Posts Tagged ‘yue xiao yu’

Tuesday I didn’t make it to practice, so I went on Wednesday instead.  But it turns out I might as well not have gone since it was a pretty light day.  Here is my training vlog.  Enjoy!

As you can see from the title, I’m going to do a bit of an experiment this month and instead of writing out these super long blogs (which actually don’t take THAT much time) I’m going to try to use my small camera to record more in-the-wushu-guan vlogs (video blogs), which I can just put up quickly.   This one is actually a little long because I took a few different clips and had to string them together, but if I can get things working right it should make the process much faster in the future.

A few things that aren’t on the video …

1. My nanquan section run-down for today: 4 x 4, 3 x 4, 2 x 4, 1-2, 3-4.  So, 12 single sections and two half sets.  Considering that I felt like crap most of the class, thats not too bad.  I actually noticed my endurance and recovery was markedly improved from the previous week. 

2. Xiao Yu mentioned that their commissary (lunch room) has a card system for non-athletes.  You can buy a card and put money on it and then just use that to buy various ala carte items from their food offerings.  I might try that out some time and put up a vlog about it so that you guys can check it out. 

3. Today Zhang Laoshi wasn’t there so Han Laoshi coached us.  He gave me a few “Ma Ke! (Mark!)” which was nice.  He actually remembers my name now.

Enjoy the video, and let me know what you think.  Do you like this sort of thing or do you prefer to read the written word.  Leave a comment! (BTW, if you have been having problems logging in, it isn’t you. My site is a little wonky and I haven’t had time to fix it yet.  Until then you can go here to login.

 

NOTE: For those of you on Facebook, you will want to visit my YouTube Channel to view all of the videos, since Facebook’s lame importing functionality doesn’t allow for embeded videos.

As I mentioned before, I had gotten permission from Zhang Laoshi and Han Laoshi to have a couple of my 外国朋友 (foreign friends) visit the wushu guan to check out the professional athletes doing their thing.  James and Charisse, along with Ruhi, jumped on the bus with me at the crack of morning and we made our way to the morning class.

Of course, what you are really wanting to know about is whether or not Ruhi was able to take any videos of the practice.  Well, you had best throw some appreciation towards the wife because she got a ton of really good footage which I am still organizing and editing to put online for everyone to watch.  Of course, by the time you read this I should be done, but just pretend that you had to wait an unreasonable amount of time, okay?

James even brought his camera along and was nice enough to toss his photos my way for posting online.  So, you can also throw a few “谢谢”over to him as well.

First up are some basics.  You might notice that I intentionally cut my own basics out of the videos.  I figured that (a) you don’t want me wasting precious bandwidth and resources with my sub-standard jibbengong and (b) it wasn’t something that you don’t probably see in your own wushu guan all the time anyway.  Not to worry, I will have a video of my own wushu later on in the blog …

It turned out that this particular day was a heavy nandu focus for training.  All the athletes had to do full nandu combinations many times.  So, of course that means we were able to get some pretty good nandu footage of the practice:

On the far carpet, as you can see from the previous two videos, there was a group of younger athletes training.  I mentioned them before – they are the ones from Northern Shaanxi.  It seems that they are here much in the same way that schools from the U.S. come to China for a month in the summer to train in Wushu.  The main distinction is that these kids are from China so there is no language or cultural barrier, and they are all much better than kids their age in other countries.  But the idea is sort of similar, since they are currently on a break from school so their coaches brought them to train with the “professional” wushu athletes.  Here is some of them:

And, as I mentioned, James was nice enough to snap some pictures of the practice.  Here are a few from the basics and nandu training:

 

 

 

He managed to take some pretty nice shots, huh?

Anyway, after basics and nandu it was time for forms.  Yuan Min told me that we were going to do 16 sections, so I decided to run through 3 of each of my nanquan sections, for a total of 12, and then go through my first section of nan gun 4 more time to flesh out the full 16.  I actually ended up doing something a bit more like this:

1 x 3, 2 x 3, rest 1 rotation, 3 x 3, 4 x 3, ng x 3

I really needed to take a short break in the middle there.  I’m not quite up to the endurance required for 16 sections in a group of just 6 other people.  The turn around is about 2 – 3 minutes for your physical recovery so it is pretty intense.  Not quite as intense as that SCWA practice in 2001 where I had to do 8 full forms in a rotation with 3 other people … but it was almost like that.

