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.

Goal-oriented training, post-workshop 2012 analysis

The first thing I should say is that the Yin Style Bagua workshops put on this year by Matt Bild were absolutely incredible. In over sixteen years of doing martial arts now, the last six doing Yin Style Bagua, this year's workshops were by far the best I have ever attended. Matt was incredibly efficient and professional in getting across his agenda, which in this case was to help us all develop clarity and confidence in using the art of Yin Style for the purpose it was made: fighting. Particularly, the workshop was designed around developing clarity in use of force and positioning to achieve a good and sure result against a realistic backdrop of another skilled fighter.

That brings me to the theme of today's post-workshop post, now that I've had a couple of weeks to sort through how my thinking about training has been affected. Training has to be goal-oriented, focused, and clear, and it is an utter obligation to be diligent and serious about this including being reflective about meeting the training goals. Goals also have to be realistic and functional. This should change everything about how we train this art.

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.

Making movies! Here's our latest one against a more-resistive opponent

So, it's been forever and again since I've posted on here--like before, tied up with other projects and not giving much time to the blog. Is it self-depreciating at this point to promise to do better in the future, knowing I very well may not?

Anyway, we've been keeping up with our training (re: my circle-turning goal, I am well ahead of schedule now and will, in fact, hit 10,000 minutes for the year so far sometime this afternoon, which is a bit of a milestone, I suppose). We've also been trying to arrange it to make videos to showcase a little of what we know Yin Style has to offer--even if we're having a hard time getting that to translate onto video.

Beast Mode: Post-burnout workout, promised and delivered

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

Beast Mode: Burnout and what to do about it

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

Beast Mode continues, and you need a GymBoss!

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

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

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

Setting goals

One of the absolute most important aspects of finding success in any endeavor, particularly long-term endeavors like those presented by training a martial art, is proper goal setting. I've talked about this before (like here and here, for a couple of examples), and I'm going to mention it again because I've put more thought and effort into the project recently than ever before.

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.

Tip to get better at martial arts -- stop thinking you're good and train

I had a bit of an epiphany while I was driving today, hopefully to further my career (rather to start one?) -- the key to getting good at the martial arts is leaving room to get better, and that starts with realizing that you're not good yet, no matter how good you are.

Saluting Stockholm

I've seen the pictures on Facebook:YSB now, Stockholm... and while I can tell you with certainty that I'm not busting it like MB's busting you, I am saluting you in my own small way.

Battle saber proves I'm weak

I train hard.

I got to thinking the other day, though, how much more ridiculous training with the saber would be if going to battle with the saber was a realistic possibility, supposing I was somehow such a soldier as my training with the saber somewhat suggests I pretend to be. Here's some of my realizations:

First, it's hard for me to do drills with the saber for a long time. In fact, it's hard to hold the saber for a long time. By a long time, I mean maybe a quarter or half of an hour. If I was training for battle with the saber, I'd have to hold and use the saber for several hours at a time without the option of putting it down and taking a little drink while my muscles feel like they're about to bust out of my skin.

Second, I'm getting better at the saber, but I'm by no means great. If I was going to battle with it, because I'd prefer not to die in such an engagement (which I surely would if I went to battle with it right now against anyone that knew how to fight with some kind of comparable armament), I'd have to be blinging great with the saber. "Eh, that was pretty good," just wouldn't cut it.

Third, I can put out some power with the saber on some techniques for a few techniques (see "first"), but if I was going to battle with the saber, I'd have to be going balls-to-the-walls for hours with it to be successful. Good Lord.

Fourth, did I mention not being able to put it down???

