My Wushu Blog

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

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

The internet connection here has been down for the last full day, but not much besides training anyways.

It was kind of odd to first walk in the main wushu hall, it felt like I was walking onto a movie set. I’ve watched countless wushu clips of the Beijing team in that same location. Practice was good, we do one morning class (9am – 11:30) everyday, then we alternate an evening (7:30pm – 9 ) and afternoon ( 2:30pm – 5:30 ) every other day. Its grueling, really hot, but at least when we walk outside, its nice and refreshing.

So mostly we practice, eat, sleep, practice, eat sleep… Most of out class went to shopping, Mark, Johnny and I stayed behind to have another class to learn a new southern broadsword set.

Coach Zhang and Patti practicing Pushing Hands

This is where we stay, its like a greenhouse

they're even growing rice

other pictures can be viewed here: http://www.m87-blackhole.org/photos/China+Trip+06/

mike Wushu China Trip, mark, Shi Cha Hai, Wushu