Here is some of the athlete practice media.  First up is Yue Xiao Yu.  You can see some really good intensity in the video of her nanquan.  I also like some of the pictures James took of her:

 

 

 

After her we’ll watch Yuan Min’s video.  i really like how his nan gun form is shaping up.  As you might recall, 2 weeks ago he taught me his nangun form.  Then a week later he proceeded to rechoreograph almost the entire thing and make himself an even cooler form.  So I’m stuck with his outdated hchoreography and he gets to look bad ass.  I don’t really mind though.  Even his outdated choreography is better than what I could have come up with on my own.

 

He was giving me a few pointers in that last picture, although the suggestions he gave me during class were way out of my ability level.  Some day though …. some.day.

Here are two more southern athletes.  One is a younger man who’s name I don’t know (practicing nan gun) and the other is Tian Jing Fang doing some nanquan.

 

 

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a wushu practice if someone wasn’t doing a bit of chang quan in the room.  Here are two athletes demonstrating a bit of that. The younger man in the first video is actually practicing with a wrapped ankle, so that is why he is sort of taking it a bit easy on some of the moves.

 

 

While we were doing our wushu thing, the taiji group was practicing over on the left side of the carpet.  Ruhi managed to get a bit of them doing some taiji.  So here is some of that.

Recently after practices the coach has had us do some stretching together in a circle.  A new development that I am actually rather enjoying. 

After class I asked James, Charisse and Ruhi what they thought of the class.  For James and Charisse this was the first time they had ever seen wushu, so it was nice to hear a fresh perspective on things.  I’ve been around wushu for so long that it is sometimes hard to remember how it felt to discover wushu for the first time.  As a bit of background on them, Charisse has around 10 years of dance/ballet experience and James did crew (rowing) at Stanford, so they both have an appreciation for physical sports and exercise.

And, as promised, here is a video of my nanquan practice from Thursday.  I will just say right now that my form needs work.  But it is at least better than it was before, and I am hopeful that it will continue to improve in to the future.

I realize this was a few days late but hopefully the abundance of wushu videos made it worth your while.  I have some more footage from Friday’s class too, which I will try to post up tomorrow if I have any time, including a pretty amazing little girl that has some pretty killer basics.  I don’t know who she is, but if she is up for adoption I might have to put in a bid.

Stay tuned for that in the next blog! 

I’ve been so busy with work and life that I have not had a chance to blog too much recently.  This might continue to be the case until the end of February when I return from Hong Kong and start school.

Anyway, my most recent training session with the Shaanxi Wushu Team was pretty good.  When I got there I noticed a whole new crop of young athletes walking in to the wushu guan.  I later found out that they were all from the northern part of Shaanxi Province – a smaller town called Yan’an (延安).  You can see it on the map here:

View Yan’an in a larger map

They were combined with some of our younger athletes and put on the SW carpet with Coach Zhang’s assistant who ran them through a whole lot of basics.  Pretty much most of their class was basics, with just a bit at the end working on sections.  Based on their wushu I would say they are a bit rough around the edges but have some potential.  Its all in the details, after all.

I was told they will be in Xi’an training with us for a month.  There are about 12 or 15 of them, ranging from the low to high teens.  About 70% boys.  Should be fun to see them progress over time.

For my own class there were 8 of us in Coach Zhang’s group.  I was in a line with 3 other nanquan folks and surprisingly I made it through basics without too many problems.  I’m chocking it up to a good workout game of keep-away that worked up a nice sweat.

After nandu we did combinations – about 16 lines of them – and then switched to sections.  I focused primarily on my 3rd section, as that is the one I’ve been reworking.  I’m happy to say that I just about have it figured out.  Well … almost.  We’ll see how long this lasts.  I never seem satisfied with my choreography – mainly because I’m never satisfied that what I have choreographed is the best possible combination for my particular style of wushu.  The coach seemed to like this new version so we’ll see if it sticks.

