He Jinbao and Matt Bild just left Knoxville yesterday morning after our first-ever, mostly successful seminar! The intensity of training was maintained at a pretty high level for most of the workshop, even if our attendance was a bit on the low side. All-in-all, though, I'm quite happy with our first stab at hosting those fine folks.
As for what was covered, it was a beautiful blend of solid foundational practices, with fantastic attention to small details, and some really new stuff: kicking practices courtesy of the Monkey System, which are completely different from essentially everything else that we've done in our trainings in the past.
I had a lot of time to think about things before and after the training sessions, and I think that the seminar itself provided me with a number of interesting topics to talk about in the near future on here, hopefully some stuff that will really help some folks out there with the training.
Probably, if anything, the only down-side to the entire ordeal was that our attendance was rather low. Recruiting for one of these things is apparently fairly difficult despite Jinbao's level of expertise. Thus, for the next year, because they will be back next year and we'd like to see a better turnout, we'll be trying to get around and introduce this art to folks via very affordable seminars.
This particular workshop seemed to strengthen our group, though, not just in terms of our training and knowledge but also in terms of numbers. Hopefully I didn't misread things when some of the folks that attended the seminar asked many very curious questions about our study group.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Belts and the Martial Arts
Since Yin Style Baguazhang is such a tight niche within the martial arts, as I've mentioned before, I'm going to try to expand the audience of this blog by posting topics on occasion that relate both to Yin Style and to other martial arts. Nearly ubiquitous in the martial arts are belts, usually of varying colors to indicate level, or some equivalent: I've seen colored shirts, pants, uniforms, sashes (which I consider belts), and necklaces all to the same function, and I'm sure there are even more variations on the theme. For the purposes here, all of these "equivalent" indicators will be considered in the same pile and referenced as being "belts" and will mean "rank-distinguishing belts." Now for the particularly interesting bit that makes this post worth making: belts are "nearly ubiquitous" in the martial arts world... but in Yin Style Baguazhang, they are not used at all. I'd like to discuss some of my thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages surrounding belts since I've spent considerable time and made considerable observations on both sides of this fence.
A quick history, if my information is correct, on this practice is that thin cords of various colors were worn in Japan by swimmers to help distinguish them at some point in that sport's history, and this practice was observed by Kanō Jigorō, the founder of Judo, and observed to have merit for ranking students, since the judo gi required a belt to hold it properly closed as it was. The practice then spread to other martial arts, and then all kinds of ridiculous legends about where the colors came from arose, such as the following: "In the beginning, everyone's belt was white, and then it yellowed with sweat over time and got grungy. Due to being thrown in the grass repetetively, it took on green hues, and then eventually grime built up until it was mostly brown from dirt, grass stain, and sweat. Eventually, the stains were so substantial that the belt appeared black, and hence a black belt meant someone who was accomplished." This story, given the meticulous clenliness of the Japanese alone, is absolutely fantastic. Belts could be washed and surely were, and the amount of rotting and degredation to fabric for it to turn black from that kind of soiling would have caused diseases that just didn't happen. Furthermore, why are students only thrown in grass at first, preventing dirt stains on their belts from arising until it's so grass-stained that it is largely green? If you throw someone down a bunch of times in one spot, the grass dies and there's dirt, usually before there are all that many grass stains. Honestly, I can't believe this kind of thing has been spread through time, continues to be spread (obviously without actually thinking about it), and (worst of all) was something I actually believed made sense when I heard it the first time.
Advantages of Belt-Ranking Systems
Ranking markers have a few distinct advantages, some of which are objective and some of which are subjective, or, rather, cultural. For the purposes of the ensuing discussion, unless otherwise noted, assume that the belt-ranking system is ideal and genuinely meaningful in an objective way. Points about how it is, in practice, sub-ideal will be discussed primarily in the "disadvantages" section below.
The disadvantages of belt-ranking systems in the martial arts world are probably more substantive than the advantages, although from a martial-arts-as-a-business perspective, I don't believe they're genuinely outweighed.
A quick history, if my information is correct, on this practice is that thin cords of various colors were worn in Japan by swimmers to help distinguish them at some point in that sport's history, and this practice was observed by Kanō Jigorō, the founder of Judo, and observed to have merit for ranking students, since the judo gi required a belt to hold it properly closed as it was. The practice then spread to other martial arts, and then all kinds of ridiculous legends about where the colors came from arose, such as the following: "In the beginning, everyone's belt was white, and then it yellowed with sweat over time and got grungy. Due to being thrown in the grass repetetively, it took on green hues, and then eventually grime built up until it was mostly brown from dirt, grass stain, and sweat. Eventually, the stains were so substantial that the belt appeared black, and hence a black belt meant someone who was accomplished." This story, given the meticulous clenliness of the Japanese alone, is absolutely fantastic. Belts could be washed and surely were, and the amount of rotting and degredation to fabric for it to turn black from that kind of soiling would have caused diseases that just didn't happen. Furthermore, why are students only thrown in grass at first, preventing dirt stains on their belts from arising until it's so grass-stained that it is largely green? If you throw someone down a bunch of times in one spot, the grass dies and there's dirt, usually before there are all that many grass stains. Honestly, I can't believe this kind of thing has been spread through time, continues to be spread (obviously without actually thinking about it), and (worst of all) was something I actually believed made sense when I heard it the first time.
Advantages of Belt-Ranking Systems
Ranking markers have a few distinct advantages, some of which are objective and some of which are subjective, or, rather, cultural. For the purposes of the ensuing discussion, unless otherwise noted, assume that the belt-ranking system is ideal and genuinely meaningful in an objective way. Points about how it is, in practice, sub-ideal will be discussed primarily in the "disadvantages" section below.
- Objective Advantage: A ranking marker like a belt has the distinct advantage of indicating hierarchy within the system in a clear way, which is useful for instructors to keep tabs on the general level of the group and of individuals without requiring extensive observation. It provides a level of expectation and allows a level of assumption that facilitate the process of instruction. It also gives a clear indication to lower-level students on which people from which they should be able to expect to gain valuable insight.
- Objective Advantage: The belt-ranking system is a clear and effective external/extrinsic motivator. Students are likely to be able to identify with and find value in the promotion from one belt to the next. Sometimes, a little extra motivation is very helpful in getting a body out there and training. The method, for the beginners of an art at least, has a strong effect in both short-term and long-term goal setting. These situations, of course, have their downsides, discussed below.
- Subjective Advantage: Students are likely to take pride in and elevate themselves to a perceived level of practice indicative of the rank they hold or belt they wear, particularly in the lower/initial phases of training.