Why am I writing about this hee-haw-dom? Well, because it makes me think about what kinds of goals to have in saber training. To be really great with it by my standards now would be to be mediocre according to going-to-battle standards. I just thought it was something to try to keep in mind while training with the saber... imagine really using it for what swords were used for. Here's a picture of me doing one technique in a short series and doing it rather poorly at the best of my ability.
Disclaimer: I'm aware of the history of the bagua dadao as being designed to be a training implement and not necessarily a true battle weapon, although it quite clearly could be used as such. Whether or not it ever saw real combat or even if it would, that doesn't change the mentality that might (or should) underlie its training.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Stirring the Ashes

I went out to work out this evening. I decided that my wrist could deal... I just wouldn't let my left hand play much. I started out with the saber, as I usually do, and did tracing in my right. It felt nice but like I haven't done it much lately (I haven't). Then I decided to test my left hand (having no sense or indomitable spirit or some such) and did fifteen repetitions of the exercise. That compares very favorably with yesterday's zero. It still hurt a little, but a little is not a lot. Then I did some chopping drills with my right hand, some turning with my right hand, some standing with my right hand, and then took my saber for a walk down my really long driveway to get the mail, which earned me some awesome stares from people driving by. I came back from the mailbox and did a couple of sections of the form several times and decided that I was really forcing the workout: I really just didn't want to do it. The momentum of half-assed workouts that have been mostly all I've done since getting back from London had killed my spirit. I put my saber away, kind of disheartened, and then I forced myself to go back out and work on strikes.

I got outside and started doing some striking drills: standing in place method -- not interested; box stepping -- not interested; zig-zag stepping -- not interested; standing in place method again -- not interested; think of applications and work on homemade combinations drills with those -- not interested! I almost gave up at that point and then, for some reason, I started doing the zig-zag stepping method again, only striking with my right as I went (and stepping through and "parrying/redirecting" with my left on the interim steps) -- very interesting. I did a ton of those, right hand one way down the driveway, left hand on the way back. I varied it across several strikes that I feel have things in common but interesting differences, and almost a half an hour later, I felt like I'd really stirred the ashes. It fired me back up.

Habits only take a few days of ignoring to break, so if you want to train well, I think that means you have to be consistent.

Some Yin Style Bagua Training Tips

It occurred to me last night that most of this blog is kind of an adventure in describing my trials, errors, and tribulations with training Yin Style Baguazhang, and since it's kind of giving me a slightly authoritative voice (or so I hear), I decided it would be nice to provide some tips for training. None of these will be too fancy, and it will certainly not be a comprehensive list. It's just a short catalog of some of the things that I've done that seemed to help me. I think it would be great, in fact, if anyone that's interested would post some of their own successful tips as comments to this post. I also think that many of these training tips would help folks that practice any martial art, or with a little more creative stretching, any endeavor whatsoever, so feel free to pass it along if you know someone that might benefit from it, inside Yin Style or out.

1. Never Zero
This is a rule that I've lived by for almost three years now, and what it means is that I do not let a day go by with no training. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that I'm throwing strikes or turning or even sweating every single day. Sometimes I'm sick. Sometimes I'm working a lot. Sometimes I'm busy or traveling (no, I didn't practice my sweeping strikes on the plane to London). Sometimes I'm just tired. On those days, I have videos I can watch, notes I can review, and an active imagination that I can tap into. All of that counts as training too as long as it's not the main body of your training. Of course, never-zero usually means sweating for me, at least thirteen days out of a fortnight.

2. Do Something
Yin Style Baguazhang has umpteen thousand things to train in it. There are four pillars, each of which is huge, plus saber. There are scores of forms, hundreds of strikes, at least a dozen stepping methods, eleventy billion postures to stand or turn in, and who knows how many ways to put them together. Sometimes that overwhelms me, and then I just start doing something. Almost always, I get into something that I really want to train, and things go great. It doesn't have to be organized every time you set out to train, and with so many things to choose from, sometimes it just comes down to choosing something and going with it.

3. When it Works, Capitalize On It
Some days, I feel like hot potatoes with my sweeping strikes, for instance. On those days, I work the crap out of sweeping strikes, and I tend to get a lot of benefit from it. Also on those days, I sometimes decide to work on something else that I'm not feeling so great at, and I've noticed that I don't get as much from it. Then, when I'm smart, I go back to sweeping strikes, or whatever it is that I'm rocking out, and crank it. Yin Style Baguazhang has a lot of things that need getting good at, and those things have to be developed one at a time. Working on things that are working for you is a great way to develop a lot in a short time, capitalizing on your gains for future gains. It's like compound interest of training.

