Be Strong My Aching Body

Just wanted to remind myself...

New Year, New Training

Happy New Year! Resolve to train harder! Wait - we do that every day...

Last night was my first training back since vacation; stamina-wise it was a bit more challenging than usual. But my body was so nice and healed that I was able to do everything without any aches or pains or nagging injuries. Still, I was definitely panting harder than usual, especially after doing erluquan all the way through during forms. Luckily, i got a break after when Sifu asked me to help teach Ricardo. I've never been asked to teach before so it was very exciting. But I was also a little nervous being asked to help him with his erluquan. I was hoping my first teaching assignment would be caijiaos... :P

This first teaching assignment was interesting because it was a learning process for me as well. Obviously when teaching someone a form and breaking down the pieces you have to think more specifically about each move and it makes you more aware of places you are weak on and places where you've gotten stronger. But also, having Sifu standing there much of the time watching and sometimes making comments, I realized I was being taught how to teach. It was an interesting perspective and I enjoyed the sort of irony of a teacher teaching a student who is a teacher also teaching a student... Everyone with me? It was fun but not as easy as you'd think, and I appreciate all the more everyone who has ever taught me.

The mouths of babes....

My blog posts have been on hiatus of late because I'm currently spending an extended vacation with the family in GA. What with it being the holiday season and there being lots of cookies around and me having the willpower of jello, not as much training has been happening as I would have hoped. There have been lots of bike rides and runs and walks in the woods and splitting wood for the fire and various other activities keeping me fit. But my kung fu training sessions have been few and generally lacking intensity.

Early on in my stay when I was practicing, my little sister, who is 6, came out to join me and soon revealed that she was capable of doing a head flip. She has mixed success getting up out of it, but watching her barrel forwards and a full run and fling herself into it was alternately impressive and frustrating. Ah youth.

So this afternoon when I was outside working on jumps and she again joined me, we started doing headflips together. After a few back landings that knocked the wind out of me, I started to get it. And even though I still can't get up out of it, I was pretty satisfied. The next think I knew I was helping her and one of my other sisters, who is ten, work on cartwheels. I was whipping out my right and left-handed indiscriminately and then started relentlessly trying them one handed. This was a less successful experiment, but I think having their youthful and fearless energy around me gave me the gumption to try it without worrying about breaking my neck.

When I get back on Monday I don't think I will have nailed anything new. And in fact will be a little pudgier than when I left. (Lots of Christmas baking around here....) But I will try to retain my new fearless spirit of tumbling. What's the worse that could happen? Well, I could twist my ankle like one of my other sisters just did...

I hope everyone had a happy holiday and I can't wait to see you all at temple!

Water Bottle Can Kill Ya

Did anybody see this article about people started worrying about health risk from hard plastic water bottle? Basically, it said that these bottles contain polycarbonate which can leak into water and MAY cause a whole bunch of terrible illnesses as manifested in lab animals.... breast cancer, prostate cancer, obesity, hyperactivity, miscarriages, reproductive failure, etc.


The main target is bottles from the company above which are supposedly indestructible, light, do not stain or cause odor..... Sounds good, I might get myself one of those. My water bottle that I got for free from my company's healthday smells like plastic and leaves yellow stain at the bottom after each use. I don't know how many diseases that will also cause me later in life...

The Big Vinegar Experiment

I did it. I washed my clothes with vinegar. Out of the dryer, they smell nice and fresh like usual. I'll be using the vinegar washed uniforms through out this week.

If I smell a little sour during/after training, you know why.

Update:

Monday - It worked! It worked! My uniform and tank top smelled fresh and clean the entire class. Out of the plastic bag at home, they still don't stink. Oh wait - it's the orange uniform which I acquired only a few months ago. It hasn't been through the summer sweat season yet. So I guess the real test will be tomorrow...

Tuesday - Didn't train. Ate too much at the office party.

Wednesday - Didn't train again. Ate too much leftover from the party. Am I fired from dorkdom?

Thursday - Vinegar worked but not as well as I had hoped. My cotton uniform smelled decent the entire class but my tank top had a little sour sweaty smell at the end. Coming out of a plastic bag at home, the whole thing gave out mildew-y smell although not as strong as before.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just smelly...

Training is my Anti-Anti Drug

Lately classes have seemed more intense. Perhaps it is the disappearance of the walking breaks instituted during summer's debilitating heat, the smaller class sizes of late, or -most likely- I'm training more than ever and am consequently more tired and sore when going to class.

