My Wushu Blog

This class was the most intense class I’ve had since I’ve been back. Jenny and I did a little jog for our lunch workout, and since I still don’t jog all the time, I was already sore by the time I got to class. Thats good though, I don’t mind, I feel like I accomplished something big.

Our warmup was brief, James led it and since he had a tooth pulled Monday, he wasn’t going to go all out. I think he forgot all about his pledge to not over do it half way through class, but more on that. We did some sprint relays with a 15lbs medicine ball, frog leaps (TWICE!), regular sprint relays.

I was already on empty by this time, so I was really glad that instead of the normal basics, we worked with leg weights and did 20 kicks for each leg. We did front-stretch, side kick, and outside. James has a pretty impressive side kick on both sides, I’ve got my one and it would be nice if the other leg would tear already. Then we did a lot of jumps and cartwheels, Patti also made up a little combo for everyone to try (that was a lot of fun). After all that I had to sit down, which was cool because it was about 8:50 anyway, it was hard for me to go any more.

James finished off the class with a lot conditioning. We did a couple sets for 50 crunches, some neck exercises, LOTS of push-ups… It was crazy how much he had us do, meanwhile he was all messed up from his tooth getting yanked out. I think he also wanted to pushish everyone just a little for Ben’s disruptive behavior. Both Johnny and Ben LOVE to talk, and last night Ben was yapping away while James was telling everyone what to do (in the nice instructional way). When James called him out on it, Ben kept trying to justify it. Its one of those times where you get angy because someone just lacks a certain amount of social skills. In then end, I think we all payed for it

Second class back (don’t worry, I’ll stop the counter there ), and I felt I had made a lot of progress since last week. Of course no butterfly-twists, but my muscles held up a lot longer and I worked out the entire class.

Kenny led the warm up, and after a quick jog around the room we did sprint relays for a while and then on to stretching. Last week my hip flexors started to spasm and it quickly became painful. That was absent this time around and I got to focus on my very poor drop stance along with every other stretch we do.

Basic kicks and combos was the same as last week, and we seemed to focus more on jumps. Patti gave a lot of individual comments for a lot of people, and it was nice to see they were able to apply it right there. I find that I can only work on one specific thing at a time, like jump higher, rotate more, keep the left leg up, keep the kicking leg straight… but never all at the same time. For me, just foing it over and over again every day is about the only thing that really works.

When people started to do combo’s, Patti asked if I wanted to work on some northern staff basics. So after James woke up from his nap (he fell asleep on the side while sitting down, the new job is tiring him out) he joined me. One nice things is my ‘wushu memory’ hasn’t faded much, I was still able to reproduce what Patti showed us the first time around. We did that for 30 minutes and my shoulders and forearms were pretty sore.

Great class, it was nice to see Kenny and Felicia again (they were not there last week), and Kenny is now off to Orlando for a competition.

At last, after a 6 month break, its nice to be back. Once a week for now, but that will be more than enough.

I was thinking Monday night about how I don’t have that persistent aching feeling, and how walking is just that, walking with out a limp. Today is the end of that; my hamstrings are sore, my hip flexors are sore, my back is sore. All of them in a good way and not in the scary injured way. My flexibility has gone down hill, and going to class once a week will not be sufficient to gain it back. I’ll have to work on that more during the week.

Before class started, James wanted to start off with some boxing. We did that for an exhausting 5 minutes, and tiring as it was it was still a lot of fun. The warmup was simple and I was glad we only jogged for 10 minutes. I can sort of jog for lets say a half an hour on my own, but their pace is faster and when you start throwing in jumps, cart wheels, high knee’s, etc… it really saps what stamina I have. Next was a set of brutal sprints (with a medicine ball), jump rope (150), push-ups (I did 20), squats with a medicine ball and a little hop.

After a quick water break it was on to stretching, then warmup kicks/basics. By this time, my tendons/muscles on the outside of my hips were cramping up, so most of the stretching became difficult and the outside kicks became a little harder. We then ran through all the jumping kicks and that was great. Lynda stressed that I should take a break, and I did after all that, I was pretty happy to get back to it again. I sat out during the forms and watched James and Josh spar. They went at for a while, it was very interesting to watch and very impressive how Josh uses Bagua effectively in a fight. It was a little unbalanced, Josh is slightly taller than me and has about 50lbs on James.