Sections went on for quite a while.  I probably did about 8 – 10 sections before I had to stop.  But the other folks just kept on going.  Very 努力.  I went over to visit with Xiao Yu who was working (i.e. chatting with someone) on the side.  She said she will go to the hospital in the afternoon to get an x-ray on her leg, along with one of the Taiji athletes.

She also said she is still waiting to hear from the coaches about the cost of training, so still waiting on that information as well … But one neat thing that happened is that I had asked her what the possibility of having some of my friends come to watch the Team train and she said I could bring them any time.  Pretty neat.  So I’m going to try and arrange an outing for some of my friends in Xi’an who have never seen wushu to check out what it is all about.  I’m sure it will blow their socks off.  Perhaps next Wednesday would be a good day, since I’m not training then.

After class I headed out and took the bus home.  Ruhi is sick at home right now so I made some soup and worked a bunch from home.

Today’s practice was brought to you by the number 3. As in the third section of my nanqan form, which is what I was spending most of my time working on today.

The first part of class started off like most others. Warm ups (led by Yuan Ming), stretching and basics. Then it was time for sections. I started with my 4th section and went through it 4 times (I guess today is also brought to you by the number 4) but when it was time for me to start on the 3rd section I realized I didn’t really have it fully figured out yet.

Some of the athletes, like Xiao Yu, were on the other carpet working through their stuff, so I joined them and spent most of the class trying to fix the things that didn’t feel right with my 3rd section. Part of what I was working on was utilizing some of the suggestions that Gao Song had made regarding my movements in Hong Kong. But utilizing that feedback requires me to really retool some of my form.

Actually, most of my form.  He sort of shifted my paradigm a bit so I need to go through each movement and re-evaluate how I do it and whether or not it fits in with my personal style of wushu and nanquan.  A daunting task to be sure.

Anyway, after class I needed to pick up a memory stick that Xiao Yu had borrowed, but since she had left it in her dorm room she said I could go with her to check out what the living conditions are like for the athletes.

Actually, I had a few surprises.  Which I suppose I shouldn’t have had since I’ve seen the dorms before, albeit a different building.  Back in 2008 during the China Nationals in Xi’an, Wu Di and Zhao Qing Jian were living on the same campus while training with the China National Team for a demo in Taiwan.  I got to visit their room then.  In fact, here is a picture from that:

Anyway, the dorms are pretty much as I expected them to be.  Think post-industrial concrete meets pre-modern industrial.  A little utilitarian, but still quite livable.  The one thing that I was really impressed with was that each room only housed two athletes (unlike the 6 person rooms back in Beijing or the 4 person rooms in Shanghai) and each room had its own bathroom.  Thats right!  No communal toilets.  Rather nice.

Yue Xiao Yu’s roommate was Zhang Yang, who you might remember from this blog entry.  Xiao Yu is also quite the entrepreneur.  I remember when she came to my house a few weeks back, she mentioned that she would take the bus (1 RMB each way) to the train station to buy candies and various 点心 and then bring them back and sell them in her room.

The store at the school sold them for a little more than she did, so the students would prefer to buy them from her since it was cheaper and she was closer than the store located in the next building over.  She made a small amount of money because her costs were lower than she sold them for.  Not a ton of money (we’re talking a few mao per sale) but it was still pretty industrious of her.

Fast forward to today and I got to see the operation in action.  Actually she stopped doing it, but she still has some stock left over from her last trip to the Train Station so until she sells out she can keep selling them.

One of the little kids (from this blog entry) came in while I was there, clenching a 20RMB note in her hand ready to buy some candies.  It was pretty cute.  One of the Taiji athletes came in as well and bought something to eat.  It was mostly candies, crackers, chips .. that sort of thing.

While we were there I tried to show her my alive.tom.com blog (since it is the only place my photos are viewable in China) but her connection was super slow so it didn’t load up.  In the meantime she showed me her QQ page and the little girl also used her computer to check something.  I got some pictures of them here:

One of the things we talked about was a few questions I had related to having foreigners come and train with the Shaanxi Team. I’ve had one or two requests for specific information related to training here (mainly for people wanting to come during the summer) so I was doing some investigating.

I have to say that, while I enjoy having a professional wushu team all to my self, I realize that this is a pretty nice situation and a decent facility and that some other folks out there might be interested in knowing more about what it would take to come train here too. Especially since planning for your summer China training trips are probably in the works.

