Training in Kung Fu is always a good learning experience when it comes to listening and learning about our bodies. I guess that's why Kung Fu provides such a vast and excellent opportunity for knowledge and adaptability. When something is going wrong or you are limited in your abilities due to and injury or lack a balanced discipline, as in my case stretching and changing things up a bit, Kung Fu will prompt you to heal and educate yourself about your body and source information from other martial artists.
Case in point, some little bastard goblins have snuck into my hips and welded them together.... okay not really. I have been having trouble with my hips lately. Not pain, but lack of flexibilty and they seemed to be getting worse. I have been thrown off balance during forms and kicks just at belt level. When practing some kicks last week in Sihing class, like cross stepping behind and throwing a High Rising kick I just about drove my face into the mats. As funny as that may have been, it would have ultimately sucked. When I move into a horse stance, rather than sitting in the horse stance with a straight back, I am hunched over and using my legs which makes your legs burn out way faster and also burns up your energy.
So what do I have to do here to aleviate this issue. Well for starters ask those around you that train, so I did and in doing so I was given some stretches to do and some good insight on another area that may be contributing to this. My IT band. That actually made a lot of sense and may perhaps explain why I have so much trouble lately opening up the chest during forms. With this all in mind and all of the cross stepping we did from both leads during Sihing class my hips felt a lot better and have lossened up a bit. I have been doing Qi Gong lately and finding the snake to be very helpful in this area as well. Horse stances and open X stances in motion seem to have helped as well. I think ultimately though what needs to happen is I may designate Sundays to a full day of stretching both dynamically and static. A few minutes here and there after classes is definately going to help, but I think with the amount of training that needs to be ramped up a full day of more stretching than taxing may help quite a bit. I guess we'll see.
I fell asleep unintentionally in a chair last week and awoke to a really bad cramp in my knee, like the kind of cramp you feel in your neck when you think it was okay to sleep with your ear touching your shoulder and your head jammed between the cushion and the arm rest... yah that kind of cramp. I'm not quite sure what happened but it took me a good minute or more to adjust my leg. It seems I fell asleep with my legs crossed and when the weight of the other one resting on my knee, and my muscles relaxed it did something. I'm not sure what but either way it hurts. There's no bruising at all so I don't think it's a ruptured blood vessel and I don't think it is mechanical, as there is no grinding or shoots of pain, but there is a steady pull in the muscle that gets sharper as I kneel down on the inside of knee but it does subside. I don't know it's weird. So I gave it a good solid rest on Saturday with heat and ice and good old tiger balm. It feels better today but still sends signals from the same origin but now a little different frequency. I kept mobile all day and worked it a little at a time but it seems the same. Little more heat and tiger balm and see how things are in the morning.
One last note to touch on is my punches, I have discovered that for some reason I think it is okay to over extend the arm which leaves my elbow extremely vulnerable. Not cool at all. I think what may have happened is I am improving on keeping the arm relaxed until the point of rotation and contact. I'm not sure completely but I noticed my when practicing some techniques with others I feel it in the elbow. This is not good and must be fixed sooner than later. I also noticed this on the back fist as well, another technique applied incorrectly but that came as a fairly easy fix. I was swinging the back fist from the chest using both arms and opening the chest but failing to lead with the elbow and rolling out the technique. This was happening more on the left arm than the right which was mentioned before about a balanced body. Nonetheless it would not take much to blow out your own elbow by throwing a back fist with full power and bad technique. Another bad habit that must be fixed. Well I think that about covers it for now. See you at the kwoon.
So definately a few things to work on here and something else to report on. We'll see how things are in a week. See you at the Kwoon.
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