Great class, can’t wait till next Tuesday.

It’s been a looong time since Mark has been in charge of a class, maybe 2005 or so, right before he moved to Shanghai. I had forgotten how relentless he is, even though over the past few years Pierre and I have threatened younger students,

“Oh you think this is tough? Wait till Mark gets back!”

or

“If you don’t stop talking, we’re calling Mark and flying him back here to make you do burpee’s!”

Most people saw him as a mythological boogie-man, like bloody-mary, and if you said his name in front of the bathroom mirror at night and then turn out the lights he’d appear and make you do frog-leaps and V-ups till you died.

What makes his classes so brutal is he’s constantly mixing it up, once you feel you’ve gotten used to the routine he changes it. He’s also a stickler for solid basics and he’ll have us work on something simple for an obscene amount of time.

The class was very challenging, especially for me as it’s been about 2 months since my last class. Even the more athletic folks were getting tired, which didn’t make me feel so bad since I crapped out during sections. We did a lot of front stretch kicks, and I’m pretty disappointed how much flexibility and overall cleanliness I’ve lost. I know once I start back up again it will come back quickly, it was just a reminder for me. I’d like to start working on the simple stuff more often, maybe find a way to work it in at work since the home front is a little busy.

When I had enough I sat down and watched everyone do their sections. Pierre has a cool form from mark that I’d like to pick up when I get back, and everyone else looked their usual kick-ass self. After class we went to Diamo and I got home at a reasonable hour of 12:30 or 1, I cant remember now.

Oh, I highly exaggerated the stuff above about Mark. Pierre and I did joke a lot about threatening the kids with Mark, and I know James knew of Mark’s reputation well before he actually met the guy. He is a very nice guy, not at all scary, but thats because he’s laughing and smiling as you’re on the verge of collapsing.

For me, wushu hasn’t always been kick ass and fun. I’ve gone through periods where I hated going to class, and I either wouldn’t have gone at all had it not been for my strong habitual nature ( I run on auto-pilot on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I just show up to class no matter what) or lately I would have found any work excuse to not go. Somewhere along the line, I stopped being excited about wushu, I stopped dreaming about learning cool styles like bagua, fanzi, longfist, etc…

The first slump was after the 1st or 2nd year. It was at the point where I realized I wouldn’t be as good as I wanted to be. Naive I know, I’m a grown adult and I still wanted to do all the things the Beijing Wushu Team could do. I still have a hard time with a good tornado kick, and I can’t even do an aerial. Then I had my famous accident, and it’s why my friend Jenny at work calls me “Celery Leg”, which pointed me in the direction of Southern Fist.

I’ve never been a fan of Nanquan. I’m still not really into it to be honest. When I was watching wushu clips like mad, I never enjoyed the nanquan clips, I much preferred to look at changquan, bagua, staff, broadsword, straight sword, fanzi, you name it I would watch it. Except nanquan. So after I hurt my leg, Patti had me work on a lot of upper body stuff (cause my leg was messed up), then eventually I worked with Peter and Pierre learning the compulsory nanquan. I felt a little shunned for a while because I wanted to continue to do wushu, but I wasn’t learning the style that I really liked.

That slump lasted until Mark came back to wushu west. He’s not only one of the most exciting people to coach you, but he always has new and interesting ways to make you work harder and laugh at the same time. He also had his own nice take on nanquan, and he taught me a few forms, and we did a few demo’s together

So Mark, Pierre and I had this nice southern group amongst the longfist people. We learned southern broadsword, lots of little techniques, and Mark’s pretty good at showing the application of a move, which I got a lot from. I was motivated again, no more splump.

Then that trecherous bastard moved to China and wont come back

I was able to do okay on my own for a while, Li Neung Miao came by with the current BWT in October of 2005 where I picked up a nice southern staff section that I later expanded into a 1:00 form to compete at CMAT with. I was feeling pretty good at that point, and traveling to China was pretty kick ass. But I was getting frustrated after that because I no longer had the coaching from Mark, or a nanquan person that I require (believe me, I NEED someone to show me what to do). I would try out a few moves I picked up from a clip and Patti would almost be disgusted at it, either it was my interpretation of the move or not it didn’t matter to me. If I wasn’t receiving any coaching support for the style, but instead relying on video’s, why show up? why pay? So I was trying to learn other things from Patti, something she had an interest in.

