15 Minutes

Keeping things simple and manageable is something we all try to strive for. Life loves to challenge us and that is something that we can never control but we can control how we manage the situation efficiently and effectively. The current lifestyle that we live in doesn't make this easy. Everything has to be done THIS MINUTE, very few practice patience, nothing can be done fast enough, me first and hurry up already! As a society we have some how along the way been influenced and led to believe this is normal and packing as much stuff in a day or when we are on own time is just the way it is. I think some people right now are having a real long hard look at their lives and how we live them. I know I have and honestly it's been a great reset and moment of clarity as the machinery rests and the dust has long settled.

I have really been enjoying this down time and see it as a great opportunity to embrace the challenge and see it through. The overall cause of this down time is not so great though as people are put at risk, people are dying, and things are not so well overall. But I am using it as a time to catch up with my family, complete those long over due projects, and bringing my training back up to speed and where it belongs. It's given me an opportunity to re evaluate how I approach things and how I will chose to live as things come back to normal.

The biggest thing for me right now is to bring in a solid and effective routine to make great changes in regards to my Kung Fu. As I said before I am not good at routine at all, in fact I really suck at it. I have just always taken what I need to do and get it done as it comes to me. But that doesn't work so well when things become busy. It doesn't have to be intricate or erratic, it just needs to be consistent and something that can be maintained and adaptable. All it needs to be is 15 minutes a day to keep things moving along. As Sifu Brinker used tell us, you give me 15 minutes a day, and I guarantee you a black belt in 3-5 years. Of course certain aspects of training require much more time, but that is another point. You can get a lot of Kung Fu training done in this time as it's about the same time we did for warm ups before class. I remember pools of sweat on the mats and taxed muscles in this short period of time for years and a lot of things covered as well. This is what I'm working on very hard and with enough consistency it will become normal, even on those long days at work.

As far as the rest of my Kung Fu goes I am making great progress with many aspects. My forms and stances are coming along well and I have continued work on my dangling board breaks which have become very successful as I feel they are coming from the whole body and not just the shoulders. There is more breaks than swollen hands anyway. I have been working on the right reverse and will be switching it up to a left reverse ridge hand. From there I hope to accomplish some breaks with kicks, but that is a ways off yet. I'm also switching up into some demon training here for the next 2 weeks to give my stamina and strength a much needed boost as I am now comfortable that I have the form down well. I can't switch it up to demon mode if the form sucks because this will for sure cause an injury, form is everything if the intent is to build something strong, so I don't mess with that too much. I'm just really taking advantage of our current situation and see it as an opportunity and now that the sun is out and the snow is gone, the outdoors calls! See you on the screen!