The other nice thing about this location is that it is probably the only city in China that has a richer history than Beijing (or at least pretty darn close), and some of the greatest tourist sites in the country. Add that to the fact that it is sooo much cheaper than training at Shi Cha Hai (but also keeping in mind that it isn’t a fancy 5 star hotel either — in case that sort of thing is important to you), and I personally think that it is a nice option for those who might be interested.

In any case, I’m not a travel agent, but if you want some information feel free to contact me through my website’s contact form and I will keep you in the loop with whatever I find out regarding training options in Xi’an.

Next practice … Wednesday morning!

Doing a bit of catching up with this entry.  I have a backlog of photos to share so here we go with that …

On December 28, while Chana and Teresa were still in town, a friend invited us all out to KTV inside the city wall.  So we headed over to Li Jia Cun (李家村) to get our song on.  It was pretty fun and after a few hours we all headed back home.  Here are a few photos:

That was lots of fun.

A few days later was my birthday.  After a morning wushu class I went home and washed up for a nice brunch with Ruhi at the Shangrila Hotel.  It was delicious and I got a wonderful card and gift — tickets to the visiting Fame 2010 Live broadway show that is coming to Xi’an!  The show is on 1/9, which is also the 4 month-iversary of our wedding.  Pretty neat.

Here are some pictures from the brunch:

When we got back home we took a couple of pictures too.  Here is one in celebration of the upcoming and poorly named “Karate Kid”.

In the evening we met up with Charisse and Theresa at the Da Yang Tan (Big Wild Goose Pagoda).  It was my first time there and boy is it hmm .. well, “big”, I guess.  And a little commercial looking, I suppose.  Quite the tourist attraction.

Then we walked to Chang An Lu and caught a taxi to Gaoxin where we partook of Ro Jia Mo and some B&R Ice Cream:

Then a few days later we found ourselves at the Xi’an Sports University checking out information about classes with our friend, Yue Xiao Yu.  She was kind enough to provide us with some introductions with one of the teachers there.  We commemorated the occasion with a few photos at the front gate:

Then it was off to meet up with Ruhi’s friend Stephen, a doctor in Xi’an who I got to meet for the first time.  Very nice guy and was very helpful answering some medical questions for us.  Here he is:

And finally we went to Ruhi’s friend’s home where she and her son treated us to some Shaanxi home cooking. It was quite delicious and I learned how to make Suan La Bai Cai!  Pretty neat.  Her name is Martha and here are some photos:

It was quite delicious.  Actually, that was yesterday (Wednesday, January 6) after wushu class.  Today (Thursday) we had an early morning appointment at the medical center so we grabbed some breakfast in the village on our way back home.  Some Chinese donuts!  Delicious!

And, with the exception of my birthday party video footage, that pretty much brings us up to date.

I did go to the Xi’an International University today, a private university located a mile or so from my home.  I was asking about Chinese language programs for the spring term but I’ll fill you guys in on all of that once I figure out exactly what I will be doing.

Tomorrow morning is wushu. My knee has been really acting up the last 2 days so I’m going to see what happens in the morning.  If I don’t feel up to it, I might just go and work on the side on some choreography stuff.  Hopefully I’ll be okay.  Although, it also means I have to wake up in 6 hours so I better go now.

Until later …

Monday work was super busy so I didn’t go to wushu. So my first day of wushu this week was Wednesday (today). And it was pretty brutal.

Not so much because it was super hard, but because the atmosphere was super intense. Coach Zhang wasn’t there today and so Coach Han, the head coach for the Taolu Athletes, was coaching us. And like I said before, he doesn’t take any prisoners.

If you can imagine the achetype of the Chinese wushu coach that barks out orders, has a constant scowl on his face and strikes fear into the hearts of young athletes, that would be Coach Han. I’m sure he’s a super nice guy outside of the wushu guan, but inside he’s 100% business.

The class started off with a lot of running. It was the usual set of running, but a bit more than usual. I had to stand out towards the end because my knee was twinging a bit, but it certainly helped me work up a sweat. Which is good because it was pretty cold in the wushu guan today.

