beknar

10:33 pm: It's been a while since I've done a knock down drag 'em out KF only workout but there it was. Didn't have time for absolutely everything, nor did I remember everything, but the basics were all there. Stance training, footwork, bagua hands, forms (a fraction of TWO forms instead of one, hahaha), even some bag work.

Didn't work so hard so as to start seeing spots, seeing as I mainly wanted to connect the dots on stuff learned from last weekend and everything I remembered. Concentrated on mainly relaxing and making things more smooth and connected. As usual, I stayed until there was only one other guy there, a Wing Chun dude, doing some kind of snake fist drill, chain punching and the first form. Yech, it's shower time.

Tired, but satisfied. Happy.

07:32 pm: a single spot
I've done this to other people and I recognize it mentally, but haven't really hammered it (literally) into me. They say that if you pick a spot on someone and hammer away at it, eventually, it hurts really really bad, unbearably bad. I've done that to other people, at least enough so they move the offending limb away, letting me get yet another hit in. So today, while we're doing drills, a kicking drill that goes like front push kick, back low round house to the thigh, back high round house to the face. Fairly basic combination, common to many arts and styles combining the concepts of changing levels and changing angles. I like it a lot. So I'm holding the pads for the hung-gar guy (he says his lineage is in dispute), hold pad in front, then drop it down to the back of my thigh, then to the front. Whenever he kicks my thigh, his shin hits the pad, but my knuckles are relatively unpadded and they hit my thigh. After about 5 shots to the same spot, I'm letting that leg go and flow with the kick instead of resisting, but it still hurts. Five more shots, and I'm visibly limping. Ouch ouch couch! Luckily, it was my turn to start kicking by the time I was ready to cry out.

Wow. What a cruel thing to do to someone intentionally. A cruel cruel thing to do.

Other highlights: two of the joint locks I've apparently gotten better on. One elbow break and one combination elbow/shoulder break. The last one's 'old man carries fish', an especially cruel joint lock/throw.

Training's been pretty sparse, unfortunately, and the most training I've been getting in is weight lifting. It's wonderful that after the second time I lifted, it stopped hurting the next day. It really does come back rather quickly. I am definitely weaker in most areas. But it got easier. and easier. And easier.

Luckily, my second contract just expired, so more training time becomes available. Lots more! Satisfied and happy right now. And I just heard the word 'sparring' after class, so I am both apprehensive and eager for it, but it may well be for the guys who have been going to class more, and that's fine too. It just means I have to train more and come to class more often. I'm good with doing that.

11:00 am: training focus
narrowed down the focus on training today:

ballistic stretching warmup routine
3 minute horse stance
rest
six horse
rest
form 1 (half of)
rest
walking about in kwuntung
rest
3 minute horse stance

man, what a pain. but, the next day, my legs don't hurt. in fact, i am feeling really really good. the goal is that by increasing the frequency of the horses within my workout period, I can get used to it more and thus increase the time I squat in it, slowly.

07:03 am: Amusing commentary from last Saturday:

"This is for fighting, not dancing. You guys aren't doing ballet."
"On the other hand, maybe I'll go send you guys to ballet school if it'll help your kung-fu."

03:21 pm: back in the saddle again
And it feels GREAT! I will probably be really sore in the morning, but that's all part of the fun.

I did wish that he had us work on basics, as so many of us had just sort of given up during the holidays, but as it turns out, I can still keep up, even with all the flabbiness and the cobwebs. The message for today is summed up in one word:

LEANING

Why leaning? By leaning from one side or another, you can access angles of attack that were unavailable before. You can further accentuate the angle by cross stepping to the side. Very new to me.

The combination goes something like this:

Cross step to right (left foot over right), chin nau with left arm to the left, bring right over left and poon-kiu with left, gwah-choy with right and move left foot from cross stance to the left to make a bow stance to the left, lean right and poon-kiu with left hand, lean left and sow choy with right hand, twisting waist to the left.

The final combination makes use of stepping out of the line and leaning. It can be continued using one of the other drills.

So tired now.

10:21 am: funny stuff
After class today, the Sifu says, "Okay, that's enough for today, I can only stand to see bad kung fu being done for so long". One of the intermediate students says, "Gee, Sifu, you only made fun of us twice today, you must be in a good mood!". Funny stuff! This is the kind of thing I just love about this place.

01:50 pm: differences and changes
Random dialogue during our last practice:

"Look, it's not because I enjoy being mean to you guys, I just want to see you get it right."
He sees a surprised and puzzled look on my face, a sort of 'What?! Yeah right!' kind of incredulous expression and he says, "No, that's not true, I DO enjoy being mean. But I still want you to get it right!"

