Yesterday marked my short return to kung fu and qin na. I have been out all of July due to traveling obligations. I’ll be out all next week again due to vacation. So July is mostly a wash as far as training goes.
Man am I sore! Missing that much class is not good. I hobbled out of bed and will likely be groaning most of the day. Interestingly I returned to a freak’n huge class! For the first time in over a year we had so many people that Sifu Smiley had to stagger the class when we did warm-ups! Apparently there was some sort of new member trend when I was gone.
In Mantis I’m taking the “all in good time” approach. I know how to fight a certain way and I’ve realized it’s going to take a long time to learn things the Mantis way. So I groan through the intense calisthenics, muddle through the line drills, and do my best on forms and the newbie two-person set. I no longer have the belt race looming over my aging head so for me, kung fu is part personal growth, part fitness, and a dash of new self-defense techniques.
Qin na I’m taking a tad more seriously. Given the realities of what I can probably do physically, it’s a good step towards filling my grappling deficit. It’s a challenge physically and mentally. It also has some good self-defense principles that I can incorporate into my bag of of tricks.
Once I’m back in August I have to get serious again. I’ve been attending sporadically and muddling through level two and three locks. I still do not have the names matched to the techniques and the truth be told, I barely remember the new stuff. With the level one stuff I took notes, reviewed videos, and then practiced the locks at home as mini katas. I can see I’ll have to attempt the same with these locks. The problem is that some of these locks are much more complicated than level one. Still, I think it will go a long way towards helping me get it.
I worked with Smiley and China last night. Smiley is close to testing for his instructor certification and China is learning advanced locks. We reviewed levels two and three for China which meant that most were new to me. My right wrist and and bottom two fingers are back to jacked. There are at least two level twos or threes that combine twisting the fingers with cranking the wrist. One shown last night “Eagle Claw style” has you clawing the fingers to hold and twist while you knife edge into the wrist with the opposite hand. The result is an awful lot of pressure being put onto one tendon in the wrist, and your pinky. The pain is immediate and excruciating!
Lesson of the night is that if you are using muscle you need to stop and re-think things. The locks are new and I’m back to the kung fu death grip approach. It seems counter-intuitive but if you try to use muscle the locks don’t work as good, or, in some instances, not at all. There is one lock whose name escapes me. If you get into position with everything grabbed and try to muscle it the lock will not work. Instead, all you have to do is hold everything in place and bow slightly. Do the bow and the attackee is dancing like a marionette due to the pain. It’s one of those techniques where you see and think it should not work. However, it works perfectly if you just relax and bow!
What else? Oh yes… I’m back to being a fat ass. I’ve gained back almost all of the weight I cut for my black belt test. Work induced stressed leads to escape in bad food and Mr. Martini does not help. So I’m taking steps to once again cut some pounds. Part of the equation started on my travels: a return to jogging. My neck has been awesome since I’ve stuck to a stretching routine, raised all my computer monitors to the recommended height, and adopted the use of a memory foam pillow (aka “the old man pillow). My legs have adjusted to a two mile run and that’s where I’ll keep things. My idealized goal is three times a week. Realistically I’ll be happy for two. I simply have not been able to settle on a balanced type of cardio since my neck injury of eight years ago. I HATE the stair stepper. Taekwondo was off the chart extreme for cardio and not doable alone. Kung fu is too “short burst” to be a good cardio workout. Yes, we get pushed to exhaustion but it’s usually in a one to three minute window. It’s good for fighting but not good for weight and the heart. I’m also working on cutting my carbohydrate intake. Easier said than done! Still, I mostly sit on my butt or hide under my desk at work. So I do not need half the carbs I’m taking in.
~BCP
