My Wushu Blog

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.

Class has been a little laid back for me, which is alright, I haven’t been working as hard as everyone else so it’s not like I can even bust out a section of a form right now. It is a little hard to go to class when everyone is so fired up and is at their peak. Patti is still giving me new moves here and there for the broadsword form, and James said she really wants to give us (those of us who are just learning dao) a really good old school wushu dao form, which is every cool for me. I really like the older flavor that Patti’s generation had, so being able to work on that would be sweet.

Anyway, everyone looks good, and i think Wushu West will have about 12 or so people competing at CMAT. Yup, WW is going to clean up I’ll be there to record as much as I can. It’s too bad Caralyne isn’t old enough to sit down all day and watch wushu I mean, I could drag here there for an hour maybe but then she’d want to do something else, so I’m bummed I wont be with here at all Saturday. Soon though.

Good class tonight.

I did manage to injure my calf when we did our round of sprints, oh but first I just wanted to say how cool it was to get a nice warm welcome from everyone

I barely made it all the way through the door and I see Shahaub, James, Pierre, Lynda… pretty much the whole gang, and in unison (almost, its more dramatic if it seems they really were in unison) exclaim “HEY! Mike!”. It warmed my attention craving heart

Anyway, we jogged outside for a bit (two times around, and I wasn’t dying! when we first started that I would only go around once) and then we did 4 sets of sprints down the street. This is about where I pull something in my right calf, I should have stretched more before doing those sprints. It was alright until 8:30 or so, I made it through basic kicks and jumps. When everyone else did sections on the carpet I went on the stage to work through the broadsword set Patti show Isao and myself. Eventually I put some red tiger balm on my leg… and that was a big mistake. I made sure to wash my hands twice after I applied it to my leg, because who wants to get that somewhere it shouldn’t right?. Well at some point I must have touched it, or it was still stuck in my nail bed, because on the way home I grabbed a handful of almonds, popped them in my mouth and after a few chews I noticed it tasted funny… then really REALLY bad… then a little hot, like a chemical burn

Lets just say that stuff tastes very bad. I had very little water left over too, so I had to live with that taste until I got home and made something else to eat. I made sure to wash my hands again, and only use my left hand to eat

Just a warning, I haven’t been receiving the comments people leave on AnD. So sorry if it seems like I was ignoring everyone Since most people are getting ready of either collegiate’s or CMAT, class for Isao, John, and myself worked out a little different. We had a good warmup. I think it is more exhausting when we not only jog around class, but include all sorts of different movements. Somersaults, cartwheels, high-knees, etc… seem to get me warmer all over, but I also get tired out quicker.

After that we immediately did 2 sets of 8 sprints. Very VERY hard for me
So it was about… 7:30 – 7:45 and Patti pulled Isao and myself aside to learn a new broadsword move. Now besides what Linda showed us for the recent demo’s I’ve never done a northern dao set. So it’s all pretty new to me, but I think I’m picking it up well, actually pretty quick considering my track record. We practised that non-stop until the end of class, where she made up another 4 moves for us to add on. Very neat, and it’s fun to watch her make something up and refine it.

After class I went over to her house to do some computer work, and I got a cd with some pictures and footage from the San Rafael demo. I have a little page here this is incomplete:

http://www.wushuwest.com/2008-new-year-demos/
I decided it was way easier for me to just do all that stuff on one page instead of a separate page for each one. That way I don’t have be so wordy. It’s incredibly draining for me to write that sort of marketing fluff. Anyway, I’ll be working on that along with the laundry list of computer repairs and additional website stuff. I’m not sure I come to wushu west as a wushu person, but more of the tech support guy that occasionally gets to do wushu.

Alright, so since the last update we started ramping up for the three performances. I was only able to make it to one of them, and I’ll be putting what we have on the site soon, and I’ll also post a video on youtube. Classes have been going over really well, we’ve kept up the jogging and circuit training as part of the warm-up. My calves right now are killing me from Tuesdays class I’ve also been better about lifting weights at home again. It’s been three weeks now, and it’s not like I feel huge or anything, but I do feel better mentally.

Work has still been very busy and intense, but I got two super kick ass updates from my boss and that makes me feel a lot better about all of it. Actually, about most of the last 3 years I still want to think I’ll be able to continue wushu, have a second kid, and continue to work as hard as I have at work.
Tuesday Patti had me work on some dao basics, I think she’ll teach Isao and myself a form which is awesome in my opinion. After class Tuesday, Shahaub, Felicia, Melvin and I went out for ice cream. It was delicious.