Then we did basics. Again, not so many more than usual, but much more intense than usual. During nandu I worked on my horse stance basics — about 5 or 6 lines of them — and then worked on revamping some of my choreography. The “Ask the ‘Zilla” from yesterday got me thinking about my choreography so I tried to fix a few of the areas in my form that I wasn’t happy with.  I like the new stuff much better so I’m glad I spent the time doing that.

Tian Jin Fan and Yue Xiao Yu were also sitting out of nandu and working on their choreography on the side so at least I wasn’t alone.

But soon enough it was time for 分段 (sections).  We were supposed to do 12 sections so I decided to do 4 of each of my last 3 sections — which are the ones that I was trying to fix.  But after the 10th we switched to something else so I ended up doing the following: 4,4,4,4,3,3,3,3,2,2.

And what was it we switched to?  3/4 forms!  Thats right.  3 sections together.  I did 2-3-4, but I sure didn’t finish strong and was huffing and puffing afterwards.  I was happy that I was able to do it though.  My endurance is definitely improving because I would have never been able to do 10 sections plus a 3/4 set a month ago.

One nice thing during class was that one of the athletes gave me a compliment and a critique.  He said that my form looks good.  And he also said that I should work on my eyes.  And he was right.  My eyes have been a little lack-luster lately.  I used to focus on that quite a bit more so I think I need to start upping the eye-work and bringing the intensity back.

So, intensity was the theme for today. And it is something I need to work on for myself too.  While Coach Han is pretty brutal, I don’t mind too much and can really appreciate that level of focus during a class.

In any case, class ended and I headed home.  This afternoon Yue Xiao Yu is going to take Ruhi and I to meet a professor/teacher at the Xian Sports University (i.e. 西安体育学院) to talk about their programs for wushu and Chinese.  I’ve been wanting to find out more because I’m thinking about going there for a study program in the spring — mostly for Chinese, but it doesn’t hurt to get the lay of the land.  Also, it is a relatively close school to where I live.

Next class is Friday and then I am heading to Hong Kong for a few days again.  This time I’m going to try to go meet up with Gao Song and possibly get in a workout with the Hong Kong kids class which meets in the evenings out in Ma On Shan.  Wish me luck!

Technically I’m writing this a few days late, but thats okay, since I come bearing gifts.  Specifically, wushu videos.

Ruhi had asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday on Friday.  My automatic answer was “Go to wushu”, so first thing Friday morning, January 1, 2010, we headed out to the wushu guan to get in a bit of wushu goodness.  She was also nice enough to film some of the practice for me, so you have her to thank for the footage.

Today seemed a little more serious than usual.  The head taolu coach (who’s name escapes me at the moment) was there and … well, actually he is always there.  But today he actually was coaching.  But fortunately for me he was coaching the group that I was not in, because he wasn’t taking any prisoners today.

At one point Ruhi heard him ask Xiao Yu, “Who are they?” (referring to Ruhi and I) and she answered “Oh, they’re always here”.  Which, I figured he should have known since he saw me there all the time.  But I guess today was the first day he bothered to ask someone who I was.  But its nice to know that I’ve become a fixture of the team.  Sort of like a mascot, I guess.

Basics were split up between the northern group and us southern folks.  Here is a video of some combination work.  You can sort of see me working on my horse stance in between the two carpets.  I try to do a few lines of these each class, usually while they are working on nandu.  But today they didn’t do specific nandu training, so I fit it in during lines of combinations.  For those of you who have trained with me in the U.S. you will notice that my horse stance is finally getting to a respectable depth.  Trust me, it took a lot of work just to get it where it is.  Got a lot more work left to get it just right … Especially during a form where I tend to come out of it more than I’d like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2U3bexOXKU

Anyway, after basics and combinations we split up and the southern folks, along with a few northerners (whom I like to call the “A Team”, for lack of a better designation) went to the NorthEast carpet (for lack of a better designation) while the “B Team” worked out on the NorthWest carpet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKX9VEMc3NE

I took a look at the schedule for today.  8 half sets!  Holy cow!  It was going to be quite the challenge … and as it turned out I was only able to squeeze out 4 of them before the end of class.  My sections were 3-4, 3-4, 2-3 and 1-2.