That is were the current slump has come in, and for the past year I’ve been so unfocused it has made me worse off than when I started wushu. There are a lot of factors involved, work, the depression I got when I came back from China and realizing I’m just a joke at wushu compared to real athletes, the website thing… it all wore away at my excitement for the sport, for coming into class, for really focusing on what I was working on even after class.

I left working on a broadsword set, which I was really starting to enjoy because it had that old school flavor to it. I’ve been out of it for over a month now and I almost feel like I should join the beginners when I get back.

Let’s back it up a bit and go on record for exactly how I got the nickname, and the insane amount of flexibility in my left leg.

I began learning the newer longfist compulsory with Isao. Stephanie was teaching us the first section. I remember it was towards the end of class and I was exhausted and hungry, probably dehydrated too. We got to the part where you do the jumping inside-kick and land into the splits where I faltered. This was before Wushu West had carpets, and that slick hardwood floor was dangerous. We used to do the jumping kick and then SLOOOWLY go down into the splits ( and I couldn’t even stretch that far ), but I was too tired to hold the stance, and I went down full force into the splits with a sick crunching sound. First time I even did the splits, it just wasn’t what I wanted.

It sounded like not just one piece of celery being snapped in half, but a whole bundle. I popped right up and muttered ‘ow ow ow ow ow’ in circles, then excusing myself to the restroom. I didn’t throw up or anything, and I teared up a little and I probably let out a “FUCK” outside. I tried to sit down but those ridiculous bench seats at wushu west are horrible if you happened to pull your hamstring. The worst part is I had to drive myself home from Berkeley to Antioch, try to sleep, and then go into kaiser the next day. I didn’t even get a decent pain killer, I got freaking Advil, and I spent almost two months on my ass. I used to have a nice picture of my leg, where the back of it was all bruised and purple. gross.

That leg is 2x more flexible that the other, it’s crazy. I can hold it out straight, and then lift it so the toe is at the same level as my chest. I almost got head to toe with it last year, and those front stretch kicks with it are pretty nice. Too bad the other leg is so stiff, its odd when one leg can do more than the other. The response I get from Patti when we do basics are “Wow, everyone, see how well Michael can do it!”, and other non wushu people usually say “Jesus christ, what is wrong with your leg! Thats not natural!”

Okay, ham-ish title, and it’s not like it Wushu West is bad now, just me and my motivation.

As I explained before, the first year or so of wushu I was a wushu craving lunatic. I spent a lot of spare time at work searching for clips, which at the time were hosted on furiousg.com and then moved to wushucentral.com. I’m not sure why I don’t watch random wushu clips now, maybe its because youtube has taken all the work out of finding something, but I really take for granted how easy it is today to find any style you want. So I’d watch clips at work, then either go to Wushu West (from Dublin by the way) or head home to practice the basic combos.

Things were pretty exciting, and since October of 2001 I have constantly had sore legs every all week long. I remember the first night of practice Lynda was teaching me the basic combos and she had warned me of two things:

• Drink water, if you are thirsty when you walk in the door, you are already dehydrated
• you WILL BE SORE, soak in hot water.

The next day I could hardly walk up the stairs to my cube farm at Legato, I was smiling the whole way up though. Within the first month I had received my first injury, and it was a fractured elbow. Like ALL of my wushu related injuries, they are never really cause from wushu itself. It’s always during a game, or warm up. This time, it was while we were jogging around the class and my long pant leg had slid underneath my shoe while turning a corner. Like a clown slipping on a banana peel I went down hard, and cracked my forearm bone (i’m not a doctor so I wont pretend like i know it’s called the ulna or something). For the next few weeks Patti had me focus more on stances and kicks, which are still my favorite things to work on.

In the beginning, progress was quick, it was easy to go from not being able to touch your toes to touching them, then the floor, then palms flat on the floor. After the first year or so, I was involved in my first Wushu West open house where I led the beginners in a group form. I cannot recall what its called, but it’s the first real for we start off with, in between the five-stance combo, and the old school compulsory.

