My Wushu Blog

I signed up for Muay Thai at Crosley Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Brentwood. I’ve been eyeing the place for a while now, it seemed to be one of the few well established school in the Antioch/Brentwood area. I was looking specifically for some type of boxing program, and they have both western boxing and kick-boxing.

It also helps that the price is right, I pay about 90 a month for two classes. They have  a nice full schedule too, classes are at 6am, 12pm, and 6pm on most days of the week. I like Mondays and Wednesdays after work, and its really nice that it is on my way home. Commuting to Wushu West had always put a good dent in my wallet, then factor in that I was paying the same price (100 a month) for just ONE night a week. It was hard to choose going somewhere else, but I was priced out of Wushu. Variety is also good.

They have a great curriculum, and this was the first week I was able to make it two nights (I had a terrible flu last week). The first two classes I had were simple, and I worked on my own, where the coach (Juan) would come over every ’round’ and either have me continue what I was working on, or show me something else. He has a great personality, and I’m usually laughing really hard on the inside when he’s showing me something because the way he describes the moves and why you do it is hilarious.

The classes are 1 hour, and there is a buzzer that goes off every three minutes. We normally switch to something else every three minutes, so the classes are very fast and there is little room to catch your breath.

So the other night, Friday, was the first time I partnered up with someone. His name was Mike, and he was very nice, and he punched very VERY hard. It was a great experience for me to hold pads for someone else, as it takes a lot of effort and concentration. whenever James would work with me, he was always the one holding the pads, which now I feel like he really spoiled me. It is something I’m going to have to practice, I’ll have to figure something out.

Right before class was over I felt like I fractured a bone in my foot. I still tend to kick the pads with my feet, which I know is a bad habit. I should be kicking more with my shins, so after an hour my left foot had finally had it. Juan was cool, he said “You okay? Good, lay off your foot and use your knee’s on the pad”. Ha, I like him, resting is for after class.

So, my foot is a little bruised now, and I iced it for a while when I got home. I should be good to go by Monday.

mike Wushu

Patti called me on Friday, and invited me to come Sunday for a workout and food. This has always been a nice little tradition at Wushu West, Patti likes to do this around the holidays.

I was pretty excited, I haven’t been to wushu since June/July, when they all went to China for the summer. I have sort of enjoyed my free Tuesday and Thursday nights, and so has Caralyne. A month or so ago she told me she was really glad that I didn’t go to wushu anymore. That bummed me out a little. Wushu is something I have enjoyed for the last 8+ years, and all of Caralyne’s life I’ve been there two nights out of the week. So, she has the right to want me around, and I should at the same time be allowed to continue one of my big passions in life.

So, I got her ready Sunday morning and took her with me, we both went as students

She was pretty excited, and I was very proud that she not only jogged with all of us in the beginning, but she fully participated in the whole class with the other kids. Sunday classes are great for this, since its one class for all levels. The also let me get a great workout, and after class we ate some delicious Chineses food (and Kringle, but it wasn’t that popular…), then she ran around and played tag for an hour while I talked with Pierre, James, Miles and all the other people there.

I’ve missed that place, and I’ve missed the killer workout only Wushu West can give you. I feel I’m in pretty good shape, yet its no where near the kind of “Wushu Shape” that you need to be in to survive a whole class. Today was pretty light, but I did manage to push myself hard enough to destroy my right leg. All the kicking and jumping really seized it up.

Caralyne excited about her first class

Basics. Miles was working on a butterfly kick.

Caralyne taking a break and getting some water. Good idea!

Figuring out what to do next

Weapons! This is James doing chain-whip

We had a good time, Patti said we could come together on Sundays. I’m going to think about it, paying for the two of us to go might be hard, but at least we get to do something together in the process.

James was very excited to see me, so he told me a bunch of different ways I could work wushu back in my schedule. Pierre offered his own special “Pierre brand” of advice on the subject of payments. We’ll see, today was a great class, I had a great attitude while training and I was very happy that I could do frog leaps, and look over to see Caralyne kicking some target pads. James had said that he’s been leading the classes with a heavy focus on basics and leg strengthening, so he tried to woo me even more with promises of brutal leg conditioning. I can believe it, we did a awesome ab workout at the end (synchronized situps, then synchronized double trunk twisters).