Being insufficiently rested has resulted in a number of consequences, the two most prominent being the rising importance of coffee and pain relievers in my life.

I've always been in a constant battle with coffee, I love it but I don't like the accompanying highs and lows depending of my caffination. I don't like the gurgling stomach I get if I have it before training, but I like not feeling like curling up to sleep in the meditation room.

Pain relievers are a little different. I think I've mentioned before that I like to avoid taking medicine if I can. Serious illness and injury are one thing but otherwise I like my body to take care of itself. But near-perpetual soreness and semi-injury are testing my resolve on this point.

I don't want to feel dependent on coffee or Advil to provide me with energy or cure my aches and pains. I want to know my body well enough to push it harder but not too hard, because I know that will make me stronger in the end than relying of a caffeine fix to give me faux-chi or anti-inflammatories to make me feel less stiff and more flexible. I don't want to be an addict!!!!! So how to solve this? I already get more sleep than most people I know. My job is low impact. Do I really just need to train less? Because after a downright excruciatingly painful set of kicks last night I need to reassess what I'm doing. Or maybe I need to crush my pride or whatever is holding me back and embrace the drugs......

Level 2 Basics

Heng Cheng and I finished learning a brand new move tonight. The one with the longest name on the chart. Heng De told us to remember it like this:

Bow stance (Gongbu) with a Pair of (Shuang) Palm Strikes (Tuizhang) followed by Back Sweep Kick (Housaotui) and Bow Stance (Gongbu) with [something we don't know -- somebody help?] (Liangzhang).

So here goes: Gongbu Shuang Tuizhang Housaotui Gonbu Liangzhang.

To celebrate this occasion, I'm posting the names of level 2 basics.

Pinyin	English
Stances
Siliubu	Four-Six Stance
Sanqibu	Three-Seven Stance
Strikes
Gouquan	Hook Punch
Zhiquan	Straight Punch
Baiquan	Curved Punch
Kicks
Futoutui	Axe Kick
Qiandengtui	Front Thrust Kick
Zuhequan Qiandengtui	Combination Punch with Front Step Kick
Cechuatui	Side Kick
Biantui	Roundhouse Kick
Qianbaitui Houbaitui	Front Crescent Kick and Back Crescent Kick
Qiansaotui Housaotui	Front Sweep Kcik and Back Sweep Kcik
Mopan Saotui	Millstone Sweep Kick
Movements
Tixi Pubu Loushou Gongbu Chongquan	Lifting Knee Followed by Pubu and Gongbu Punch
Chuanzhang Lihetui Liaotui	Piercing Palm Followed by Inside Crescent Kick and Lifting Kick
Gongbu Shaung Tuizhang Housaotui Gongbu Liangzhang	Bow Stance with Pair of Palm Strikes Followed by Back Weep Kick and Bow Stance
Liyu Dating	Carp Straightens Body
Wulong Jiaozhu	Black Dragon Coils Around Pillar
Jumps
Bawang Zhaikui	Jump with Backwards Punch and Cartwheel
Xuanzi	Butterfly Kick
Xuanfengjiao	Tornado Kick
Tengkong Danfeijiao	Soaring Single Flying Leg
Tengkong Shuangfeijiao	Soaring Double Flying Legs
Tengkong Waibailian	Soaring Outside Waving Lotus
Tengkong Tanti	Soaring Spring Kick

Kickin' It With Heng De

(Awesome Heng De has offered to share his recent thoughts via a guest entry. Amituofo!)

I was thinking last night about how jumps taking off of my right leg are much better than off of my left. Especially in danfeijiao, a kick where you jump off your right leg, tuck your left, slap your right like caijiao and land on your right. I do it great on my right - I feel like I can get some serious air, more than any other kick (which is another issue, why jumping off my right leg alone gets me higher usually than off both), like Shifu said to me when you jump higher, you have more time to express yourself.

So being the scientific and analytical type guy I am, I asked myself why I feel better with my right leg kicks and jumps than with my left. In the form I just finished, there's a tornado kick with the right leg, and two erqijiao or danfeijiao like kicks off the right leg. So I wondered in our forms, how many kicks on each leg are there? You'd think it should be even to develop both sides of the body. But my results are surprising and astounding!

Form	Right leg kicks	Left leg kicks
xiaohongquan	4	3
dahongquan	6	3
tongbeiquan	6	2
xiao luohanquan	5	2

and the most astounding result...erluquan...which we all do over and over again for like a year, has 11 kicks with the right leg and just 3 with the left!