4. When It Doesn't Work, Make it Work
I don't know how many times I've sat there and thought about it for a while, and then, with a look of disgust on my face, decided "I suck at such-and-such." I used to get discouraged by that. Now, I see it as an opportunity. "I suck at cutting strikes, so I'm going to go do cutting strikes until I don't suck at them," I might tell myself. Then I go do a lot of cutting strikes, looking for why I suck at them and trying to make them better. Eventually, usually over the course of drilling them like that for days, I don't feel like they suck any more and I start to like them instead of feeling discouraged. Then, I can go back to Tip #3 and make some serious progress.

5. If You Like It, Then You Should Get Good At It
Most of us are into Yin Style because we like it, right? That means there's something in Yin Style Bagua that we enjoy, and if we enjoy something, then we should do it a lot (that's what enjoying something means). When we do it a lot, we should be getting good at it. So, if you like something particular, like in Tip #3, do it a lot, get good at it, and capitalize on your interests and fancies. You don't have to train things that you hate all of the time. Eventually, we're each supposed to start making Yin Style personalized to ourselves, which means focusing upon and using mostly the things we like and the things we're good at. It's best if those things are the same things.

6. If You Hate It, Train It More
See Tip #4 for this... really, it works.

7. Concentrate Your Training
For me, it's been much more effective to spend most of my training time over several days or even weeks working the same form or strikes a lot of times. It seems like that would be dry and rote, but it's kind of the opposite. It really helps make the techniques improve which makes them likable which makes a feedback loop on training because it puts you back into the realms of Tips #3 and #5. It also seems to speed development more than choosing lots of different things and trying to work all of them. That latter method just feels too scattered.

8. Be Details-Oriented
The devil's in the details, particularly here. Pay attention to the details of the requirements of the things you practice, going over the checklist and trying to kinesthetically feel them for yourself. If you don't feel them, then they're probably not there or lacking. Look for proper form, execution, and economy of the movements, and you'll be on the right track. Ask yourself if it feels right: e.g. "does this form really feel like it's windmill?" or "this strike comes from the Lion System... my force should be heavy and full... would I describe it that way?"

9. Be Purpose-Oriented
Why are you doing the things you're doing? To get good? What does that mean? Looking back at Tip #8, you should be constantly asking yourself why you're doing what you're doing. Every part of every movement should be economical, efficient, and make sense in terms of use and application. You cannot get good by trying to get good; you can only get good by trying to develop your training to the point where it achieves specific goals that you are aware of: get stronger, more rooted, balanced, more powerful, develop a heavy and full force, be cold, crisp, and fast, etc. If your purpose is "to get good like Matt and JB," you'll never get there because their purpose was to develop each technique according to the rules with an active, alive, refined execution.

10. Watch Yourself
Pictures or (better) videos of yourself training are really valuable. You'll see that in a lot of ways you're lacking more than you think. Some folks post their training in private or public venues on YouTube or other such places. You don't have to. Just check yourself out and see what needs to be seen. No technology? No problem: try a mirror.

11. Train Themes
This is a training method I feel I've had a lot of success with: training material that's related by a theme. Maybe I'm into cutting strikes. I stand strengthening in cutting, do some turning in cutting (it feels different if you've never done it), do oodles of cutting strikes, and try to learn and practice several or all of the cutting forms from the videos. I might spend a few weeks or a month just on cutting strikes, and at the end of it, I have a new and real appreciation for cutting strikes. It really works. Maybe instead your theme is an attacking method, i.e. a particular kind of form. Fine... you're into Lifting and Holding? Do as many Lifting and Holding forms as you can. Try out different palms within an animal system, or, if you have the videos and a little background, try out some of the Lifting and Holding forms of a different system. It's adventurous and teaches a theme, and afterwards, you'll have a better grasp of the idea of Lifting and Holding, its use, its applications, and even, in this case, some small insight into the Dragon System. Cool.

12. Make a Routine and Do It
Write down what you want to train in a day and then go out and train it. You can get a really well-organized training session that way and develop a lot. Just be warned: writing down training ideas is far easier than executing them! Example: "Today's goal: 1000 tracing the saber in each hand." That was easy. Now go do it. Yeah right.