- Cultural Advantage: Prospective students and even students themselves place cultural value in the symbol indicated by the ranking belt. In what I've seen, belts and sashes are held in largely equal esteem culturally, since they are, in fact, essentially the same thing (belts carry the idea that they are for holding your pants up, but martial arts belts are no good for that purpose and are indeed used more appropriately as a "sash" to hold closed a kimono or gi, a typical traning uniform in Japanese-derived martial arts). It's often enough easy for the students to make the "leap" from belts to colored shirts or pants or even necklaces, and so there is a perception of value in any ranking system that lends credibility to the art and its instructor, since there is a perception of some objectivity in the promoting of students to various ranks (although no such objectivity truly exists in any meaningful way across the board). A high-ranking belt held by an instructor is therefore, objectively, a valuable marketing tool.
- Cultural Advantage: Particularly prospective students, but indeed many students of the martial arts in the West, at least, associate belts with a "real" martial arts program. The concept of "black belt" is so deeply ingrained in the iconography of West that literally a program without belts, or some equivalent, is often deemed to be a charlatain operation -- a real and present challenge for recruiting to Yin Style Bagua study groups since we do not wear or use belts or any equivalents, at least not to my knowledge and certainly not officially. It is possible that the growing attention to MMA (mixed martial arts) which seems to discard this line of thinking may change that perception, but as there are also no rings, octagons, widespread media outlets, or multi-million-dollar cash purses for training YSB, I doubt we'll see much positive effect from the MMA-loving community. Time may change that, but we shall have to see about that... in time.
- Marketing, as mentioned above;
- Selling belts (or equivalents), typically at a steep profit;
- Belt testing (or equivalents), typically with steep testing/promotion fees, i.e. profit;
- Student retention, via goal-setting, though this usually eventually backfires;
- Marketing again, in a more insidious but increasingly popular way: Many schools now offer an all-inclusive, pay upfront deal "this much (usually thousands upon thousands of dollars) money now and all of your lessons until you earn x belt/rank (usually black) are paid for in advance, good for your whole life or until you achieve said rank." This is particularly insidious because only about 0.01 (one in a hundred) students make it from beginner to black belt even in a fairly watered-down program and would usually have therefore paid less to have tried it until they didn't like it, quit, and then paid out the remaining of their training contracts (another typical vestage of martial arts schools in the West). This kind of program is obviously manufactured to the owner's advantage or else it wouldn't exist, particularly because it starts to give off a strongly rotten stink of "buying a (black) belt," see below for more.
The disadvantages of belt-ranking systems in the martial arts world are probably more substantive than the advantages, although from a martial-arts-as-a-business perspective, I don't believe they're genuinely outweighed.
- The belts are arbitrary: This is pretty clearly true to anyone that doesn't buy into them, and more strangely seems to be held simultaneously true and false by everyone that wears a belt for long enough in many of the martial arts programs I've seen. "The belt doesn't matter," people say. "It's what you know that counts, and you still know it when you take off your belt." Right. Then why are you holding it when you walk around and demanding people call you by your rank-given title? Why do you put stripes on it? Why do you care what color it is? One problem with this situation is that eventually people either realize this fact and lose some faith in the belt system and are kind of forced to believe in double-speak or they never realize it and live a proud, empty life centered on their rank and title (see below for more). Another problem is that the entire system, because there isn't an infinitely large rainbow and because there isn't an infinitely long belt, is that this system is inherently limited. That puts a "finish line" on the process for many people, and for most, that finish line is "black belt." Look at the attrition rate of almost any commercial martial arts school's black-belt level students compared with its rate among students that clear the first half of the "under black belt" ranks. I'm pretty sure more people quit within a few months of earning black belt than otherwise. That seems a bit disturbing and is obviously centered on the belt-awarding system itself: "I achieved this goal, so now I'm done with this." What an empty practice.
- Ego and pride: I've met an awful lot of people that believe they're very important or, in some cases, some of the best martial artists in a town, state, region, country, or the world based on the fact that they wear a particular belt and umpteen-three people signed a certificate saying that they deserved to wear that belt. Many of them might deserve some recognition for what they've done, but as often as not it seems to grant more self-importance than anything else. It certainly doesn't grant martial skill, even in the case where it's warranted, and in fact seems, often enough, to grant just the opposite in a way (see the next point).
- Sense of having accomplished: Possessing a sense of accomplishment about one's training is very important, I think, and valuable to the continuity of it. This, in fact, is one of the advantages of a belt-ranking system. This disadvantage, which is different -- a sense of having accomplished, which is in the pluperfect (past perfect) tense, is very common, as I've seen it. I've even been guilty of it. It can be summed up by the following attitude: "I am a Glory Belt; I have accomplished; I no longer have to accomplish," although the last part of that attitude is only actually expressed in regards to things like doing basic exercises and whatnot. For myself, after earning a black belt in karate, I essentially stopped the practice of stretching all together and lost a huge proportion of my once rather impressive and quite valuable flexibility. I figured that warm-ups and stretching were optional for black belts, and so I didn't really need to do them any longer. I had arrived, if you will. The prevalence of "coffee dans," as they're somtimes called (dan means black-belt-level ranks in the world of Japanese-based martial arts, usually with an ordinal number given before it to indicate rank and can be taken to mean "__-degree black belt," where the __ indicates the ordinal, like third) is pretty high. I'd guess more folks with 3rd degree black belts and higher don't do as much working out/training as they do talking and "instructing," as compared with how many do train regularly and honestly, and even fewer still work hard on basic developmental exercises. While that's a subjective proportion, I think I'm probably qualified in making that guess from my observations and experiences. I've also noticed that as the ordinal increases, particularly past "fifth," the amount of doing seems to decrease proportionally, though this is not a universal situation. In my opinion, though, higher rank should indicate more work, not less, but it usually goes the other way.
- Extrinsic motivation: The motivation conferred by belt systems, because they are ultimately arbitrary and actually rather empty of meaning, is entirely extrinsic. Extrinsic motivation can only take you so far, particularly in a system where faith is lost in the motivator as time passes because of its obvious arbitrarity.