Add all of this with how many people don't do kicks like erqijiao or lunbicaijiao on both sides, and that's a lot more kicking with the right than the left. Over the years it really adds up.

I started doing staff form with the staff in my left arm because I could feel the strengthening in my right arm and it would be really sore. I didn't want to have all that extra power and coordination in my already dominant arm only. So far I can do the whole form, but it's not as smooth as my right side of course.

I'm thinking about starting to do forms on the opposite side now. At least tongbeiquan which is short and would be easier to figure out, and erluquan because there's so many more kicks on one side. So if you see me doing 5 kicks backwards, now you know why. And knowing is half the battle G.I. JOOOOOEEEEEEEE!

(In case you were wondering, the other half is sounding like you know what you're talking about, thanks Mo and Cheng.)

Oh yea speaking of 5 kicks my left side waibaitui sucks...my hip just doesn't open and my right shoulder hurts when i do it. Could it be all those times doing 5 kicks over the years was what made that side more open? Maybe I should do erluquan only on the left for the next four years...

Diversion Tactics

I thought last night's class would be all about my thumb; it's still fat and pained and kind of purple. Turns out, it was all about my hamstring. After overextending a caijiao last week my right leg has pretty much been out of commission. I've been training through it, but it's come to the point that I think this one needs rest, not training. (The last couple of classes have been, frankly, painful.) What it did serve to do though, was distract me from my thumb. The distraction allowed me to discover that, while I can't bend it, I can still do a ceshoufan or two without too much pain.

Funny how one pain minimizes another. A foot injury distracted me from my shinsplints, a sore neck distracted me from my foot. A sore butt distracted me from my neck. The flu distracted me from everything. Just goes to show, if you don't focus on the pain it will in fact go away.

This is something I've noticed in how I approach class as well. I used to get caught up in how many people were in class, where I was in line, how many minutes left until a water break, the temperature and who knows what else. I realized lately that these things have gone away. I don't know if it's from training a lot more or being stronger, or being more chan, but now class is just class. I don't worry about how much water I'm drinking or where my sweat is flying: I just train. I don't know how or when it happened, but it's a really satisfying realization.

I also spend less time trying to distract myself in line. It used to be that I would try to think on something, sing a song in my head, or anticipate some other move to distract me from the pain/exhaustion of the move I was on. Now, I am much more focused on what I am doing and how well I'm executing it. And the pain has gone away not through distraction but through strengthening my movements by focusing on technique. It's not that I don't still get tired, (hahah if only). It's not that I don't still fall victim to pain - see my lackluster training in light of current barrel of injuries. Only now I feel like, I'm going in with the same mindset no matter what variables are varying.

I must say though, I'd still like something to divert me from the pain in my leg. It's so unsatisfying not to be able to whip out five kicks at full chi.

Devolving

Last night, through no one's fault, I got smacked in the hand in line during fanyao. I never really think of fanyao as a strike, yet I can recall more than one occasion where I or someone else has suffered a rather painful injury from a fanyao collision. Don't underestimate the power of whipping arms! Anyway, the accident left my thumb throbbing and before the stretch break it had swollen too, if not enormous proportions, at least big enough to look funny next to my other thumb. And just when I unjammed my finger accident from last week. Of course that one, I hit myself....... As a result I once more have a hand hampered by a jammed finger. Only this time I've lost the benefits of my opposable thumb, the result of eons of hard evolving.

My pre-simian abilities got me pondering backwards evolution and that feeling you get sometimes that, through no fault of your own, your kung fu seems to be de-evolving. (Devolving we'll call it, hyphens are awkward.) I'm not talking about when something is rusty because you haven't practiced it in awhile or struggling with something you're still trying to learn. This is when you're rolling merrily along only to suddenly discover you can no longer do a fanyao properly on your right side, you can no longer do a yangshen yunshou on EITHER side, or you for no reason whatsoever regress in your forms. This seems to be happening to me a lot since I began L2. Sometimes it's just choking. Sometimes.... I don't know.


There does exist the theory that you are actually getting better. The more you learn the more you see that you are doing incorrectly so you are more and more aware of even the tiniest flaws in your movements. So even though it feels bad/different, the move is improving.

I think this is sometimes the case for me, but certainly not always. I guess, sometimes something just gets off and, like my new found appreciation for how much I need my thumb, when it starts working once more, you get the pleasure of success all over again.