Wednesday of this week, I'm optimistic about the outcome, and I'm furthermore absolutely enthusiastic about doing what it takes to reclaim my back from the degeneration it's suffered at years of what I've determined is goofed-up posture, probably since the accident that broke me as a teenager.

I'm going to try my hand at turning again tomorrow. I would have tonight, but such was the nature of my work day and our meeting together that it wasn't on the agenda. It seems weird to have gone this long without turning, and it hasn't been this long since the last time my back hosed me. I think I'll have to be careful not to overdo it, though. We'll see how I feel, I guess. Before that, I'm going to stand. Tonight. For the first time in what seems like ages!

A Direction?

After meeting with the group last night to rehash what we learned in Vermont as well as to start to try to compile a direction for us to go forward in our training through the myriad paths of Yin Style Baguazhang, we may have settled some of the debate that I was having. A couple of assumptions underly this decision though.

1. We need much more practice on what we worked on in Vermont (true).
2. A new set of curriculum will be announced from Beijing in the spring (probably true).

Personally, my goals are to continue with my training as I have been (in terms of intensity), though the direction will be different. First and foremost, Matt told me to get stronger, so getting stronger is my immediate priority. I'm doing all kinds of "proxy saber" drills each day, back on the push-up (and other body-weight exercises) wagon, and adding all kinds of tasty things like whey protein to my diet. As for which of the directions I'll be taking per those I mentioned in my last post, I'm still unsure. We didn't discuss those ideas fully, partly because of Assumption 1 above. The group seems intent on focusing diligently on the three forms we reviewed and worked on in Vermont, the same three forms we've been drilling hard (though somewhat incorrectly) for months now. That puts me in one of two positions: forget my ambition to develop strong skills with four of the form-types or use those three form-types (moving with the force -- studied cutting, lifting and holding -- studied sweeping, and lying step -- studied grasping) as the first three to test my approach. Perhaps that is what I will bid to do in the coming 5-6 months.

This offers a bit of a compromise into how I could study the striking methods over the same time period as well (each also a "study in themselves"). Since we studied hard on the sweeping, cutting, and grasping methods, perhaps while we're trying to develop much better skillfulness with those particular forms, I should be working those striking methods diligently as well. That gives me two intersecting paths to follow, three times at least. I could use the rest of the "magic eight" to expand beyond that if time allowed, but I'm almost sure it won't. I think I will try to consider doing something like this, using one form as a basis (for example purposes, lifting and holding - sweeping, then going to the others:

• Study the lifting and holding forms, learning all eight of them, putting double emphasis (or more?) on the sweeping variety. That should give me practice with what we studied while being able to investigate its underlying theme from another set of perspectives (7 of them) as well. I should continue to practice the other two that we focused on, though more as a maintenance effort than a deep development effort (so as not to lose sight of or forget requirements, nuances, and details).
  
• Study the sweeping strikes concurrently, putting particular emphasis on the basics and those occurring in the lifting and holding form.
• Borrow stepping methods from the lifting and holding form and drill the movements from the forms as well as the basics using those stepping methods (in addition to others?).
• Incorporate standing in the sweeping palm posture (and the Dragon posture???) on a daily basis, in addition to whichever other postures suit my fancy on that particular day/week.
  

That might give a solid basis for how to conduct my standing/striking/changing practice for a month or so at the least. After that, I can change to another of the forms or continue if I don't feel satisfactory progress.

I think I'm on to something. I just hope it's not crap.

Off to an okay start

I wish I was off to a good start, but taking off all of Thursday through Sunday and half of Monday put me so far behind that I'm only just now coming up for breath. I've trained some since I've been home, but never in that hard, fierce way I prefer to. Yesterday, I worked the saber drills I learned with a broom and then holding 5 lb. medicine balls in my hands, and I worked them several times -- enough to be notably sore today. I even did them with my katana, which was okay for a couple of the drills and for looking kind of cool with the form, but it's too light and short. It's no comparison. It's not the same as a dadao. I need to get one.

I'm going to try to turn again here in a few minutes, but I don't know how long it will last. I was up past two last night grading and out of bed again at about 7:45 this morning to pick up the torch again. Grading sometimes takes forever and can be extremely draining. I'm almost physically itching to get back to my real training, but I'm not sure I'm going to be capable of much today. I'm even vaguely dizzy and sick feeling at the moment, and I know that taking a nap will last well into the night (and therefore be a bad idea!).

What I have worked on is increasing the precision in my stepping and coordinating my body to this new pattern. I worked so hard all last year adapting my stepping to the one I noticed was most common in doing many of the drills we practice, and in doing so, I made a mistake that now just seems plain foolish. I assumed it was the proper way to step doing baguazhang. Why should it be? Bagua wouldn't paint itself into a corner with only one way to step, but that's sort of what I've done, and changing it is hard. I'm having a particularly tough time remembering to swing my leg in on a cutting-in step, especially in the Lifting and Holding forms. I blatantly see its usefulness and importance, though. I'm going to trust to what they say: hold the requirements in your mind, try to meet them, practice a lot, and your body will catch up to your intentions. I already believe it since it's not a problem really in the Lying Step.

As I'm sitting here, I'm thinking of yet another post I want to make, but I'll wait until I play with the idea in my body a little more before saying anything. Let me just put it this way: what I discussed above and what I'm thinking about (and have made a note of due to my overfull, overtired head) really impress the idea that if a person is really interested in learning Yin Style Baguazhang, that person cannot be lazy: (s)he wouldn't have time! There's so much to learn, so much to train, so much to study... missing even a day without contemplating, experiencing, testing, feeling, and working it is an opportunity beyond recall!