It was the first time I had seen the advanced students perform, and Wil’s emce-ing was pretty entertaining I think my favorite comment was right before Colin did his chain whip set:

Normally a 9-section chain whip is used, Collin however, has to use a 7 section

I remember how nervous I was, but I didn’t mess it up and then I got to spend the rest of the time watching everyone else, including Patti. That gave me goosebumps, I had never see a china pro in the flesh.

I’ve always looked forward to demo’s, and while I occasionally slip up here and there, I think we all pull it together as a group and put on a good show. I dread the thought of competing, and a big reason why eventually competed (once, lets point that out, I’m not totally over it) was because of a blog entry Mark had made. He said that since wushu is all about making yourself better, and you should not shy away from doing something because you are afraid of it or you are not good at it. Thats the reason why you SHOULD do it, you can’t always just work on that jumping front kick you are so good at, but work on the high horse stance, or compete if you are afraid too.

One evening Michele was a little frustrated with me, about how I never really say anything. I’m a pretty private person even with my own family, so I don’t talk all that much beyond superficial “how’s the weather?”. Well, since I had this secret obsession with wushu, and I figured if Michele really wanted to know what I was thinking of I’d let her in. I believe she thought it was a little far-fetched, again, we didn’t know people who did martial arts especially adults. So I showed her a bunch of Yuen Wen Qing clips, and the cool Compulsory Longfirst routine on Raffi’s site (with Fakin’ the Funk as the background music). I think I had that form memorized in my head before Patti showed me a year or so later.

I still wasn’t ready to fess up to Michele that this is what I wanted to do. I also wanted to loose more weight, and that was also an excuse for me to put off going to one of the wushu schools. Finally we were on some trip, and we were in some hotel room (we may have been up in Oregon for a wedding) and I think I just sort of blurted out that I wanted to do wushu like I suffered from a strange form of turrets. Again, she was a little surprised, but not all that surprised at this point since I was glued to my monitor watching clips all the time. After that I just had to decide where I wanted to go. There were a few places in the San Jose area, and I worked in Dublin so I figured it was at least feasible to go there after work, but I was drawn to either Cal or Wushu West. The Jet Li pictures on wushuwest.com pretty much sold me .

Michele was a class at LMC where she had to visit a few different colleges, and one of them was UC Berkeley. I took the opportunity to go check out the cal wushu club. I had a hard time finding the place, I had to ask around one administrative office (they didn’t seem to know anything about it) and they eventually pointed me to the gym where they met. No one was there of course, so I picked up some flyer’s and called it a day.

After that week, emailed webmaster@wushuwest.com and asked a few questions like if I could stop by and see a class. I got a reply back from Mike, which I assume now was Mike Chew. I went the next Tuesday after work, making my first trek to Berkeley. Turns out, it was one of those 5th Tuesdays of the month that Patti used to take off, so I sat there in the Finnish Brother Hall for two hours waiting for ANYONE to show up I was a little crushed, but the next day I called the phone number on the website to ask when the next class was. Patti answered, and she was very short and curt in her responses. She explained the 5th week of the month deal, and said I could stop by the next class.

There were a few other people already waiting outside the hall, Bryant and his cousin. They were both talking about The One, Jet’s most recent US movie at the time. I didn’t talk to anyone, I was still nervous about going there, and I was really nervous just GOING to wushu west for the first few years. Serioulsly, I’m such an introvert that it was a big step for me starting wushu at all. I did feel at ease knowing there were other Jet Li fan’s, and maybe they were just as dorky as I am. Finally Patti arrived, and I introduced myself as the person that called. I wasn’t used to how she addressed things, she was very short with answers and she came off a little mean at first. Hey, I’m sheltered, what do you expect. So I sat on the bench seat of the Finnish Hall and watched the beginner’s class warm up, do basics, and work on their forms. Now when I went in there, I still wasn’t sold on the place and I wanted to keep my options open. After seeing that though, I was very excited and I forgot about looking at other places. I stayed till the end, and when I started to get up and leave Patti came over and talked to me a little more. She gave me the paperwork, talked about pricing and the thing with paying for 3 months at a time (and I was very happy with the rational she had for it). I thanked her for her time and she told me to come back at the 1st of the month, which was in two weeks.