Class .. a laugh riot. But I guess ya had to be there.

Second day doing weights at the gym. It's still difficult. Very difficult. But I feel like I'm making progress again in that, some things are easier. I guess it takes a while to calibrate oneself to various machines and the environment. Bit crowded today, so I had to do my warmup and stretching underneath a staircase. I felt like a troll under a bridge, charging everyone gold pieces to pass.

During the cardio bits, I think I may have hit my target heart rate for HIIT. You're supposed to be red-lining at the very least near the end of the workout, and I think, red lining in the middle. The difference this time, is I engaged the upper body with the upright levers as well. Boy, what a difference, even with the 'relaxed' HIIT schedule.

So hungry now, though. Even with a full lunch, still starving.

04:01 pm: cardio day
Today's cardio day. Went on the regular machines instead of the weird ones, and it seems to have gone better. I tried a 'relaxed' HIIT schedule of 30 seconds high activity/60 minutes low activity to start out with. I'm guessing this is still a little high, because even on the first 1-8 example workouts on Poiliquin's site, the low activity period is 2 minutes. I was still pretty drained, though. But I think I am STILL not working hard enough, as my heart rate was a little short. I'll have to get used to these machines, still.

One of the things I've been doing during warm ups is ballistic stretching, some of which mimics some of my longfist. I'm not sure ultimately how much it helps, but it SEEMS like my dot-choy (spinning backfist) is a little smoother, and I'm getting a little less dizzy while doing them. It's all subjective, though. The motion is smoother, but now I'm over-rotating when doing the stepping and spinning, which I guess might be okay if I'm planning on doing something else after the hit.

Things are looking up. Now if I could only consistently get up at 4am to do my stancework and stepping.

03:41 pm: lunchtime follies
Did some heavy weights for the first time in months. Wow. I'm weaker than I used to be, but not significantly so, maybe off by 10-20 pounds on some weights, and lifting the same on other weights. Managed to kick someone while doing ballistic stretches. Not too big a deal, he didn't punch me out or anything, so it's a big win! Didn't quite do a HIIT level workout on the cardio machines, as it's some kind of weird machine that would vary your stride length. Very weird. Too weird. I stopped halfway through. No punching bags at this gym, though.

If I can combine this with my morning workouts, where I do technique, stancework and stepping in the morning while doing traditional gym workouts at lunch, I should be good to go. Maybe even going to gym after class would be good too. Of course, it is still not enough. It never is.

08:53 pm: circles to beat straight lines
Sifu's back! Nothing like training with the guy to really step it up. We did a lot of stuff. The one thing that stuck with me is something we went over once, just once and then moved on.

The technique is related to our cheung anh choi, but instead of going in a straight line, you sort of elbow someone's guard hands and then open your elbow to smash a fist (hammer fist or leopard fist) into the face. Genius!!! And so simple. The key is to smash your elbow on the outside of the guard hands. I wouldn't try this with a guy already doing a bau jeurng though.

Great session!!

10:00 pm: So here it is. No building, no web site, and some weeks, no Sifu. We have one of the other instructors teaching this week, though. Very cool stuff. He had us do some ballistic stretches. Neat! I think I'll incorporate some of them.

There are some drills that folks do that are 'moderated' sparring. Not real sparring, just drills to get someone used to the idea of moving around, hitting a thinking target and being hit by someone. Things like 1 step/2 step/3 step sparring, continuous attacker vs defender, progressive resistance drills in grappling arts, that kind of thing. Today, we learned something even more basic than those.

First, we had the basic combination, 3 straight punches while someone holds out their hands as the target. Not hitting too hard, because obviously, there are a lot of little bones in the hands that you don't want to get broken, and they're not hardened like your knuckles are. So one guy stands there, the other guy does 10 sets of the combination, then the other guy goes. Then we step it up a little. One guy hits with the combo and the second he's done, he hits the other guy with the same technique and the other guy puts up his hands. We get into a nice groove with that, and Rodrigo (the instructor teaching us) has us kick it up another notch: has us moving around in random ways, to the side, circling, etc. Now it's MUCH harder. We have to adjust with each sequence and sometimes with each hit of the combo. Then he has us instead of just holding out our hands in one spot, he has us catch the front fist with the front hand, then the back fist with the back hand and then the front hand again. That way, the 'defender' is thinking about when the guy's hitting. THEN it's kicked up another notch. Now he wants us to aim for the head. Not hitting the head yet, but to change our intent so it's not just hitting the hands. This way, we're closing the range, so we know at what distance we can effectively punch. Lots harder. Lots harder! What the heck. Good stuff, though. Real good stuff.