- Non-objectivity: There is no, and really can be no, universal board that indicates meaningfully what the level of black belt means. It varies widely from style to style, system to system, and school to school within any given system. Of course, these requirements are typically a huge source of pride for people at each school, usually all of whom believe their belt requirements are the best, most comprehensive, most meaningful, etc. That means that one of the main values of a belt-ranking system is only valid in the microcosm: the tiny world within a particular martial arts school, occasionally a larger martial arts system of schools, or a necessarily rather small organization of similar martial arts schools. The rectification of this issue is a nearly impossible goal to realize, even on the small scale, because as everyone knows, the more rules, regulations, and beaurocracy that enter into any system, the more sluggish and ineffective it becomes. Furthermore, people in terms of both students and instructors are different people with different opinions on what is passing quality and what isn't, on what is important and worth ignoring, and so on. The only way to really make objectivity work is to have a central testing board with well-written, clear, objective proficiencies that must be obtained, and that is strongly limiting in terms of how large such an organization can hope to become. It also turns the higher-level practitioners into administrators instead of active participants in the art. They just can't possibly have time for both. That's going to lead to a degredation of the objective quality over time all by itself. Subjectivity is the rule in this regard, but it further renders the ranking system meaningless.
- Money talks: It's commonly said and largely true: if a school is commercial and wishes to retain its students, eventually rank promotion has to occur. That means eventually, almost without regard to proficiency so long as some very basic requirements can be satisfied, people move forward if they've played for long enough, unless the instructor is so high in his/her standards that (s)he is willing to sacrifice his/her own business to adhere to principles. In this world, most people can't afford that kind of austerity, and those that can frequently aren't willing to. That further degrades the objectivity of rank in a deeper and more meaningful way than from school-to-school: it really means that a belt rank is meaningful only in context to the individual. This, of course, is the only real measure of performance that actually matters, and so this could be a good thing hidden within a bad one except that the rank is still billed, particularly within the school, as being substantive in an objective sense. Students aren't universally sheep and can see this kind of thing, which makes it clear that there is some level of double-speak even within the confines of a particular school. Of coruse, the ability (or perceived ability) to "buy a belt" at "McDojo" is perhaps one of the biggest injuries to the spread and growth of martial arts that's out there, turning off perhaps the most valuable sector of the population from training -- those that think training should be about getting good at something, not just about getting, earning, or wearing a belt (or equivalent).
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Two Weeks Until the Seminar
The 2009 Fall Tour kicks off here in Knoxville in just a day over two weeks. Yikes! The preparations still to do for the seminar and for my training... what a list! In any case, here's a slightly more detailed version of what's going on, just in case anyone stumbles upon this and is interested. For practical "I'm interested in coming" information, see my previous post on the matter by clicking here.
Very General Overview:
The first two days (Thursday, Friday) focus on foundational training and the last two days (Saturday, Sunday) focus on turning, forms, and applications. Both dadao (big saber) and shuai jiao (fast wrestling) practice are scheduled during the last two days. The seminar is open, requiring no previous experience in Yin Style Baguazhang, although having some background at least in the martial arts or fitness would be helpful. Interested parties can schedule to attend full days or half days (save the last half-day) individually or attend the entire seminar (recommended in all cases where it is possible). Contact us for details (see below for a link to contact information).
Thursday, September 24, 8:00a-12:00p
The morning session of this foundational day focuses on the Sweeping Palm of the Lion System. First is standing strengthening practice in the Lion representational posture and the sweeping palm posture. Then the remainder of the morning is devoted to practicing sweeping strikes and basic striking combinations. If you've never done any Yin Style Baguazhang and are interested and able to come to a Thursday morning session, this is the ideal place to start.
Thursday, September 24, 1:30p-6:00p
The afternoon session of this foundational day focuses on the Cutting Palm of the Lion System. The afternoon will proceed like the morning with "cutting" replacing "sweeping" for the first three and a half hours of this 270-minute session. Cutting is another excellent place for beginners to find something, so if you can't make a Thursday morning session but can make it in the afternoon, this is good for you. The afternoon session finishes with a new-to-essentially-everyone session in some of the basic kicks of Yin Style Baguazhang, lasting for one hour. The time in between the sessions, obviously, is a break for rest and lunch.
Friday, September 25
This foundational day follows the same framework as the previous day, focusing on the Chopping Palm of the Lion System and the Hooking Palm of the Lion System in the morning and afternoon respectively. The times are the same as Thursday's times for both sessions. These practices, while different from the material on Thursday, are also excellent foundational material, and in some ways they echo the themes of the material from Thursday. Thus, if you cannot make a Thursday session but can make a Friday session, this day would still be great for beginners to come to. The day will wrap up with another hour-long session of studying the kicks of Yin Style Bagua, sampling a few others from the system.
This is a photo from one of the foundational days in the recent London Intensive in which He Jinbao directs myself and another noteworthy practitioner in some fundamental practices. Applications such as these will be largely or entirely reserved for the final day of our seminar. Click on the image to see it slightly larger.
Saturday, September 26, Morning
The times are the same as for the previous days, but the focus on Saturday is different. The morning session starts off with circle-turning practice in the representational posture of the Lion System and then studies one of the forms from that system: Enfolding Cutting. Drilling the form and strikes from the form, likely with combinations included, is on the menu. If you're a beginner and interested in coming to this session, it may be in your best interest to contact one of us as soon as possible for a quick primer in this seven-movement form.
Saturday, September 26, Afternoon
This day's afternoon session focuses on another of the forms of the Lion System: Windmill Cutting. Again, you might want a primer on the seven-movement form if you can come to this session. The last hour of this day's session will be on basic drills with the bagua big saber (dadao)
Sunday, September 27, Morning
The morning session on Sunday, with the same times as previously, is similar to that on Saturday morning: circle turning training and a Lion System form -- Moving with the Force Seizing. Again, you might want a primer on the seven-movement form if you can come to this session. The last hour of this session will be the beginning of a structured, long applications session. We will hold this session at a different location from the others to have access to mats.
Sunday, September 27, Afteroon
The afternoon session on Sunday is for applications practice, reviewing and learning to apply many of the techniques studied in the previous days' sessions. This is the sole session that carries a full prerequisite that you've attended something previous to it in order to attend. The session will be structured around the material we covered throughout the seminar and last for three and a half hours, the last hour of the last day being reserved for some fun tussling in shuai jiao, which is a bit like judo but faster and with a different philosophy. The goal here is less to develop skill in shuai jiao and more to get some practice with that kind of exercise and feeling the weight of a resisting opponent. We will still be in the matted environment for this session.
This photo is of myself and yet another noteworthy practitioner practicing applications. In this scene, I am taking him down with a basic cutting palm strike. Click on the image to see it slightly larger.
If you think you can or want to come and you haven't made that explicit to our tour organizer, please follow this link to his contact information and contact him as soon as possible.