We’ll see.

mike Wushu Christmas, conditioning, Wushu

Wow, what an awesome class!

It was nice and warm tonight, so it was really easy to get warmed up and stretch well. That was a bonus though, there were a few really killer parts to tonights class:

• We had some nice and quick basics
• Jumps! which I have not done in a while
• James taught me part of the Baji set he learned
• I had to change my shirt twice, and that means I got a good workout
• James also showed me some interesting weight lifting routines

I had commented to James that I’d still like to learn the Baji set he picked up in China, so when it was time for the class to break off into sections (long weapons tonight), he pulled me over and wanted to go over it. BUT, first thing is first, I wanted to run it by Patti, she is after all our coach and it wouldn’t have felt right not to. She was cool with it, and at the end of the class was happy that I asked James to work on that

So, I worked on a small part of it a bit, and for now, I think I have the general feel for it. Once I get back from the cruise I’ll pick up more and also go over the rough spots. Thankfully, I have footage of the form so I can also refer to that.

After that I did some weights with James, and then we did a bunch of ab work, 100 crunches, 10 push-ups, 15 “twister” crunches, 10 more pushups, somewhere I passed out, more I think I did something else like a pushup, then we finished up.

Too bad I’ll be on a cruise for effectively two weeks, I’d really like to continue off of this momentum.

mike Wushu Ba ji Quan, James, weights

Tonight was Mark’s last class before he leaves for Idaho for a month. Last week, he joked that he wanted everyone to still be recovering when he gets back in June… He tried his best to make that happen, and I think Patti bailed us out in the end

We got some time to warm up for a few minutes, I think he wanted us ready by 7:20, so we jogged around for a bit and did some light stretching. Mark went around to assist us, which always helps out, but its a tad painful. Ahh good ol’ pain, its such a gift. Then I think Mark rubbed his hands together, muttered “Let us begin…” and cackled…

Tonight was all about basics, so our first drill was simple: keep your arms out straight, palms flat, and do a series or 20 front stretch kicks. The trick was, is we would do a round of kicks, using a bit of our momentum from the previous kick, to really get it up there – head to toe if you can. The alternating set was to NOT use the momentum from the previous kick. So you would kick, and stop immediately on the way down, wait, and do it again. Doing it this was is a lot more difficult, and its great because it really strengthens your leg muscles more, and you end up working your core more as well. Between those, and I think we did around 100 kicks, we still had to keep our arms up. I’m happy to say I never wussed out and took a break, but as of Saturday, days later, I can still feel it in my forearms and shoulders.

The next drill was normal front stretch kicks, and we were broken up in the three typical groups. Simple, but the trick this time was Mark wanted all of us to synchronize our kicks. Since we have a few people that always like to march to their own drum, this can take a while to get right So its always hilarious when people are getting frustrated after the 5th or 6th try and still hearing Mark say “Almost, but not quite, again.” Felicia is yelling at people, Eli is ready to quit, everyone is throwing in their two cents on who should follow who and who needs to slow down Its funny I tell ya.

This lasted an hour, and I think Mark wanted to work on more basic stance work but Patti suggested we all work on weapons. This was good, because my quads felt like they were pulled off, they were so exhausted that I think they detached themselves and walked off, giving me the finger on the way out.

Mark had us alternate between a group of long weapons (which I was in, staff), and then a group of short weapons (straight sword/broadsword). We did basic stuff like figure 8’s and reverse flowers for a full minute, switching out groups. After doing that for a while, Mark had Johnny and myself work on some nangun basics. Now, most of what I’ve learned has been from one seminar 4 or so years ago when the Beijing Wushu Team came out. I’ve practiced this one form from video clips over and over again, and when Mark worked with me on some of the basic moves, it was like learning it all over again. It really breathes new life into things when you get to correct the simple moves. I’ll have to make sure I get more from him in June.