Some of the things I need to work on for this drill. Keeping myself in a bladed stance. One side presented only. I have a terrible habit of going into a 3/4th stance, thus presenting more targets. I need to 'push' more with my back foot. I need to either rotate to keep up with the target/attacker or switch feet to keep my bladed orientation. Lots and lots of good stuff today. As always, good to be in class. I only wish I could go more often.

11:08 pm: ow
Everything except my hands hurt. Thank goodness for Iron Palm, huh? Forearms, upper body, lower body, everything's aching. Face has bruises. Body has bruises on top of bruises. Good god, make it stop!

The funny thing is, all the kung fu guys at this event has learned the lesson: don't box in boxing rules if you're not taking boxing lessons. Learned the lesson at the cost of a bloody nose and some VERY hard shots to the head. The hung gar guy was firing some horrifyingly hard blows, but the guy he was boxing was getting more shots in. A lot more shots in. The lee koon hung CLF guy got in some good shots too, but at the end, he was getting owned and paid for it. No more boxing rules for us. And all the KF guys did a heck of a whole lot better in the bareknuckle sparring fights. A LOT better. They were very surprised at themselves.

We had an MMA guy there who actually taught me a few good tricks. Which actually paid off, when I rolled someone over who was inside my guard for the first time in my life, EVER. I've never been able to do that.

There was a wing chun guy there, of the Chu Sau Lei lineage. Don't ever make one of these guys angry. They'll stick to you like fly paper and then pound your face in. No chain punching here. Just skill, good structure, listening, good stepping, and forward energy.

Once again, I had trouble with high kickers, since I haven't been doing drills against kicking, while I was fighting a TKD guy. So long as I closed with him, I was fine, and I could do some shorter range techniques on him. The problem was he kept ranging me, so I kept having to wait until he kicked, and either step a 45 around it or deflect it to close in.

It looks like my ground skills haven't deteriorated completely. They're still there, clinging for dear life. They were enough to get superior position on everyone except the MMA guy, who is actually a Pro fighter, and who submitted me so many times. I was really hoping there were other grapplers coming so I could play with more people, but .. them's the breaks. No sign of the kyokushin guys at all. Didn't even call.

But all in all, it was a blast. I'm happier now than I've been in oh, about a month's time.

07:48 am: day 2
It figures. I get up early to do my morning workout and halfway into it, right smack in the middle, the kids wake up and there is no one but me to take care of them. So I do. And I try to work out all the same, but it's hard. Difficult. Full of interruptions, concentration broken, workout chains broken .. these are all the reasons why I chose to wake up so early in the morning to do it. And now, no matter how early I wake up or what time I choose to do it, it's simply impossible to do.

I still got a few things done, though. My HIIT routine is nowhere near optimal yet, as I don't think I'm hitting my target heart rate, because I'm simply too tired by the middle of the routine to do any more pushups continuously at the kind of rate that would generates and sustains that kind of heart rate. At the end of the routine, it is difficult to even lift my arms, and it would be impossible to do even one set. I think that my performance during this time is a little better than yesterday. It is really difficult to tell, though.

Luckily, I have class today, so that fulfills some of the requirements. Some.

Hoping that most mornings won't be like this one. But even so, I'm energized and free of headaches and pain because of the workout, such as it was.

07:31 am: After a month of languishing and not getting more than 1 or 2 workout days, I decided to try out morning workouts at 5am. Some good qualitative results, but it looks like I will have to split up my workouts as I don't have enough time in the morning to complete everything, even if there were extenuating circumstances.

I was only able to complete the half of the form I've been working on, stance training at 3 minutes, walking about in kwantung, some stretching, and my HIIT routine using pushups and a relaxed HIIT schedule. I had to take care of some biologicals during the hour, so I definitely missed out on some time that I would have otherwise had. Also, it took me a few minutes to actually get up, get my clothes on, then start. I will have to split this up some, with a HIIT routine at my company's gym in the middle of the day for half an hour, then head to lunch. A possibility exists of doing a lot of incidental training while I'm doing work from home as well.

Right now though, it was a HUGE pain getting up. A huge pain. But I feel so good and energized and without headaches and physical pain that I see I'm going to have to do this every single day. I haven't felt this good since .. since my last good workout day!

07:50 am: morning training
Did my form for the morning on the advice of a friend. At every stage, I asked myself 'What am I doing? Waist movement to punch' or 'Stepping toward to hit'. It's too early for results just yet. Initial impressions from morning training is that it felt loose. Too loose. I guess I should mostly focus on syncing the mental and physical together. This is for this *move*. etc.