Very General Overview:
The first two days (Thursday, Friday) focus on foundational training and the last two days (Saturday, Sunday) focus on turning, forms, and applications. Both dadao (big saber) and shuai jiao (fast wrestling) practice are scheduled during the last two days. The seminar is open, requiring no previous experience in Yin Style Baguazhang, although having some background at least in the martial arts or fitness would be helpful. Interested parties can schedule to attend full days or half days (save the last half-day) individually or attend the entire seminar (recommended in all cases where it is possible). Contact us for details (see below for a link to contact information).
Thursday, September 24, 8:00a-12:00p
The morning session of this foundational day focuses on the Sweeping Palm of the Lion System. First is standing strengthening practice in the Lion representational posture and the sweeping palm posture. Then the remainder of the morning is devoted to practicing sweeping strikes and basic striking combinations. If you've never done any Yin Style Baguazhang and are interested and able to come to a Thursday morning session, this is the ideal place to start.
Thursday, September 24, 1:30p-6:00p
The afternoon session of this foundational day focuses on the Cutting Palm of the Lion System. The afternoon will proceed like the morning with "cutting" replacing "sweeping" for the first three and a half hours of this 270-minute session. Cutting is another excellent place for beginners to find something, so if you can't make a Thursday morning session but can make it in the afternoon, this is good for you. The afternoon session finishes with a new-to-essentially-everyone session in some of the basic kicks of Yin Style Baguazhang, lasting for one hour. The time in between the sessions, obviously, is a break for rest and lunch.
Friday, September 25
This foundational day follows the same framework as the previous day, focusing on the Chopping Palm of the Lion System and the Hooking Palm of the Lion System in the morning and afternoon respectively. The times are the same as Thursday's times for both sessions. These practices, while different from the material on Thursday, are also excellent foundational material, and in some ways they echo the themes of the material from Thursday. Thus, if you cannot make a Thursday session but can make a Friday session, this day would still be great for beginners to come to. The day will wrap up with another hour-long session of studying the kicks of Yin Style Bagua, sampling a few others from the system.
This is a photo from one of the foundational days in the recent London Intensive in which He Jinbao directs myself and another noteworthy practitioner in some fundamental practices. Applications such as these will be largely or entirely reserved for the final day of our seminar. Click on the image to see it slightly larger.Saturday, September 26, Morning
The times are the same as for the previous days, but the focus on Saturday is different. The morning session starts off with circle-turning practice in the representational posture of the Lion System and then studies one of the forms from that system: Enfolding Cutting. Drilling the form and strikes from the form, likely with combinations included, is on the menu. If you're a beginner and interested in coming to this session, it may be in your best interest to contact one of us as soon as possible for a quick primer in this seven-movement form.
Saturday, September 26, Afternoon
This day's afternoon session focuses on another of the forms of the Lion System: Windmill Cutting. Again, you might want a primer on the seven-movement form if you can come to this session. The last hour of this day's session will be on basic drills with the bagua big saber (dadao)
Sunday, September 27, Morning
The morning session on Sunday, with the same times as previously, is similar to that on Saturday morning: circle turning training and a Lion System form -- Moving with the Force Seizing. Again, you might want a primer on the seven-movement form if you can come to this session. The last hour of this session will be the beginning of a structured, long applications session. We will hold this session at a different location from the others to have access to mats.
Sunday, September 27, Afteroon
The afternoon session on Sunday is for applications practice, reviewing and learning to apply many of the techniques studied in the previous days' sessions. This is the sole session that carries a full prerequisite that you've attended something previous to it in order to attend. The session will be structured around the material we covered throughout the seminar and last for three and a half hours, the last hour of the last day being reserved for some fun tussling in shuai jiao, which is a bit like judo but faster and with a different philosophy. The goal here is less to develop skill in shuai jiao and more to get some practice with that kind of exercise and feeling the weight of a resisting opponent. We will still be in the matted environment for this session.
This photo is of myself and yet another noteworthy practitioner practicing applications. In this scene, I am taking him down with a basic cutting palm strike. Click on the image to see it slightly larger.If you think you can or want to come and you haven't made that explicit to our tour organizer, please follow this link to his contact information and contact him as soon as possible.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
How a Timer Can Help Your Training
Someone's going to jump up and down about this, particularly after my recent post about tips for circle-turning practice in which I had a subject heading labeled
Convenience
You can easily set a timer and decide to do an exercise, class of exercises, or exercise routine until the timer goes off. This is convenient if you have a known, limited amount of time in which to train ("my roast is done in an hour, time to rock out some training without worrying about burning it!") or if you need/want something external to really push you. Be sure to get a timer with an alarm that is loud enough so that you don't have any desire to go running over to it to check it periodically which is a sure sign that your mind is not fully on your training. A good use of the timer is to take your mind off of how long you have to train and let it do the worrying-about-that for you. This, by the way, is a distinct difference from using a clock, which you'd have to continually check.
Accountability
A timer is a funny little object in that it has no mind, no authority, and no power whatsoever as it is only measuring an arbitrary duration with arbitrary (but agreed-upon) units to some debatable level of accuracy, and yet it's pretty easy to hold yourself accountable to those little bad-boys. Set the timer, do whatever you've decided to do until the timer goes off, and let it be keep you on task until the time goes off. You can always do more if that wasn't enough or if it lit your fire, with or without the timer. Remember one of my golden training rules, though, when you set out on this kind of practice: things are easier to write down than to do.
Challenging Yourself
Let's say you have a good idea of how many such-and-suches that you can do effectively and roughly how long that takes. Using a timer to tack on a little more time ("a little" is defined in terms of the exercise you're doing) than what you are pretty sure you can do well and committing to trying your damnedest to perform through that whole time. If you can, then it benefited you. If you can't, then remember that the goal is quality, not quantity, and so you can do what you can do with quality, rest a bit, and then pick it back up to finish out the time (you might stop the timer while you're resting) when you've had a little break to regain steam. Since it's easy to be accountable to a timer, this is an excellent use of the timer in your training. After convenience (because I have a lot of crap to do in my life too), this is my primary use of a training timer.