During that first year at wushu west, I would practice everything I had learned everyday after work. I was still very shy about it (still? I AM shy about it, I wont show anyone what I’ve learned in wushu), so I would wait till dusk and jog downtown for 10 minutes and find some little corner of a parking lot where I could go over the first basic forms. I would do front stretch kicks on my back patio (which at the time was tiny), I would find almost any reason to do a little jump, a kick, a front slap kick. When no one was present of course. I was like James is now I think it changed when Caralyne was born, and since then I’ve had a lot less time to do that outside of wushu. But when Caralyne was born wushu really helped my sanity, but there was a lot I had to deal with being a parent for the first time. That was probably my biggest peak with wushu, not peak as in how good I am, but where my excitment level was.

Mark’s Wushu Retrospective journal has made me all nostalgic about my own experience with getting in shape, loosing weight, and starting wushu at our beloved Wushu West.

I had gained a lot of weight right after Michele and I got married in August 2000. Well, after high school (1998), I gained 20lbs, but I proceeded to put on more once we tied the knot. You would have thought it was my second full-time job, eating crap.

I never had a problem with weight growing up, I was always in pretty good shape and it was mostly because my Step Dad had a never ending list of chores which included mowing an acre worth of lawns, raking, cutting down dying pine tree’s and disposing of the brush. My Mom was also into eating healthy, so we had a lot of plain food growing up that were appropriately proportioned. So, while i never played sports or exercised on a regular basis growing up, the lifestyle I was offered took care of that. It never occurred to me how quickly I could gain weight.

As soon as I was out of high school, I started to work at Sears. This gave me the exact amount of disposable income I needed to get two large donuts and a quart of chilled WHOLE milk. Every day. Oh on occasion I would mix it up with a Jack in the Box breakfast, but those costs more that $2 so I mostly stuck with the donuts. I did this the entire time I went to Heald (started in September of 1998). Those two places were the only eateries that were close to my house in Oakley that were open that early, and since I’m not a morning person I choose to sleep in that extra 5 minutes it would take to make a decent breakfast. So that’s how I ate on the weekdays (this is where being a creature of habit can kill you), and not to worry, on the weekends I would make my own breakfast of 3 toasted waffles smothered in syrup.

I had quit smoking in 98, so eating was the natural oral fixation I was trying to make up for and it tasted good. Well, two years of that plus a few months of marriage had a taken its toll

I keep those handy, just as a reminder. I was about 240 in those days, and I was totally oblivious to it until I saw the photo’s you see above. I think my waist was around 40 – 42″ as well (in high school I was about 32″, today I’m around 32-34″). So, one day Michele and I ordered an elliptical machine, and a weight lifting station online, for cheap. Once it arrived we assembled both of them in out basement, and we would occasionally go down there and workout for 5 – 10 minutes and then calling it a night. I figured this was good enough, and I mean, it’s better than nothing right? Well, obviously those first months (until June 2001) were very unproductive.

Two things happened, the first was my cousin Michael Abrue came to visit. Growing up, he and his sister Cat would come and spend a few weeks with the family ever few years, and it was always a celebration. My Sister and I loved seeing them, and we always looked forward to them coming out. Since the last time Mike had seen me, I was 160 or 170lbs, pretty scrawny compared to my then present figure. He was a pretty big health nut and he sort of coached me a little, gave me some eating guidelines, and made it seem realistic and even easy for me to cut out little things here and there. One big thing was soda, and I would get a LARGE 32oz cup of fountain soda at lunch every day. Of course eating waffles for breakfast was a big no-no, but also cutting out fatty dressings on sandwiches and salads. From then on I stopped drinking soda, had two egg whites (and thats it) for breakfast and stopped putting mayo on my sandwiches. Oh, it’s also important to know that I also started smoking again after I got married. That also curbs the appetite a little.