After class, we went to Diamo’s to eat, and I stayed until midnight we had a lot of fun, and some good conversations.

mike Wushu

Saturday was the 17th annual Cal Martial Arts Tournament, at Cal Berkeley. For the 4rd year in a row I went, and as the last three years I was solely a spectator. I took some footage, and snapped a few pictures, but I wasn’t into staying from 8am till 11pm running around to each ring trying to film everyone. My experience with that last year solidified the idea that no matter what, someone (usually more than one too) will be unhappy with what you’ve worked hard to do, and I wasn’t interested in repeating that thankless job. You know, things like “You got my score wrong” (I didn’t), “be sure to spell my name right” (that’s hard to do with a resource like Facebook), and “how come you didn’t get X form?”. So, I enjoyed just watching and hanging out with the usual suspects.

Collin "smiling", poor kid...

Normally, I take BART to Berkeley with an event like this. This year I decided to drive, for a few reasons:

• Taking BART turns a 35 minute drive to a 80-95 minute commute (I normally miss the first train during the transfer)
• BART doesn’t operate all night, and the last few years I’ve had to rush out of CMAT to catch one of the last trains
• BART is still expensive to me

So I ended up parking on Hearst, right next to Wushu West, and walked a good 30 minutes to Cal. I enjoyed it, it was a very peaceful walk, and I enjoyed the mild exercise. The extra bonus is I didn’t have to pay for parking.

I walked in just in time to talk with Connor and his parents (it was about 3:40pm, and he was done for the day) and I unfortunately already missed the Nandu (“difficulty”, all the flashy stuff) division. Chase got a Bronze though, good job. For the first few hours, things were pretty uneventful and it wasn’t until 8pm or so when the advanced divisions went on when things started to pick up again. It was sort of odd not to have Collin and Shahaub compete this year, and it seemed that the entire overall quality of competitors was lower than previous years. Also, there were not as many people from China, you know, the ringers, to completely destroy everyone else. Still, there were some good people, and Anton was very good (he is also new to wushu, which makes it even crazier).

Lynda, Patti and Mark. Mark is covering up his mysterious hair cut

The entire competition lasted till around 11pm. There was a young girl who must have competed in almost 6 or 7 divisions. She was the last female competitor and she did a very good job:

crazy girl in mid aerial

After it was over, I contemplated going over to Marks to watch videos and hang out with everyone, but man it was late, and I had to walk back to my truck. I was also getting a little worried that I may have been towed I’ve been towed away in the neighborhood before, and even though I asked the person who lived there if it was okay I still felt very uneasy. With that, I made it back to my truck, munching on a free veggie sandwich (it was from the judges lunchroom, they had a bunch left over). The evening was very nice, it was cool and quiet. I made it home at exactly 12am.

Collin judging, why so judge-y Collin?

Stephanie Lim and Anton Alexsiev(sp?)

Wong Wei and Shahaub judging two separate events

Now they are waving at us (Mark and I moved to the other side of the staduim)

Those are all the photos (that are worth showing, most of them didn’t come out). I’ll probably upload some of the footage I took to the Wushu West You Tube account later. Or I’ll give it to Mark and let him decide what he wants up there or not.

mike Wushu CMAT, Collin, mark, Pierre, Shahuab

Ip Man

It’s long overdue, but Mark, Shahaub and I finally got together for a movie. All three of us are movie geeks. Mark was part of the industry with Jet Li and Rotten Tomatoes, Shahaub is in film school right now (and posted a few demo reels, like this one, on vimeo.com), and I like to watch them and then write about what I watch. Our conversations immediately started off with George Lucas movies,  Arrested Development, and then oddly to my fear of Bees and Black Widows. How did we get there?