Before my last half-set, while I was sitting down and getting a drink, I noticed an older man in the wushu guan.  He didn’t look too familiar, so I walked over to Yuan Ming and asked him who he was.  It turns out he was the head coach for the entire wushu team.  Basically they guy that everyone else who does wushu or coaches wushu reports to.  The Wu Bin of the Shaanxi Team, if you will.

And of course he comes and stands next to Coach Zhang just as I’m about to go up and do my sections.  Ruhi heard him ask Coach Zhang who I was and asking him what was up with my stomach (i.e. “Why is he so big and what is he doing here?”)

Well, I guess he liked my wushu okay because after I went he walked over to Ruhi and started talking with her.  Then, after a while I went over too and he introduced himself to me.  Song Bin.  He was very friendly, actually, and spoke with us for a good 20 minutes while the rest of the athletes were doing some conditioning and stretching.  He talked about the phrases written on the walls, about using my waist more when I did wushu and he even exchanged phone numbers with Ruhi so that he could pass on some information about a traditional shadow puppet show for us to watch.

It was a little surreal.

After class I did a bit of stretching and then we headed off.  But like I said, Ruhi took a lot of video so I’m going to show a few of the highlights here.

She also took some footage of my wushu training, so I’m going to stick that in the “members” section of wushuzilla.com for anyone who is interested.

Zhang Yang – Spear: I like her long fist, but for some reason she was practicing spear today. But thats okay. You can still check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuyyPIdp4aA

Changquan: I feel bad because I can’t remember this guy’s name, even though I’ve been told it a couple times. I want to say his last name is Zhao or Zhang, but I’m just not sure. Anyway, he is definitely the best long fist guy currently training with the Shaanxi Team so I asked Ruhi to be sure and get some of his stuff on video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KsEP-aWoXE

Yuan Ming – Nanquan: I really like Yuan Ming’s nanquan. He is super quick and his fast twitch makes other people’s fast twitch look like cold syrup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRJ_JHDX8L0

Long Weapons Practice: A few of the athletes practicing some long weapons. I just grouped these together since I wasn’t sure of their details and it wasn’t really long enough to make 3 individual videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5Or0hu3TE

Yue Xiao Yu – Nanquan: She was actually really doing some serious damange with her nanquan on Friday, but we just got this one bit of footage of her. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB6P9gNuwXM

Don’t forget that Ruhi got some footage of my nanquan, so I put that in the Members section on wushuzilla.com. Registration is free and takes less time than it did to read this sentence.

“The coach is crazy”

Those were the words out of Xiao Yu’s mouth this morning while we were doing our preparatory stretching and warm ups at the wushu guan.

I was inclined to agree with her as he had just finished telling us what our workout would be for the day.  80 kicks.  20  of each stance transition.  40 combinations. 8 sections.  4 half-sets.  It sounded pretty brutal, but as the athletes started playing some strange variation on dodgeball, soccer and rugby while I jogged around the carpet I realized that it wasn’t necessarily as bad as it sounded.

80 kicks meant 20 of each type; front stretch, side stretch, inside and outside.  That was essentially 2 lines of 10 kicks each.  Nothing terribly unusual, but it did sound much worse when you actually place a number on them.

20 stances was 20 of each type of transition.  For chang quan folks they did some mabu-gongbu and some pubu-gongbu-high.  There were a few others in there too but I was with the nanquan folks doing gua gai’s, upper cut swings and tiger claw qi lin bu’s.  We did about 10 lines of stances, which again wasn’t totally panic inducing.  It was a lot, but not impossible.

The 40 combinations was also not as bad as it sounded.  As you go down the carpet you do a combination twice.  And if you go down and back, that is 4 combinations per lap.  So, 10 laps around the carpet of combinations from your form.  Also not super terrible.

The one thing that WAS a little tricky was the 8 single sections.  I was suprised though because by my count we only did 6 of them, not 8.  And for the half-sets I was only able to do a 1-2 punch with my sections one time through.  But even by my count most of the athletes just did 3 and not 4 half-sets.

So, although it did sound terrible at the beginning of class, by the end of class I found that the workout had actually been rather pleasant.  Well, okay — in a somewhat tiring and painful way.  A full out half-set for me is still a little bit on the harsh side.  But I like working on forms so I don’t mind.