Keeping Your Mind On Task
This really falls under "convenience" and was mentioned there, but it's so valuable and important that it gets its own little separate place too. If you're doing strikes or turning or whatever, and you're measuring what you're doing by counting them, which is totally natural, commonplace, and fine for certain things, then your mind isn't entirely on your training. It's great for group training, but then again, the timer serves the same function here. You can set a timer to a rough number by knowing roughly how many strikes you can do in a minute if you're doing them at the right speed (~30, btw). How can you find that out for yourself instead of comparing against my numbers? Do some strikes, count them, and time it. Figure out strikes per minute by dividing the number of strikes you did by the number of minutes it took (Math Note: There are not 100 seconds in a minute, and thus there is a meaningful difference between "one minute and twenty-three seconds" and "1.23 minutes." You can avoid having to convert to correct for this kind of thing by setting the timer for something like five minutes, doing your strikes, and letting the count be as it will). The same goes for turning if you're a revolutions-counter. Make sure to keep the timer out of view while you train, or this aspect probably goes right out the window as the timer becomes a distraction instead of a tool to increase focus.
There are also improper ways to use the timer and should be watched for and avoided: letting it be your cop-out if you're not pushing yourself hard enough when you have the time to train more than you are (the timer went off, so I was done), allowing "how long" you did something to matter in any way to you whatsoever other than as a rough measure of progress or conditioning, and allowing your training goals to start to center more on time (quantity) than on quality, for some examples. These insidious little problems are easy to let creep in, so you want to stay aware of them and let them pass.
Here are a couple of examples of how I use a timer to get in some really nice little workouts (ignoring the obvious "convenience" factor labeled above):
Do Not Base Your Turning on a Clock, a Number of Revolutions, or Some Other Crap that Isn't Worth a Damn.I hope not to be flamed about this because a timer can be and is a helpful training tool if it is used correctly. Here, I endeavor to describe more fully what role a timer plays in my training and how it could help or potentially hinder yours. Here are some proper uses of the timer in training:
Convenience
You can easily set a timer and decide to do an exercise, class of exercises, or exercise routine until the timer goes off. This is convenient if you have a known, limited amount of time in which to train ("my roast is done in an hour, time to rock out some training without worrying about burning it!") or if you need/want something external to really push you. Be sure to get a timer with an alarm that is loud enough so that you don't have any desire to go running over to it to check it periodically which is a sure sign that your mind is not fully on your training. A good use of the timer is to take your mind off of how long you have to train and let it do the worrying-about-that for you. This, by the way, is a distinct difference from using a clock, which you'd have to continually check.
Accountability
A timer is a funny little object in that it has no mind, no authority, and no power whatsoever as it is only measuring an arbitrary duration with arbitrary (but agreed-upon) units to some debatable level of accuracy, and yet it's pretty easy to hold yourself accountable to those little bad-boys. Set the timer, do whatever you've decided to do until the timer goes off, and let it be keep you on task until the time goes off. You can always do more if that wasn't enough or if it lit your fire, with or without the timer. Remember one of my golden training rules, though, when you set out on this kind of practice: things are easier to write down than to do.
Challenging Yourself
Let's say you have a good idea of how many such-and-suches that you can do effectively and roughly how long that takes. Using a timer to tack on a little more time ("a little" is defined in terms of the exercise you're doing) than what you are pretty sure you can do well and committing to trying your damnedest to perform through that whole time. If you can, then it benefited you. If you can't, then remember that the goal is quality, not quantity, and so you can do what you can do with quality, rest a bit, and then pick it back up to finish out the time (you might stop the timer while you're resting) when you've had a little break to regain steam. Since it's easy to be accountable to a timer, this is an excellent use of the timer in your training. After convenience (because I have a lot of crap to do in my life too), this is my primary use of a training timer.
Keeping Your Mind On Task
This really falls under "convenience" and was mentioned there, but it's so valuable and important that it gets its own little separate place too. If you're doing strikes or turning or whatever, and you're measuring what you're doing by counting them, which is totally natural, commonplace, and fine for certain things, then your mind isn't entirely on your training. It's great for group training, but then again, the timer serves the same function here. You can set a timer to a rough number by knowing roughly how many strikes you can do in a minute if you're doing them at the right speed (~30, btw). How can you find that out for yourself instead of comparing against my numbers? Do some strikes, count them, and time it. Figure out strikes per minute by dividing the number of strikes you did by the number of minutes it took (Math Note: There are not 100 seconds in a minute, and thus there is a meaningful difference between "one minute and twenty-three seconds" and "1.23 minutes." You can avoid having to convert to correct for this kind of thing by setting the timer for something like five minutes, doing your strikes, and letting the count be as it will). The same goes for turning if you're a revolutions-counter. Make sure to keep the timer out of view while you train, or this aspect probably goes right out the window as the timer becomes a distraction instead of a tool to increase focus.
There are also improper ways to use the timer and should be watched for and avoided: letting it be your cop-out if you're not pushing yourself hard enough when you have the time to train more than you are (the timer went off, so I was done), allowing "how long" you did something to matter in any way to you whatsoever other than as a rough measure of progress or conditioning, and allowing your training goals to start to center more on time (quantity) than on quality, for some examples. These insidious little problems are easy to let creep in, so you want to stay aware of them and let them pass.
Here are a couple of examples of how I use a timer to get in some really nice little workouts (ignoring the obvious "convenience" factor labeled above):
- Turning: I set the timer, put it "over there" and turn until it goes off. If I cannot maintain the posture even by switching sides often, then I rest my arms by bringing them down or picking another posture to turn in (lower posture, chopping posture as a counter to the Lion posture, "tripod posture" for strength, Rooster posture because I got told to do it sometimes when I was in London, etc. There are lots of postures to choose from). After a bit, I go back to the Lion posture (or whichever you're currently focusing on) and do it as well as I can again. This process repeats until I use up all of the time.
- Saber: A favorite new drill of mine is to set a timer for a fixed time (usually 20 minutes) and then "not put down my saber" in that whole time. The real goal is, of course, to do drills for the entire time, and it's a wicked workout. There are drills, sections of the form, turning postures, and standing postures to choose from, and none of them lasts for a terribly long time with that beast, so it's a varied and exciting workout. If I "can't think of another drill to do" at any given moment, I do tracing the saber until something comes to mind. It doesn't ever take long. I do most of the drills as equally as possible in each hand to give one a rest while the other gets some work. It would be far harder to do it otherwise.
- Basic Drills: This applies to any martial art, actually, not just Yin Style Baguazhang. I pick one drill, set a timer, and try to do the best I can with it until the timer goes off. I usually pick a time period that pushes me a little but that isn't so hard that I have to really cheat to finish. For example, today I did tracing the saber for five minutes, switching hands whenever I needed to. It worked great. I got about 100 on each side, so now I have a rough timing mechanism too (40 traces per minute, roughly). I do this with strikes and forms as well. Strikes, I think, is obvious in method, and forms go by setting the timer to several minutes (5 or 8) and doing a particular form repetetively until time runs out, trying to make it as good and powerful as I can throughout. It's kind of sad to think about, but eight minutes straight of a form is kind of hard, and that's really not that long of a time period.