I figured since they were coming out (of the closet) from Berkeley, I’d prepare lunch for them. We had DELICIOUS cheese steak sandwiches, baked chicken (which Mark provided), and a big salad with Avocado. One thing with those two, is I don’t have to worry about pickyness or food allergies. They will eat anything, and everything on the table

The movie itself was pretty awesome, there are a lot of great fight scenes, and they all prompted Shahaub to imitate the Wing Chun style:

Despide his fierceness, Mark said it felt like a massage.

as well as trying to stand up from a kneeling position, using the strength of his feet (as in the movie):

ready?

and UP...

and back down, nice try Shabi

The movie is based on Grandmaster Ip Man (or Yip Man), who was most notable for teaching Bruce Lee Wing Chun. I’m sure there are some artistic liberties taken to make a more entertaining movie, the back story was still very interesting. After the movie, we went though a bunch of wushu clips that I had, then some on youtube, and then squeezed an episode of Arrested Development in (The “Nelly” episode, oh it feels so good to talk like this!). When Michele, Caralyne and Owen came back home, Caralyne had a lot of fun shooting all three of us. his fueled the inner child in Shahaub, and made him question why he doesn’t own Nerf weaponry. We know why, its because no one would be safe, and every crotch in a half mile radius would require medical attention. After a few rounds of destroying each other, Mark and Shahaub left to meet Chase and his family for dinner.

mike Movies, Wushu Home Theater, mark, Shahuab

I’ve gone from using Movable Type -> Roller Weblog -> Wordpress over the past 3 years. I’ve missed converting a few entries so today I went through my old MT blog (which is buried on m87-blackhole.org that I even forgot about it). So below are links to my china trip in 2006, which I still reminisce about.

• China Trip – Arrival and Settling In
• China Trip – Day one and two
• China Trip – Day three and four
• China Trip – Day five through eight
• Beijing Team Demo

mike Wushu

I didn’t know, but this class marked Mark’s 14th year wushu anniversary. Thats awesome, he remembers the exact day, time and the fact that it was partially cloudy outside. Sheesh, I remember mine was around October 2001, around the time The One was released in theatres, not the exact time and day though. With that, congrats Mark!

The rule for showing up late is that you have to do 20 burpee’s. Burpee’s are not a cute package of seeds to start your own watermelon patch, burpee’s are the worst thing you can subject yourself to do. 10 is enough for me, 20 is impossible, and 30, which is the NEW requirement for showing up late, is a new state of exhaustion. I can’t wait till next week, I almost want to show up late and try 40. A burpee is a simple exercise, you start off standing, you jump straight up in the air (clapping your hands above you head), immediately fall into a squat/balled-up position on the floor, then your jut your legs out and do a push up and pop back up to a standing position. That, is just ONE burpee.

I was very warmed up after those, and I did some stretching real quick and joined the lines for basics. We did a LOT of jumping front kicks, and front stretch kicks. It was really nice to really focus on those.

When we split off into groups, I stuck it out and did 8 sections in a row, then my entire form twice. Of course, my entire form is about half of a real one, that is why I went twice. I think I wanted to die right after that, so I parked my self on the stage next to Mark and enjoyed his new nick-names for a few of the students, like “hand-eyes” which sounds like a cool nickname when said in Chinese.

Once all three groups finished, which was around 9:10pm, we did about 20 minutes or conditioning. First it was sprint relays, which then become frog leap relays, then duck walk relays, then sprinting again… After that, we did 30 sit ups, 30 push ups, and 30 “supermans”, which after my lunchtime workout with Jenny of just core exercises was difficult to complete. Finally, we ended with a set of horse-stances, and Mark was nice enough to push a few of us into a more “proper” stance, which felt like someone just ripped my legs out of their sockets. So today, I feel fantastic, and I really like walking up 3 flights of stairs a few times a day after a class like this. It reminds me of when I first started Wushu and I thought “this shouldn’t last forever, I’ll get used to this soon…”

mike Wushu burpees, frog leaps, Wushu

Another awesome class of basics with Mark.

I like the basic wushu movements now more than ever, for two reasons.

1. I’m so out of it now, I can’t remember an entire form, so its all I can do.
2. If you can do basics well, then all of the rest comes a lot easier. Its something we should always work on.