After class I spent some time teaching Xiao Yu how to do some poppping with a simple body wave and moon walk, and then caught a little bit of footage of a young girl practicing/learning taijij quan. She is the youngest girl in the taiji group but she is already not too shabby.  The wushu boys were playing some soccer.  Because apparently 2 hours of wushu is not tiring at all to them.  It is also probably because they know there is no training for them in the afternoon so they don’t mind wearing themselves out a little bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaZo4AWVNhU

Next practice for me is on Friday which just so happens to be my birthday.  My present to myself?  another day of wushu training.  A great way to celebrate my 40th year on this planet.  Err .. I mean the 11th anniversary of my 29th year …

Well,  you can tell by the title that today was intense, but I’ll start at the beginning just to be thorough.

When class started I checked out the schedule for the week on the board.  According to what was originally written there today was supposed to be:

• Jibbengong x 1
• Nandu x 2
• 1/4 x 8
• 2/4 x 6

I saw that we were doing 6 half forms, and I thought that would be a good challenge, but looking later in the week I noticed that there were a couple days where the athletes were set to do 3/4 forms.  Ugh .. 3 sections.  At least we would have a few days before that happened.

But then at the beginning of class, before warm ups, Coach Zhang lined us up and told us that there would be a change in the schedule.  He was swapping today’s morning and afternoon workout schedules and also told us that he wanted us to do our running around 2 carpets instead of 1.  From what I understood, it was time for us to start increasing forms work.  The post-competition, off-season-training reprieve had ended!

We did our running, which pretty much winded me.  Couldn’t quite do all of it, but did as much as I could, catching my breath whenever I needed to.  During basics, instead of 1 line of each we did 2.  I was getting winded and breathing pretty heavy (as I usually do — its wushu, afterall) and Xiao Yu would pretend to call a doctor with her hand serving as an imaginary phone.  ”Hello?  Doctor?  We need you here!” and she would laugh.  (But in a nice way so it was hard to be offended.)

After basics and before we started sections I looked at the schedule again.  Before this point I hadn’t looked to see what the afternoon training was supposed to be.  I assumed it was similar to the morning but with more running and basics.  It turns out that instead of 8 single sections and 6 half sets we were going to be doing 8 single sections, 2 half sets and a 3/4 set!  Holy Lung Capacity, I was going to be tired by the end of class!

For the single sets I pumped out the following sections: 4, 3, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2.  Then for half sets I did: 3-4, 2-3 and then I did 2 – 4 for the 3 section set.  It was pretty brutal, I must say.  The best part was watching Yuan Ming really go for it.  I think he’s finally turning up the juice on his practice and his stuff was looking pretty intense and impressive.  He has some pretty nice technique.

During class I also had a chance to thank Wu Ya Nan in person for his super nice birthday gift.  He wrote a very nice letter to me that he had Yuan Ming and Yue Xiao Yu deliver with the shoes.  I will admit that the color of the shoes (burgundy with pink highlights) is not necessarily the most flattering, but dude — these are brand new Nike Shaolinquan shoes given to me by the Taiji Champion (2008) of China!  Who cares about wearing them?  I might just get them bronzed and put on a plaque.  It is going in my collection with the 2005 All China Games competition straightsword that Wu Di gave me.  (I need to start a wushu collectibles museum …)

After class I did some stretching and then headed home.  Aside from a slight tweaking of my right inner thigh today (just a bit sore, and should be okay in a day or two) I actually felt pretty good after class.  My body is starting to adjust and having a day off between classes is helping it build up its strength and endurance.

I’m pretty sure there would have been no way I could have pushed out 3 sections (even sloppy ones like today) at a time a couple weeks ago.  So at least that is improvement.

It actually reminds me of the training back at Wushu Star in 2003 when we were preparing for the 2003 CMAT.  Nothing increases your lung capacity for forms like just doing a whole lot of back to back sections.  I’m guessing that on Wednesday I will have noticed a new increase in my endurance.  At least — I sure hope so!

Tomorrow stay tuned for ‘Ask the ‘Zilla’, where I attempt to answer some questions and pretend I know what I’m talking about.  It should be entertaining (and possibly painfully embarassing).