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

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

I just can't get into MMA but keep feeling like I should... wtf?

I feel like I should be into MMA (mixed martial arts). After all, I fit the demographics pretty well, and worse, I feel tremendous passive social pressure to be into it.

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

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

On training Yin Style, to paraphrase Laozi

To paraphrase Laozi, here is a comment on training Yin Style Baguazhang:

Saluting Stockholm

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

No reasons to cut corners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Battle saber proves I'm weak

I train hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Year's training resolutions 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Serious leg workout: Yin Style Baguazhang style

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

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

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

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

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

Armchair Training

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

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

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

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

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

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

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