My Wushu Blog

Most people went to the Crucible’s second showing tonight, so Patti had asked if Jane and I could take care of the beginners class. Pierre and I got there the same time and he helped me roll out the carpets, James dropped by for a few minutes. He gave us a quick run down of the show and said the fight set Wushu West does is incredible. James is also leaving for Thailand for 2 months, so I hope he comes back in one piece.

While I was warming up the kid, Patti told me the Director of The Crucible called her and was not happy about the youtube vidoe’s. This is understandable I guess, but mind you I’m a tad sensitive on how information is relayed to me.
When you say “Hey, can you remove those videos from youtube?” I’m okay with that. But then you email me with not very friendly letter like this:

Sent:  	January 11, 2007, 02:26 PM

Subject: 	Please Remove the Crucible's fotage from U-TUBE Immeadately!

Message: 	

Please Remove all the Crucible's fotage of it's fire ballet and rehursals. You are in voilation of the contract between The Crucible and Wushu west and could jepordize the payment to Wushu West. You are also not respecting the rights of Flavor group and The Crucible.

Questions? Call Michael 510-xxx-xxxx

I get a little annoyed, why? Because first off, no one really cares about this clip on youtube, the only people watching it are those who ALREADY got tickets (not cheap ones either) for the show to see their own classmates perform. Second, the evil movie stealing community on the interweb aren’t salivating over this, there is no interest in a 2 minute clip. And usually the more of a pitt bull approach you have to “protecting” your content, the less its really worth, it says that your more insecure than anything else. Also, I did give credit to both Wushu West and The Crucibles “flavor” team in the descrīption, but I guess I cannot expect someone to read a trivial thing as that when they have numerous spelling errors in their message. Anyway, enough of that, I did my duty as an angry internet user and bitched about it online.

Back to the class. I warmed up the kids with the basic full-range type movements, then a bit of loose kicks, and I had Raymond lead them running around the class a bit. He did a good job and kept up the pace, they did however stop on their own so I had them do 5 more laps. Then I had them do lunges back and forth about 5 times, not to punish them (though it did keep them quite) but because it was chilly and that has to be one of the best ways to warm up your legs. Every time we would do something, both Cybel and Haniel would protest and say something like “Can we play dodge ball now?” or “Can we just do cartwheels?”… usually when they said that I would continue with basics, but I did give in to playing Wushu Tag, and I tried to keep it under 10 minutes.
By the time we started basics (which we a lot of front-stretch kicks) Jane had showed up and that was a relief. I was nice to have someone there to help keep the organized. I was correcting a lot of them on keeping their arms out, straight, and palms pushed out, so after they did all three basic kicks, I had them hold their arms out for a few minutes. Ahh, the cries of pain was delicious
Then they did front sweep (which they protested they did not know how to do), back sweep, then Jane reminded me they haven’t done the punch snap-kick at all, so we had them do that plus holding the kick out for 3-5 seconds. Two lines of that and they were ready for a water break.
They did jumping for a bit after that, and we gave them the options of weapon basics or open hand. I lead a few of them doing staff basics, and when I turned my attention to one student ( can’t remember her name ), Ray, Cybel and Haniel were laying down chatting.
I told them it was time for burpee’s since they seemed to be finished with that So it was 3 sprints, burpee’s, then the more back and forth sprints. After that it was frog leap down, duck-walk back two times. Then I had jump in place, but moving very slowly, I did that with them, and they finished too early, so the next time Umaru did it, and the rule was, whoever finished before Umaru had to do 20 pushups. They did a much better job that time around.
Lastly I had them stretch again, then then three “advanced” people took their place on the carpet as they saluted and left. It was getting around 7:45 by that time, so we did some sprints, front, inside and outside kicks and then jumping stuff. I felt a little better about my jumps, I haven’t been up on them since I hurt my back and now that it feels better I can really get into things again. Unfortunately it has been hard to keep the stamina up, and its going to be really bad when Patti is back full time She’s going to make up for lost time that is for sure.
Umaru and I finished off with target pad kicking again, then the 3 of us rolled up the carpets and cleaned up.
I only had to change my shirt once, so I didn’t get all that good of a workout but oh well.

I had a pretty long night, Pierre was sick and Peter is out of town so Patti asked if I could be there by 5:30 to help get the carpets ready and help out with the beginners class. Thankfully Lynda was there, so really, I just participated in the class like a regular student

After some running, dodge ball (with really light foam balls, first time no one got hurt), then a good round of wushu tag everyone had sufficiently warmed up and went on to stretching. Lynda had to make sure Cybel and Haniel were separated, those two have the attention span of mice and they can’t keep their mouths shut. When they did basics, James and I did some partner stretching which seems to be working out really well for me. He wants to get a picture of my freakishly flexible left leg.

Patti ran us through some basics, she made us do a lot of inside kicks, the 540 inside kick and then a LOT of jumping front kicks. That is really hard to do with 4 people in a line, I was getting pretty beat. A little frustrated too, I haven’t been doing a lot of them but I’m feeling pretty sloppy. We did all the other jumping kick as well and thats about when Patti left… and our ambition went with her. It was about 7:45 or so and we started to slack off from that point on, I didn’t feel so bad about it because I was already tired by then (I had also went for an hour walk during my lunch break, so my legs were sort of weak anyway). I did a section a few times of nanquan, worked on some chain whip basics and before we knew it, it was 8:30. Umaru and I did our now regular TKD kicks with the target pad, and then 2 sets of 30 sit-ups with a 12lbs medicine ball.

Then during the night I suffered cramps in both of my legs, it was painful and I was too sleepy to realize what was happening for a while, but eventually they subsided enough for me to get back to sleep.