- Standing Practice: Obvious. Stand for a set time on a side, switch (helps to have a person working the timer for you). Do it again until you don't want to do it any more (two or three times on each side is usually pretty good). Alternatively, set a time (5-10 minutes is hard) and stand, switching sides as needed, until time runs out.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Yin Style Baguazhang Is Coming to Knoxville!
I know I already mentioned this, but it bears repeating since it's a major goings-on in my training-related life (which is what this blog is about). Yin Style Baguazhang International is coming to Knoxville, TN, in just under a month! (Don't know much about Yin Style Baguazhang? Start here for the YSB International page!)
When: The seminar is going to be awesome for four consecutive days: Thursday, September 24, through Sunday, September 27, starting early in the morning (8-ish), continuing until lunch at 12, picking back up at 1:30-ish, and finishing in the evening between 5:30 and 6. That's more than eight hours a day of instruction from He Jinbao and Matt Bild.
Where: In West Knoxville, near the I-40/I-140 intersection. Contact us directly for more details. At the moment, some of the seminar will likely be held in Maryville (25-30 minutes south of Knoxville via I-140) as well since we will have much-appreciated access to a mat-covered floor there.
How Much: The cost will be $100 per person per day, which is a good deal since He Jinbao is the lineage holder of this branch of Baguazhang. This compares pretty favorably with what you'd find in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) seminar hosted by someone in a comparable position in the hierarchy (e.g. seminars with some of the Gracie family's students -- not a Gracie -- run in the $50-100 for two hours range).
Who: Anyone interested in experiencing the training practices of Yin Style Baguazhang firsthand with direct access to the best guys the art has. Folks with martial arts backgrounds that would like to develop or deepen their training are particularly likely to benefit. In fact, even if practicing Yin Style Bagua isn't one of your goals, your self-defense ability and overall martial arts training is very likely to be enhanced by this kind of experience.
What: The focus will be on the Lion System of Yin Style Baguazhang, which is also what this blog is about (don't know what Yin Style Baguazhang is? Click here to find out more!). The basic practices of the art as they pertain to that particular branch of it will be taught and explored in details. While the specific material on each day will be different, over the course of the seminar the following will certainly be addressed: striking drilling practice, combinations practice, forms practice, standing strengthening practice, turning the circle practice, dadao (Chinese big saber) practice, and applications of the techniques. Usually these seminars also leave open the opportunity for Q&A with the teachers, which is especially good when folks come and ask martial-arts-related questions. The opportunity to get direct, personal feedback from them is also available at those times as well.
What Else:
When: The seminar is going to be awesome for four consecutive days: Thursday, September 24, through Sunday, September 27, starting early in the morning (8-ish), continuing until lunch at 12, picking back up at 1:30-ish, and finishing in the evening between 5:30 and 6. That's more than eight hours a day of instruction from He Jinbao and Matt Bild.
Where: In West Knoxville, near the I-40/I-140 intersection. Contact us directly for more details. At the moment, some of the seminar will likely be held in Maryville (25-30 minutes south of Knoxville via I-140) as well since we will have much-appreciated access to a mat-covered floor there.
How Much: The cost will be $100 per person per day, which is a good deal since He Jinbao is the lineage holder of this branch of Baguazhang. This compares pretty favorably with what you'd find in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) seminar hosted by someone in a comparable position in the hierarchy (e.g. seminars with some of the Gracie family's students -- not a Gracie -- run in the $50-100 for two hours range).
Who: Anyone interested in experiencing the training practices of Yin Style Baguazhang firsthand with direct access to the best guys the art has. Folks with martial arts backgrounds that would like to develop or deepen their training are particularly likely to benefit. In fact, even if practicing Yin Style Bagua isn't one of your goals, your self-defense ability and overall martial arts training is very likely to be enhanced by this kind of experience.
What: The focus will be on the Lion System of Yin Style Baguazhang, which is also what this blog is about (don't know what Yin Style Baguazhang is? Click here to find out more!). The basic practices of the art as they pertain to that particular branch of it will be taught and explored in details. While the specific material on each day will be different, over the course of the seminar the following will certainly be addressed: striking drilling practice, combinations practice, forms practice, standing strengthening practice, turning the circle practice, dadao (Chinese big saber) practice, and applications of the techniques. Usually these seminars also leave open the opportunity for Q&A with the teachers, which is especially good when folks come and ask martial-arts-related questions. The opportunity to get direct, personal feedback from them is also available at those times as well.
What Else:
- In addition to He Jinbao and Matt Bild, several of the senior students in Yin Style Bagua from across the U.S. will almost certainly be in attendance, providing examples to follow and training advice for folks less experienced in the art.
- We're hoping for a pretty good turnout, so if you read this and are interested or know someone that might be, please follow this link and contact Bradley Moore for further specifics.
- Any and all are welcome to come if they are interested and can make it. Experience in the martial arts is helpful but not required, and it is worth noting that the workout will be rather physically demanding.
- Folks within a short drive of the Knoxville area that already train in an art and that are interested in tasting something new and good are especially encouraged to contact us and try to make it up for as much of the seminar as possible.
- Local schools or groups that think they might be interested and would like for Bradley and I to come by and give you a primer before the seminar are also encouraged to contact us (it would be helpful for you if you did that). You can do so here or by contacting one of us using the e-mail addresses here.
- Local individuals that thing they might be interested and would like the same kind of attention, contact us about coming and visiting our study group and its regular meetings in a park in Maryville on Monday nights. For the time being, our study group is meeting for free, so you'd only be out on some time.
- This is an internal martial art, but "qi warriors" probably won't find what they're expecting. Being realistic and pragmatic, Yin Style Baguazhang isn't advertising magical powers or anything of the sort; just intelligent, mature, well-designed martial arts techniques play center stage here. He Jinbao's skill is high enough to be worthy of some legends, though... at least in my humble estimation (which I'm sure I can find quite a bit of backup on from the folks who know him!).
Friday, August 28, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Train FOR Something: Skills-Oriented Training
I've mentioned this kind of thing before, but it bears mentioning again and again. When you train, go train for something specific, in particular to get better at something specific.
