My Wushu Blog

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

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

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.

mike Wushu staff, Wushu

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.

mike Wushu Boxing, Spar, Wushu

The Beijing Wushu Team are getting ready for a small performance, so we all stayed to watch. I wasn’t sure if taking photo’s was allowed, but then I noticed Patti was recording it. The only problem with this demo is that our classes have been moved from 9am ( which I originally thought was unbearable ) to 8am ( which literally is hell ). So it’s an early bedtime for all of us.

Li Neung Miao laughing at us for taking his picture

"Tiger" (they say thats his name) doing a neat straight sword set

Wu Di getting ready to do his cool spear set ( which appearently I am unable to capture properly )

Yang Bei Bei's broadsword set ( she's the one who taught some of us the souther broadsword set )

LNM making as many people as deaf as possible

mike Wushu China Trip, Shi Cha Hai, Wushu

It has been a very nice weekend to recover, plus the Beijing Team is back from their competition so Wu Di has been attached to Mark’s hip. Its pretty funny to watch those two. So besides lots of resting up, we’ve gone to a few nice places to eat, went to a VERY large electronic’s “store”

The Fry's of Beijing

Which resembles a large computer show in the US, except all day every day and the store is 5 stories high. After that we went weapon shopping:

Wu Di was translating and giving recommendations

back to eating

The Chinese food here is of course very good, and they have a lot of lamb, so far the best is kabob style with I think a curry spice. Very good.

We also had He Jingde visit us, he retired from the Beijing Team around 2000, now he’s in Las Vegas performing in “Ka”.

Two very talented wushu athletes

mike Wushu China Trip, Shi Cha Hai, 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

Hurray, Beijing!

Shi Cha Hai, a sports institute

The flight from SFO was pretty boring, and long, but I had a very hyper 4 year old sitting in front of me to keep me awake. Her name was Odelia, and it took 5 attempts to get a picture of her since she thought it was a game.

4 hours of peek a boo

I dont think she stopped moving the entire flight, she was constantly peeking over and giggling at me.

I arrived at the school (Shi Cha Hai) around 8pm, and everyone there was pretty happy to see that I showed up. So we went out to eat and then I went to bed.

The room I shared with Mark

Sunday some of us went to the Great Wall, it had been nice and cloudy since I got here, so it was pretty humid and warm but the smog and overcast kept the bright sun to a minimal. I only feel a little crispy.

This is concidered a 'clear day'

I was also amused with this large ant

Big Ant

Patti then took us shopping at a large mall, but I forgot my camera; no pictures available. It was a nice mall but a lot of the stores have strange way of checking you out. First, you tell the sales associate what you want, then they fill out a little form which you give to a cashier ( usually a small distance away). The cashier inspects the form, takes your money, stamps the form (giving you two carbon copies), and then you can go back to the sales associate. Once you show them your reciept they then give you the desired item(s).

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

mike Wushu China Trip, Shi Cha Hai, the great wall, Wushu