Lots of conditioning tonight. We jogged around for what seemed like 20 minutes, I was pretty exhausted after that but then we did some circuit training. Three separate groups, one did horse-stance, another did vertical jumps, and the last group did jump rope. We did 40 seconds or whatever group were we in, then we’d switch to the next group. We did this twice, and two times doesn’t seem like a whole lot. Let me tell you, IT WAS.
After that intensive warm up, we stretched. I think we did it too long because when I got back up, I was frozen stiff. It was really cold last night, and after that intense warm up and loosing the heat I almost gave up. I didn’t think I had the energy to get that loose again and I didn’t want to risk getting hurt. I stuck it out though and it was alright, but we didn’t do any crazy sections or anything.
After basics, I worked on the group dao set we will do on Feb 3. Linda is making it up so she showed Umaru and myself a good part of it. It’s the first time I’ve worked with a broadsword, thankfully southern broadsword has a lit or similar moves. I think I have the jist of it, and its kinda cool to do something new. We did that for 40 minutes or so, my forearms got a great workout.
After class James showed me the basics of holding target pads, and then we switched and he show me some basic boxing techniques. It was pretty fun, and a good upper body workout. I’d like to work on it a little this weekend, just to keep it fresh in my head.
mike Wushu
I’ve had the misfortune of missing thursday classes lately. I usually have a lot of crap on thursdays, and I missed last thursday because… because… I didn’t want to drive in the rain. I took the day off for Michele’s ultrasound ( we are having another girl! ), and after running all the errands and getting back home around 5pm I decided to just stay home and make sugar cookies for Caralyne’s school.
Tonight was good, we jogged for a while, did a couple rounds of high-knee’s, stretched, and then some basics. My right leg is still really stiff and now sore, so I’ve started (today at least) stretching in the morning. I plan to keep this up again like I did last year, and if I can keep up with it I should have some flexibility in my right leg again.
Basics and jumps were good, I did however move to the back of the line. My back was still a little tight and I wasn’t as fast as everyone else. Thats pretty normal though, I’m just not a fast person. I think I did reasonably well with my right let, most of my jumps feel real off now though. I haven’t been working on them consistently and this is becoming a common theme with my training. Nothing feels like it has the appropriate amount of structure or repetitiveness that it should for the amount I am able to train. Two days a week is not a lot really, so if I don’t work on jumping for one of those two days, its harder to play catch-up on a day that we do work on it. Same with my forms, tonight I worked on the nandao set yang bei bei showed us in China and it was painful. Patti seemed pretty disappointed, but I haven’t worked in it in about a year now. She wants to change it up and thats okay with me, Mark was cool enough to send me a few clips for both nangun and nandao. Slow clips too 
We ended with some conditioning, abs work, I did two sets of 50 leg lifts.
mike Wushu
Western movies were never really my thing, I’ve never watched a John Wayne movie and the entire ‘cowboys and indians’ thing never caught my attention. 3:10 to Yuma got a lot of attention, and with Christian Bale in it I figured it would be hard to go wrong.
It was kick ass and it made michele leak a few tears towards the end. Christian Bale always pulls of the normal person doing normal things role really well, I mean even though he can pull off Batman with ease, he also does the non-superhero thing. Russell Crow plays a good bastard
mike Movies