Here are two examples of exercise-related/training-related goals, phrased in a fairly generic sense:
Making your goals skills-oriented makes for a harder, more rewarding road. If you work hard and honestly to get good at something, chances are pretty good that you'll be able to do it several or many times in a row, but you'll have obtained more along the way: a deeper understanding of the technique or exercise. It's a difficult goal to meet, however, because it's abstract and lacks a clear finishing point. You know when you can do 150 squats without stopping (body-weight squats, of course), but you cannot know when you've honestly mastered a technique fully. Of course, that can be discouraging, but for a mature, serious person (like a good martial artist has to be), it's more of an opportunity than an impossibility. "Cool! I'll always have room to develop in this practice!" is the way you can look at it instead of "Shit! I'll never completely get this!"
Basically, any exercise you choose to do as part of your training can have benefit. The question you have to ask yourself is how much benefit a given exercise per unit of time that you have to train. Dr. Xie Peiqi apparently used to say something like "we're all given the same twenty-four hours in a day, so what matters is how we choose to use them." Realistically, with jobs and family and living, most of us might have an hour or two a day on average to dedicate to our training, which really isn't much (ten or fifteen hours out of 168 in a week, i.e. less than 10% of our time). That means our choices on how to spend our training hours have to be optimal. No matter which exercises you pick: standing strengthening, turning, striking, drilling, forms, dadao practice in any of those dimensions, applications, or accessory training like cardio, weight training, stretching, or what-have-you, you have to look at your goals in terms of developing certain skills. Stretching might seem much more valuable if you're too stiff to do certain movements (lying step, anyone?), and weights might really help you if you're weak. Weights can help you if you're strong as long as you're creative and serious enough to focus your weight training on meaningful exercises and routines that actually enhance your training, determined enough to make sure you put your mind into those exercises, and mature enough to drop the silly, empty, bullshit exercises that make up the majority of what is done with weights in the wide world of exercise -- no matter what they might make you look or feel like if you do a lot of them (is bench press really going to make you a better fighter? I somehow doubt it...).
Most importantly (in fact, so importantly that I'm going to repeat it even though I already wrote it), put your mind into your training, even if it's not a martial technique. If you're jogging to increase your wind, then put your mind into your breathing while you're jogging. That's the reason you're jogging, right? If you're lifting a weight to increase your ability to hit hard, make sure that the exercise you choose somehow uses the same muscles that are involved and that you focus on feeling those muscles, imagining how their strength translates into striking power. If you're stretching, then put your mind into your body and try to feel your tightness... and then try to let your mind help you release it. Bring your internal to your external, and you can really maximize what you're getting out of your training time.
Here are two examples of exercise-related/training-related goals, phrased in a fairly generic sense:
- I'm going to work this exercise until I can do it 150 times without stopping!
- I'm going to work this exercise until I'm very good at it, trying to pay attention to find and learn the proper mechanics and execution along the way!
Making your goals skills-oriented makes for a harder, more rewarding road. If you work hard and honestly to get good at something, chances are pretty good that you'll be able to do it several or many times in a row, but you'll have obtained more along the way: a deeper understanding of the technique or exercise. It's a difficult goal to meet, however, because it's abstract and lacks a clear finishing point. You know when you can do 150 squats without stopping (body-weight squats, of course), but you cannot know when you've honestly mastered a technique fully. Of course, that can be discouraging, but for a mature, serious person (like a good martial artist has to be), it's more of an opportunity than an impossibility. "Cool! I'll always have room to develop in this practice!" is the way you can look at it instead of "Shit! I'll never completely get this!"
Basically, any exercise you choose to do as part of your training can have benefit. The question you have to ask yourself is how much benefit a given exercise per unit of time that you have to train. Dr. Xie Peiqi apparently used to say something like "we're all given the same twenty-four hours in a day, so what matters is how we choose to use them." Realistically, with jobs and family and living, most of us might have an hour or two a day on average to dedicate to our training, which really isn't much (ten or fifteen hours out of 168 in a week, i.e. less than 10% of our time). That means our choices on how to spend our training hours have to be optimal. No matter which exercises you pick: standing strengthening, turning, striking, drilling, forms, dadao practice in any of those dimensions, applications, or accessory training like cardio, weight training, stretching, or what-have-you, you have to look at your goals in terms of developing certain skills. Stretching might seem much more valuable if you're too stiff to do certain movements (lying step, anyone?), and weights might really help you if you're weak. Weights can help you if you're strong as long as you're creative and serious enough to focus your weight training on meaningful exercises and routines that actually enhance your training, determined enough to make sure you put your mind into those exercises, and mature enough to drop the silly, empty, bullshit exercises that make up the majority of what is done with weights in the wide world of exercise -- no matter what they might make you look or feel like if you do a lot of them (is bench press really going to make you a better fighter? I somehow doubt it...).
Most importantly (in fact, so importantly that I'm going to repeat it even though I already wrote it), put your mind into your training, even if it's not a martial technique. If you're jogging to increase your wind, then put your mind into your breathing while you're jogging. That's the reason you're jogging, right? If you're lifting a weight to increase your ability to hit hard, make sure that the exercise you choose somehow uses the same muscles that are involved and that you focus on feeling those muscles, imagining how their strength translates into striking power. If you're stretching, then put your mind into your body and try to feel your tightness... and then try to let your mind help you release it. Bring your internal to your external, and you can really maximize what you're getting out of your training time.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
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!
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!
Sunday, August 16, 2009
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:
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.
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:
- "Five minutes of turning (read: training) is more than no minutes of turning (read: training);"
- "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."
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.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Accessories Workout, With Pictures!
I figure it's about time I start putting some pictures on here. So... I did a workout today and took some of the process. Since I didn't have a photographer and didn't want to goof around with the timer and all of that, they're all from my perspective. That makes them probably quite a bit different from what you're used to seeing... awesome. I'm definitely the "different" sort of guy. The only pictures I took were of some of my saber stuff and some accessories, although my workout integrated those kinds of things with yard work and empty-hand drills -- standing, some turning, and striking drills. All-told, I went at it for about two hours before I decided I was too excited about putting up some pictures and too thirsty to continue.
Here are the tools of my trade today: saber (freshly polished), twenty pound dumbbell (for accessory exercising), and Heavy Gripper 200 lb (also for accessory exercising). They made for quite the little workout.
After the photo opportunity, I launched into some standing and striking and then picked up my saber for some harder work. The goal was to turn in the Green Dragon Shoots to the Sea posture for fifty revolutions in each direction, however many times I had to go in each directly to accomplish that goal. This picture is a perspective shot of me in the posture. Notice that the saber tip is at eyebrow height.