13. Mini-Intensive
Get your crew together occasionally for a mini-intensive. Plan it out ahead of time and make it long and hard, similar to a normal intensive or workshop day. Start early on a weekend, say at 8 am, and train until lunch. Come back after lunch and bust it until dinner. Try to cover all four pillars and make it as much like a day pulled from an intensive or workshop as you can manage.

14. Four-Pillar Days
Sometimes you should concentrate your training on just striking or just forms or just something. Sometimes it's great to try to hit all four pillars in a day and feel like you've really accomplished something.

15. Be Complementary
Yin Style Baguazhang is a complete martial art, so nothing extra is needed to develop. Still, in the words of The Man, "how could more strength be bad?" Add in complementary exercises to your routine. I, for instance, noticed that my shoulders were a particular sticking point for me in terms of dadao development, so I would do drills with the dadao and then lift medium-weight dumbbells in routines that benefit my shoulders. Then I'd pick the dadao back up and go again. Some movements and drills can even be replicated in slow motion using weights or semi-isometric contraction. Another particularly beneficial exercise I've incorporated is to hold dumbbells at shoulder height and do slow squats, starting off with holding a low horse stance and then holding it again every fifth or tenth (depending on the weight) repetition to increase leg strength. I've also incorporated jumping jacks and short sprints between sets of strikes to increase my aerobic capacity slightly. As long as the complements don't take away from the primary, these things can only help your training.

16. Turn a Lot
You knew it was coming. Turning is the cornerstone practice of Baguazhang, and it is in some sense the most simple and yet most profound exercise in the art. Training turning seems to benefit every aspect of development, and it should take years of hard practice with it to get really good (meaning you and I both need to turn more!).

Hopefully these tips are of some use. If you have some to add, please leave a comment. As I think of more, I'll make another post of this sort in the future.

Easing Back In

So I'm officially easing back into training, which means that I've admitted to myself that I cannot physically train as hard as I was before and during the London intensive yet and have decided that the situation will not hold me back entirely. I pushed myself last night, however, and tried to have a more vigorous training session and almost undoubtedly injured myself -- my hamstrings and leg adductors are too tight and I seem to have pulled something right around where those things become my ass on the left-hand side. Hopefully that won't interfere too much with my recovery and eventual return to what my friend described as "attempting to become a beast." I believe the cause was trying to train on muscles that had been subjected to a weekend of torture in an emergency trip to visit my wife's family on literally no notice that kept me in a car for over twenty hours out of fewer than sixty. Much of the remaining time was spent in a stiff, uncomfortable chair in a hospital waiting room, and I believe it pretty much wrecked everything from the bottom of my ribs to my knees. Dehydrated and essentially fresh out of the car from a solid eight-hour stretch in it, I went straight to training with a will that outstripped my means. Now I'm paying for it.

Still, the tendinitis in my wrist seems to be improving daily, though I still cannot properly twist my left arm out to even properly execute the Lion's representational posture with the left hand as the lower. The point cutting strike, which I believe is the donor of this tendon issue, is still more or less completely out too, unless I completely ignore one of the main corrections I was given and thereby do the strike somewhat incorrectly. I've opted to do that since I'm aware of where I'm cheating and at least 90% of the mechanics (particularly the body movement) don't involve the use of my wrist and can therefore be done as long as I'm somewhat judicious and don't force myself too far too soon.

Finally, the numbness in my toes seems to be slowly clearing up, though progress there is much, much, much slower than I had hoped. I'm working on the apparently afflicted area two or three times daily with a penetrating, rather vigorous massage, and I'm being a little less aggressive with my stances and stepping until feeling returns to full in them.

Of course, some of you reading this might be thinking: "Shit, look at him.... If everything in here it true (it is), then this guy trains pretty damn hard and the intensive broke him. I'll never go to one of those!" I will be going to one of those again, however, and I do not feel that the London intensive broke me, though I'm certainly not performing optimally after about two weeks of recovery with light training. The injuries I've sustained are quite minor, I'm sure, and the amount I developed while there and learned in the process, which will fuel a huge amount of development in the coming months and year(s?), vastly outweighs some temporary discomfort and reduced training capacity. It gives me a really good reason to take time to seriously mull over the art and how I want to train it as well, preventing me from falling into a rut where I train and train and train and eventually find myself essentially training just for the sake of training, which is no good at all.