What I also like are little combination, you know, not a full section, but just a short string of punches, kicks, and stances. I’ve always been very self-conscious about my ability to pick up new forms and movements, where I’ve seen people (Mark for example) learn a new form in 1 hour and repeat it. I can’t, and the few times I’ve tried my brain and body become so exhausted I probably couldn’t remember my own name, let along a series of complex movement with a fighting application. So, little combo’s work for me, it lets me work on my muscle memory, and it doesn’t burn me out.

I’m just very happy that while Mark is back teaching, we’ll have to oppertunity to work on that stuff on a more regular basis.

I help up pretty good tonight, and I got though all the jumps too, and I sure miss doing all of those. Once Mark asked people to break into groups, Patti asked if I wanted to box with her and James. Well of course!

James alternated between the two of us, going through some simple drills and then “sprints”, which tired both of us out. Patti joked around and said she liked how good I looked in the pink gloves. Look… those gloves stick out like a sore thumb in the bin, and I couldn’t find any other 12oz gloves. I should bring mine from home when I come on Thursdays, cause they’re super manly! They have curse words on them, and their all black, shit, they even have chest hair on them! And Tattoo’s! Yeah, they’d make those pink gloves squeel and run away… but they would totally be intrigued cause they are so bad ass.

Okay, enough of that. We did that until 9 or so. It may not be obvious, but both the trainer (James) and the participant (Me) get a great workout, its really hard holding those target pads and time everything. James is always a great sport with me.

When it was about 9:15 I had to cut out. Mark was still drilling everyone pretty hard (CMAT is coming up again) so I said goodnight and came home to blog, and eat a potato!

mike Wushu Boxing, mark, Wushu

Mark was back, and when I walked in it was obvious that this is where he belongs

Its always one of my favorite scenes to walk in on, and its because I enjoy the immense pain of simple leg conditioning. Mark is casually leaning on a staff, behind a line of the beginner students, calmly calling out

“horse stance…” (pause 30 seconds)

“bow stance…” (pause again for 30 seconds)

“and again…”

over and over,  I can see the look on the kid’s faces and its comical. Their legs are all super wobbly, they are sweating, crying, gasping in pain. I also know that he’ll do the same thing to us. This is just what Mark is known for, he’s brutally consistent with conditioning.

Anyway, class began shortly after I arrive, I got in a few minutes to greet Mark with a big hug and catch up before he taught the advanced class. Durning warm-ups, he asked me how long its been since my last class, and that he’d push me but also told me not to throw up.

For the record, I’ve never thrown up. I’ve had the sensation I think twice, back in 2006, March I think, and it was after a LOT of sprint relays with frog leaps mixed in.

We jogged around for a few minutes, very ligh warm up, and then we stretched. In some of the recent classes, I’ve felt I was not stretching enough, they’ve been pretty quick. I probably notice it now more than others because I only come once a week, and I don’t stretch nearly as much as I did or should. This time it was pretty lengthy, and we worked all different angles of the legs.

Next was basics, Mark made sure we were all in sync with each others kicks. It makes us look like professionals, but it ups the difficulty. It’s hard to keep up with everyone, I’m not as fast as I have been so I was really struggling. Its a reminder that I should continue to push my basics, and not slack off and go at a slower pace. Besides kicks, he had us work on short little long-fist combo’s. I actually felt okay with all of them, and they were a good refresher.

Once it got close to 8pm, we split off into groups to work on sections. I haven’t worked on a form in MONTHS, so I decided to work on southern staff. With maybe two sections out of an entire form, I don’t have much to work with, but I worked on it over and over again. I had felt pretty good towards the end of it, so not to shabby after not doing nangun for an entire year.

Finally, the class ended with the same leg conditioning I walked in on. Very nice, I haven’t had my legs that sore in a LOONG time (saturday I was still very sore and stiff). We even did some burpee’s (BOO! HISS!), 20, and some ab work with the medicine ball.

Yup, as soon as Mark gets back from his HK trip, it’s going to be great to have this become the class standard. Plus, with him staying for 2 months, I’m sure James, Pierre and I can steal his Visa, kidnap his family, and find all sorts of things to keep him around.

mike Wushu conditioning, mark, staff, Wushu