I had to drag myself in to class last night. I was exhausted from work, recovering from a cold, and I was in a sour mood from work itself. It’s a scary thought, but I may end up being a dinosaur at my current work. There is a large push to “one platform”, and while that USUALLY means the desktop it can easily leak to the server room. Anyway, things are crappy right now.

Patti jogged with us, and we did it for about 25 minutes. That is so far the longest we’ve gone, and towards the end she was pushing us to run 3 faster laps, then do cartwheels and summer-salts (however that is spelled). Then we did the circuit training ( horse-stance, situps with the medicine ball, and jump rope). Finally after all that we did some nice stretching. I must have looked pretty bad because Patti came over to me and asked if I was alright, if I had food and water, and urged me to take a break. I never really took a break, but I did change my shirt twice, and that was after the class sort of winded down. A group of the class will do a performance this Friday, those of us who cannot make it did our own thing. So I did basic until about 8:30, then I went on the stage to work on our group broadsword set.

After class we went to Diamo, and that was a lot of fun. I stayed till almost 11pm, which was much longer than I wanted too, but it’s just so damn fun hanging out with everyone. Shahaub offered to be my “speed coach”, basically if I commit to it he’ll make sure to push me to go faster and faster. Thats a big problem for me, I never seem to put real speed into things.

I didn’t fall asleep monday night until 3am the next morning. I really messed up my sleeping schedule over the long 3 day weekend ( had a lot of fun though ), and I really thought I could quickly recover and not miss a class. I’m really bummed that I wasn’t able to go, and now I’m feeling a cold coming on so that is just adding to things.

So I guarded the couch last night, watched Sanjuro until it was time to go to bed at a reasonable hour to wake up early enough to catch a early meeting that was cancelled anyway

We have been consistent with jogging FOREVER in the beginning of class, and its actually starting to feel a little better. I also made myself pick up the jump rope along side Pierre and James, and this was right before we did a few rounds of horse-stance, sit-ups, and jump rope. I got warmed up really quick , felt really good too.

Shahaub joined us, and I’m going to assume he’ll continue to join us again ( at least for Thursday ). I didn’t recognise him at first, with the goatee and all. He now looks a little more menacing.

Anyway, we did some basic kicks, but doubled the amount. lately, we have done just one line of each kick, but tonight we did too and a pretty fast pace. It was pretty challenging and I was glad we then switched to a simple longfist combo.

Our review of the group broadsword set went over well, and I think we are improving. Patti also went over who was going to do what at the up coming performance. Feb 9th, Saturday evening in Marin I think, for Chinese New Year. I’ll be doing a couple nanquan sections, and I should start figuring out what I’m going to do.

It has been a nice holiday break, but it was time to go back and get a good workout. I knew it would be tough, I had done some light exercising over the holiday but its just never good enough. We started out jogging for 15 minutes or so, at least that’s what it seemed like, and it was brutal (for me). I did make it the entire time, I wasn’t able to run as fast as Pierre or others ( I did get lapped) but I didn’t stop and that was an achievement in itself. After a little break I did feel pretty good, and we then did a little circuit training ( again, 3 groups, each doing a different exercise for 40 seconds ). One round was good, and I felt with that particular set I could have done a couple more rounds.

We then did a nice round of horse stance, balancing, side kicks, and then stretching. The previous routine felt like a great transition into stretching. It worked and stretched out the legs just a little so all our passive stretching wasn’t so sudden and painful.

Basics were good, we ran through them pretty quick and covered a lot. I’d still like to work on getting an aerial in the next few months. After that I worked on the group broadsword set, Umaru was getting pretty discouraged about the set and some of the things that have changed, while I understand I think the only real solution is to practise and then ask for more clarification. Oh and practise, yeah, do that and it will work out.

So class was great up until Cary said “What’s Half Life? Episode 2? Thats lame, I got Halo episode 3!!1!”. Keep in mind this is while he butted in a conversation Isao and I were having about episode 2 and its merits. It’s console players like him that are the reason why games are watered down.

Oh, on another note, I updated the wushu west website. I added a page for the 2007 china trip and replaced the photo gallery. The photo gallery could look nicer, but it’s been difficult getting it to behave exactly how i want it to. The china page took forever because it was entrusted to Cary to throw down some verbage and cobble some pictures together. six months later I was still getting grief from patti and I had to do it. Anyway, thought i should pimp that out and you know, let the google search bots know the site is still being updated.

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.