Don't bite off.....

I recently hit a reminder of what not to do in your training. I set a goal to do 10,000 kicks that shouldn't be all that hard considering I gave myself a whole month to do it. In all honesty I am barely a 1/4 way there. All these kicks take up a lot of time at the moment and steal from other parts of my training that I need to work on. Weapon forms, hand forms, techniques, etc. Things that I am way behind on like Loa Gar and 5 personal techniques. Also personal goals should take a back seat to the I Ho Chuan requirements, another recognized misdirection. My work schedule is not so time forgiving right now. 1 hour plus each way and 10 hours work doesn't leave much time, but it is manageable. If I stay away from the extreme training mentality and work a manageable and consistent rate instead of something that looks like a heart rate monitor short circuiting! I will be back where I started at the beginning of the year mentally and not lose focus and end up feeling like a failure. Not that I am there, but I have been. Therefore I recognize the pattern and know first hand how this can cripple your morale and focus and install stress. How easy it becomes to lose direction due to extremes. So I need to stomp old habits and get back to positive and progressive focus. I have a lot of trouble with routines so going off track of a fragile one that was starting to become a solid base sucked. It was my own doing but I caught it in time. Keeping in mind the past is the past and this is my journey and the march must continue. So primarily I will follow the I Ho Chuan requirements and school curriculumn first hand and practice quality over quantity instead of the other way around. I will go back 15 mins. meditation, stating 10 things I am grateful for, 1 rep of Qi Gung, 75 p/u and 75 ab exercises before I leave the house. The remainder of training can happen through out the day as time permits. Short term goals must still be a part of the plan but more manageable numbers. I can always raise the bar as my training quality and endurance matures. Training in Kung Fu happily and mindfully becomes more ingrained and more solidified. Training to the absolute extremes with no heart or passion will lead to lousy Kung Fu and failure of this challenge. Maybe I'm misguided and not getting it, or maybe something has finally penetrated my thick stubborn ass skull and this will continue to be my best year ever. See you at the kwoon.

Shotgun Post

In other words scattered thoughts.

As far as my Kung Fu is going, it's going slow, but it's moving. I'm really excited about this year. I'm really looking forward to grading and probably have the most positive outlook I've ever had. The year of the horse will be one of awesomeness to it's purest form. Everything in all aspects feels right. I just need to get my ass in gear. Less yak, more smack.

My goal of 10,000 kicks this month has taken a beating due to me being sick for almost two weeks. This isn't an whine, just a fact. One of our teammates has had a far worse experience than my little virus couldn't carry water for. That, and this teammate is tough and the engagement never left. Awesome example. So no cry babies here. Nonetheless, I feel a lot better now and will continue to try to achieve this goal. The biggest detrimental factor at the present moment is flexibility. I have a major imbalance of kicks to stretching ratio. It's takes less time to throw an abundance of kicks, than it does to stretch for the proper amount of time. The math is obvious and the lack of balanced discipline is prevalent regarding the issue. The shrinking of the muscle as it develops, and me not stretching properly, is causing me to throw myself continuously off center as I try to raise my kicks. As we all know, the more you work a muscle, the more it develops. That in turn also causes the muscle to shrink, which reduces flexibility, which requires a disciplined and committed stretching regime.
  Although my kicks aren't high, my crane stances are getting higher which is the cornerstone to all kicks and a stable center. So this is a good thing.

Weapon forms are due to be demo ready by May 15. I'll be ready for this. I'm really pumped about the Long Axe. (Thanks Sifu Freitag, for your help.) I did have some more techniques to show the class last Friday, but for some reason I get completely messed up in front of the I Ho Chaun and lost my train of thought. No sequence of form will do that. Oh well, you'll see soon enough. One thing that I am really working on is to differentiate stance transitions and sequences from learnt forms.  I have used sequences from some of our school forms when creating my personal weapon form. As a result it has completely messed me up when asked to do the form I have pirated from. Not cool.

One last thought is this. Anyone that is a student, and especially a I Ho Chuan member: COME TO A SAN SHOU CLASS! You have no idea what your missing. If you are really passionate about yourself and your Kung Fu, and you wish to look into the depths of it all, join this class! I Ho Chuan members, get in your rounds! You`re already there, what`s another hour! See you at the Kwoon!

Achieving Version 1.0

So I'm pretty excited about the weapon I chose this year. I remember being over at the weapon rack and looking over all the fun just sitting there and all saying "pick me!' and Then Sifu Freitag pulled the two short handled battle axes and I thought, these are pretty cool. It would be a two handed weapon so I could probably put together something from some of the other stuff I have been working on. Then Sifu said, "Or there is this one"  and that was it. Soon as I grabbed it and looked over it for a few seconds an incredible feeling came over me. I felt like I had just won the weapon lottery, it was love at first site. I still get pretty excited just looking at it. I'm not sure of the exact name, so I call it MINE.
 During class a lot of ideas poured in and that just reinforced my confidence to begin training with this weapon. I have been working on some techniques with each part of this weapon and I do have some that I think will be effective and I will use in the form. I'm trying to mesh my stances now to create a flow and not having much luck. There is a few kicks involved as well. The issue I have right now is I don't know this weapon completely. I haven't used it enough to trust it. I don't have the room to really swing it around and see how it handles at top speed, balance points, and which stances to use. And get this, apparently people do not like a person swinging around a almost 6 ft, shiny, pointy, spearheaded, axe from hell, in the middle of the street. Whatever. So once outside I will be able to learn to handle the weapon completely and confidently. Then I will begin to work on meshing stances and experiment with flow and stabilization during application and transition into the next technique. It is going to be a challenge to get something together in time for review. But if I keep working on what I have so far something should come together. Come on sun. See you at the kwoon

So this month...

So far this year is rolling along and the discovery of strengths and weaknesses have been exposed and are placed into certain levels or priority that will require immediate attention. Kicks and stretching are going to be a huge part of my focus this month. In order to stick to my plan I have laid out for the year I am going to try to do 1/5th (10 000) of my personal goal of 50,000 kicks and 2000 minutes of stretching by the end of the month. That works out to about 325 kicks a day and over an hour everyday of stretching. I have been doing Qi Gung almost every morning and this has helped out a lot as well. I feel the impairment that my lack of flexibility and low endurance is causing and how this is disrupting the flow and confidence to do techniques be cause the tight muscles cause so much instability and shorten range/ vector. With the lack of endurance it is causing me to hurry through techniques and the lack of flexibility removes options when training with combinations or sparring. Basically it completely messes with all of it. So I plan to do these kicks from various stances in order to have a balanced muscle structure to protect my joints and well rounded endurance in my legs and play with a lot of stretching techniques. My push ups and sit-ups are basically done the same way. For push ups, I have 5 different configurations and 6 for sit-ups, although lately it has been 5. The idea is to not cause only one group of muscles to develop and others to not, creating an imbalance and a disrupted joint path. This should keep the  muscles strong and in a balanced form around the joints and good solid core. Along with stretching of course. So I guess between that and work, and everything that comes along with it; reviewing the I Ho Chuan requirements,  reviewing the curriculum, random exercises and forms, or playing with my weapon, that's what I'm doing. See you at the Kwoon.