February 6th - Getting Back On Schedule

My Thoughts 🤔 我的想法

February 5th 12:55 😷

Even though I am sore as ever after the morning workouts of Tai Chi, Shaolin Basics and Forms; I'm doing okay. My calf soreness isn't that big of a bother, more of an annoyance than anything as once I start sweating and am warm I can focus on forms and movements easily. (Low Stance is still a little hard as well as "Cat Stance") Everyone here is fighting through some sort of pain, whether it be serious or minor. Someone here has a potentially broken hand, another one has a broken foot, a few have very sensitive tendons from power stretching and others are just sore and really tight.

The food today was good, I ate a lot today which makes me a bit nervous as I might've eaten too much. My stomach will let me know later just like it let me know while running this morning! I ran back to the school fast, not because I was training hard, but because I was feeling so uncomfortable. Needless to say I'm drinking and eating enough.

February 6th 13:05 🥋

Today has been, surprisingly, easy compared to the rest. Today we had Qi Gong and Power Conditioning in the morning and later on we will have Power training. So its only 3-4 hours of training (4 if you do Tai Chi) today compared to the 4-5 hours we normally do. I thought conditioning was a little... silly to be honest. It wasn't like how my dad or any of my coaches taught me about conditioning. Some of the exercises I liked while others I really thought were dumb (tapping your head on a wall). No Iron Finger training like my dad does, no heavy bag kicks to make your legs stronger and no slapping a bag of beans or sand to make your palms better. Just tapping a wall with various hand shapes until time was up then you and your partners would lightly* hit on various parts of the body 50 times whether it was kicking, punching or using pads to slap.

Before all of that... silliness we did something I was actually interested in which was “八段锦" which is a health Qi Gong type exercise that uses breathing and stretching to improve your health. Thanks to Shi Yan Lei and Shi Long Pang I knew a little bit of what we were doing because I would practice it at home when I was too sore, too injured or recovering.

Among other things I discovered I liked 形意拳 better than 八极拳. I think I will stick with training 形意拳 so that I can really learn a few things here as I don't really like the Tai Chi style they train here and 八极拳 wasn't that fun to me. Maybe I'll just keep training them all as I do have time for it since I can't leave the school yet.

*After 50-100 times of lightly getting hit it does hurt.

Study 🧠 学习

February 5th 12:55

I'm really gonna have to study more and more because these other students and even the masters are looking to me for when there is a language barrier. This is gonna be tough as I've had to be the translator multiple times over the past few days.

沙袋 "Sand Bag"
出气筒 "Punching Bag"
踢脚垫/踢垫 "Kick Pad"
踢盾 "Kick Shield"
脚靶 "Kick Pad/Kick Shield" (This is the one my teacher says)
手眼协调 "Hand Eye Coordination"
寄出 to send (by mail)
连续 continuously
连接 to connect
耐心 patience
灵活 flexible, agile, quick

February 6th 13:29

As well as studying "normal" words for talking, I also have to study various martial art words and Chinese "philosophy" words. These words are taken from my 形意拳 class that I had yesterday. Each word is a type of attack in 形意拳.

劈 Pī "Chopping"
钻 Zuān "Drilling"
崩 Bēng "Crushing"
炮 Pào "Exploding"
横 Héng "Crossing"

Hopefully, I'll be able to get some pictures of me doing the attacks so that you can understand what they are.

Also, I have to study the names of the 八段锦 movements just so that I know them later on.

双手擎天理三焦
左右开弓似射雕
调理脾胃单举手
五劳七伤向后瞧

Yea, this is a lot to study for four movements but I have until next week to memorize them. We will see how it goes.

I'm trying to stay on schedule but I will say that this training is kicking my butt. What are you struggling with this week?

-Johnny "白武龙"