I followed that exercise up, which was hard, with tracing the saber to the count of fifty in each hand and then dumbbell shoulder presses (two sets of twelve) to further tax the muscles that hold the saber up, although my hands were way more taxed by the posture than my shoulders were. Here's a perspective shot of the "closed" position with one of my lovely maple trees in the background.
After the dumbbell, I did a set of ten with the gripper. Actually, I did a set of ten with it after each of my three turning exercises with the saber. It's really hard to close. Two hundred pounds is a lot of required force. Then again, four people in London told me that they believe that I have, in the words of the Iced-JohannesBerg himself, "the bone-crushing strength in my hands." I only use these things about once a week and only after crazy saber and crazy ox-tongue palm workouts, which I think do more for the grip anyway (unless I do seizing and grasping postures... I'll do grippers after those too... whew, burner).
After doing some yard work and some more empty-hand drills and another round of standing Lion (I'll have to take a perspective shot of that sometime... I can't believe I didn't think of it), I decided I should turn with the saber in Lion posture. Good thinking. That was hard. It took four sets, but I went thirty times in each direction. Can someone say shoulders? I almost couldn't by the time I was done.
Since the Lion section of the Nine Dragon Saber form seems to have a lot of chopping in it, I think more than any section except the Rooster one, I decided to do hook-chop after that: twice in each hand so that I ended up with 30 total on each side (18, 12 for the breakdown). That was kind of hard. Here's a perspective shot of that, which was hard to take because I posed for it after the sets. I followed that up with lateral and front shoulder raises with the dumbbell (ten each in each hand) and then the gripper again and then more empty-hand striking drills of the zig-zag stepping variety.
Okay, so what would I do after that? A short turn in the Lion posture, of course, and then... good times of all good times:
You're damn right you know what that is. Turning in the Qilin (Unicorn) posture. That sucked bad at that point, and so I only went twenty times around in the right and fifteen in the left (my left wrist still isn't 100%). That took four sets to get to. I've really got to turn more with that thing, seriously. I don't even think that I'm twisting my arm under far enough since looking at the picture indicates to me that the blade isn't pointing straight up. Damn, yo. The followup to this monster is the most Qilin/Unicorn feeling of the basic saber drills that I could think of: arcing. I can do a bunch of those, so I did fifty on each side in one go. Then I picked up the dumbbell and did curls and then forearm curls (one set of twelve of each) and threw that thing on the ground because my forearms felt like they were going to pop. In response, I did another set with the gripper and tried not to cry.
Afterwards, I busted out some more striking drills, working striking combinations from the Lion System basics and did a little more yard work before deciding to hang it up for the day and get to other things. I'll probably do a bit more in a little bit now that I've had plenty to drink and a little to eat, and then I'm planning to stretch and do my Taoist energy exercises that I've recommited myself to (for the third time) before bed.
As I went out, my wife saw me, and so I showed her how shiny my newly polished saber is. She snapped a picture of me admiring it. By the time my workout was over, I was as shiny as it... probably shinier. So... that's how I rolled today. What fun!
Here are the tools of my trade today: saber (freshly polished), twenty pound dumbbell (for accessory exercising), and Heavy Gripper 200 lb (also for accessory exercising). They made for quite the little workout.
After the photo opportunity, I launched into some standing and striking and then picked up my saber for some harder work. The goal was to turn in the Green Dragon Shoots to the Sea posture for fifty revolutions in each direction, however many times I had to go in each directly to accomplish that goal. This picture is a perspective shot of me in the posture. Notice that the saber tip is at eyebrow height.
I followed that exercise up, which was hard, with tracing the saber to the count of fifty in each hand and then dumbbell shoulder presses (two sets of twelve) to further tax the muscles that hold the saber up, although my hands were way more taxed by the posture than my shoulders were. Here's a perspective shot of the "closed" position with one of my lovely maple trees in the background.
After the dumbbell, I did a set of ten with the gripper. Actually, I did a set of ten with it after each of my three turning exercises with the saber. It's really hard to close. Two hundred pounds is a lot of required force. Then again, four people in London told me that they believe that I have, in the words of the Iced-JohannesBerg himself, "the bone-crushing strength in my hands." I only use these things about once a week and only after crazy saber and crazy ox-tongue palm workouts, which I think do more for the grip anyway (unless I do seizing and grasping postures... I'll do grippers after those too... whew, burner).
After doing some yard work and some more empty-hand drills and another round of standing Lion (I'll have to take a perspective shot of that sometime... I can't believe I didn't think of it), I decided I should turn with the saber in Lion posture. Good thinking. That was hard. It took four sets, but I went thirty times in each direction. Can someone say shoulders? I almost couldn't by the time I was done.
Since the Lion section of the Nine Dragon Saber form seems to have a lot of chopping in it, I think more than any section except the Rooster one, I decided to do hook-chop after that: twice in each hand so that I ended up with 30 total on each side (18, 12 for the breakdown). That was kind of hard. Here's a perspective shot of that, which was hard to take because I posed for it after the sets. I followed that up with lateral and front shoulder raises with the dumbbell (ten each in each hand) and then the gripper again and then more empty-hand striking drills of the zig-zag stepping variety.Okay, so what would I do after that? A short turn in the Lion posture, of course, and then... good times of all good times:
You're damn right you know what that is. Turning in the Qilin (Unicorn) posture. That sucked bad at that point, and so I only went twenty times around in the right and fifteen in the left (my left wrist still isn't 100%). That took four sets to get to. I've really got to turn more with that thing, seriously. I don't even think that I'm twisting my arm under far enough since looking at the picture indicates to me that the blade isn't pointing straight up. Damn, yo. The followup to this monster is the most Qilin/Unicorn feeling of the basic saber drills that I could think of: arcing. I can do a bunch of those, so I did fifty on each side in one go. Then I picked up the dumbbell and did curls and then forearm curls (one set of twelve of each) and threw that thing on the ground because my forearms felt like they were going to pop. In response, I did another set with the gripper and tried not to cry.Afterwards, I busted out some more striking drills, working striking combinations from the Lion System basics and did a little more yard work before deciding to hang it up for the day and get to other things. I'll probably do a bit more in a little bit now that I've had plenty to drink and a little to eat, and then I'm planning to stretch and do my Taoist energy exercises that I've recommited myself to (for the third time) before bed.
As I went out, my wife saw me, and so I showed her how shiny my newly polished saber is. She snapped a picture of me admiring it. By the time my workout was over, I was as shiny as it... probably shinier. So... that's how I rolled today. What fun!
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