The second thing that happened at about the exact same time, was a co-worked asked if I had seen the movie

Fist of Legend. This was probably the most important and crucial moment in my life (okay, maybe meeting Michele was really the first, but this was big). I watched it that night, twice in a row back to back. I then went down to the basement and went past my previous record of 10 whole minutes on the Elliptical to 20. I then came back upstairs to watch all the fight scenes again. Then I did what every computer geek would do, I googled for jet li (found his official site hosted by RT, and reading the handle “narom” for the first time), and then ripped FoL to DivX so I could watch it all the time. Imagine how disappointed I was when I found out Jet Li moved too fast for the DivX codec to properly render

Over the next few days, I started working out every night. Each night I would add one more minute to my time on the Elliptical, and I quickly moved the Elliptical out from the basement to our living room. I was bored, I needed something to entertain me while working out so I decided to watch more Jet Li movies ( then after than, ANY movie ) while working out. I did this everyday for about 60-90 days. I’m not sure, but at one point (before I started Wushu, but now im getting ahead of myself) I was able to last an entire 2 hour movie. This had ballooned my DVD collection from 6 to almost 100. I was getting new movies and every week to keep myself entertained, and I watched a movie EVERY night of the week. I soon started to get compliments from my family and co-workers, people were pretty impressed and surprised that I turned around in a relatively short amount of time. People asked me how I did it, and the weird part is I really enjoyed that attention, and when it stopped a part of me started to get really panicked and anxious. I would wonder if I was getting fat again, and truth be told I’m still pretty touchy about it now.

I do feel very bad for Michele, I never realized then that I was totally ignoring her to fufill my goal of losing weight. She started to stay in the back bedroom by herself, and eating more. It was almost like for every pound I lost, she would put on. I wish then I would have been more active with her and built up something we could have enjoyed together. But that was hard for me to do, I was very driven and had this tunnel vision mindset, and I figured I couldn’t afford other people getting in my way. And Why? What was my goal?

On the Black Mask DVD, one of the “special features” was about Wushu. It didn’t show any footage, it just said that Jet Li grew up on the Beijing Wushu Team. After googling for Wushu, I came across this killer video clips of all the China pro’s (including Patti). Raffi’s site, http://www.beijingwushuteam.com/ was my daily homepage after that. I read the bulleten board every day, read all of his articles, and checked out jetli.com daily. I was in heaven, I knew I wanted to do it. I was so amazed that the human body could preform those feats, with such confidence too. I wanted that, I wanted to do that. Living in Antioch, your options are slim when it came to martial arts, especially if you don’t want to get caught up in a belt/money making scheme. I accepted Berkeley as part of my search scope, and thats where I found both Wushu West, and Cal Wushu.

I remember how sheepish and almost embarrassed I had felt wanting to do martial arts as an adult. Everyone I knew did that thing as a kid, with other kids. There were no adults, and then there was that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer joins a Karate school and it turns out his a giant middle aged adult with little kids. I was afraid of that, and I was also a little shy about being a white guy in a very Asian sport. I know, its stupid and a reverse racist thing, but those were a few things I had to mentally get over. I remember telling Michele that I wanted to do it, and I showed her all the clips I had saved on my computer. I think she was pretty perplexed, and probably hesitant, but I’m very annoying and persistent when I want to do something so she went with it.

After that, it was all about finding a place to learn from.

After CMAT I had felt a little extra bit of motivation, it has dawned on me that this past year I had really digressed in wushu. There has been little focus for me, and work has been more and more demanding so I recognize that as an issue. Mostly though, the majority of ‘coaching’ I have received has been about the website and computer work. What I really need to do is to be less passive about what I want and be a little more persistent.

Tuesday’s class was very light, those of us that were not part of the Olympic ceremony in San Francisco on 4/9 did our own thing on the side. Isao and I have been working together on a broadsword set Patti is teaching us. It started to feel REALLY slow, but then thursday she had up really pickup the pace on it, and it then immediately kicked ass It went from a slooow 1 full section of a form to 1/16 of a section. I can’t wait to continue learning it and building my stamina back up.

Thursday was a lot nicer, more intense and I felt good about the workout. I’ve started to stretch again on my own in the morning, and James and I stretched each other on the wall. After we did that, out basics were so much better. It was nice to hear Patti’s encouragement and overall happiness with our kicks.

I’d like to say that I’ll be working on updating this more, but everything but my spare time has been increasing lately.