10:02 pm: teacher commentary
So I think I need to change my terminology when I talk to people. My conversation went something like this:

"Sifu, I wanted to talk to you about some fights I had .."
"You got into a street fight?"
"No, just some sparring!"

Anyway, I asked about having difficulties dealing with the WC guy in the second and third gates, and with his hand speed. After berating me for fighting people in other systems at my level (a year, beginner), he demonstrated a few conceptual things that we hadn't learned yet and a few things that we'd already learned. First off, we have some *very* long kicks. Learn to keep someone at range that way. And if he gets in, you can move at 45 degree angles and pound at him that way. The other thing was to roll elbows as a counter to the fast hands. The last two are things he hasn't taught us yet, the first is something I don't like doing. So, really, the training answer is 'keep coming to class. keep learning'. And that's fine with me.

I think it was great he was nice enough to take the time to demonstrate the concepts, though. Solutions within the system. Little peeks into what we can do.

Today, we did learn some stuff from second and third gate fighting, that would've helped with someone in close and with fast hands. The SAME drill I saw him do with Master Chan on someone's youtube video, when he was training in Montreal. It's good to see he shares everything with us. I don't think he likes me running around sparring with every Larry, Moe and Jack I can convince to spar with me at this point in my training, though. It is unfortunate that I like to spar.

03:51 pm: iron stuff
It looks like my various hand/wrist/etc injuries have been long done, so I'm back to doing iron palm on my morning and afternoon drives. It stings a little. I figure it will for a few days and then it's done, just like when I started. It's not just the physical hardening, it's the mental hardening and the body movement of penetrating into the target that I want to get out of it. I sense that my hands aren't as hard as they used to be. Time to toughen them up again.

10:13 pm: wow
It hurts to type. There are bruises on top of bruises. I think I have a black eye. Everything is sore. I took face shot after face shot during boxing rules with gloves from a 280 pound bruiser. One shot hit me in the jaw and snapped my head back. I swear to god for a second, everything went black, and then snapped back into focus and I was fighting again.

All in all, today's get together was AWESOME!! I cannot wait for the next one. So very satisfying. And, everyone got along. No one got mad when they took a shot. No one ran victory laps after a round. Egos didn't flare up. It was a pretty amazing experience.

The very first thing we did upon getting there, after getting warmed up, was bare knuckle sparring. My standup definitely needs some work. I'm not hitting where I think I should be hitting. Also, I had a lot of difficulty getting past the fast hands of the Wing Chun guy. The Lee Koon Hung CLF guy was seriously hell on wheels with his footwork, very very mobile, tough to deal with his opening strike, but at least I knew where he was going to be coming from, since we're distant cousins, style-wise.

We did a few training exercises, some two person drills, some Chi Sau, some push hands. Unfortunately, the only two person drill I remembered enough to make work was the moving three stars drill. I thought I remembered the ping-chop drill pretty well, but we just couldn't get it to work right. The Chi Sau was VERY interesting. It's basically a framework that you can impose your CLF on.

Now the bad. My boxing sucks. Seriously sucks. Very annoying. Yes, I can make all the stupid excuses like, he was much taller, he had much greater reach, he was heavier, blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, I have to face the fact that my boxing sucks. Oh well. I'm not a boxer, though. My kickboxing is a little better. I brought the pain with my leg kicks, since I knew my shins were more conditioned than the other guy's, so he eventually brought that leg back. I should have started on the other leg, ha ha! Also, whenever I kick, I leave my face open to be punched. Amazing.

Also, whenever someone got close, the grappling came out. Boom comes the single leg take down. ka-bam comes the over-under movement to take the back. Horrible. Even during boxing, I clinched. During our 4th round, no one was looking so I kept clinching and hitting the other guy on the head while he landed some juicy body shots on me. Fun times!

Humorous moments: gettine elbowed in the face during push hands with the LKH guy. Ow! WTF! It was an accident, but still pretty funny.

The good things are, I can still take a hit that nearly knocks me out, and still keep going. Even to the head.

So today, I am happier than I have been for a long time. And I can't wait for the next time, which should be in a few weeks. In the meantime, I'm trying to get together with a couple of local San Diego guys to spar. I don't know what they're like, so I have to be careful.

Happy happy so happy!

11:36 am: Had some practice footwork yesterday in the datacenter at work while waiting for some repairs. Stayed on the balls of my feet, alternating between front and back (great, I'm bouncing again), staying light before executing my entrance strategy. Our southern footwork has whichever foot that's moving first staying as low to the ground as possible. If at all possible, the moving foot has to be sliding. No wonder my workout shoes keep getting worn out on the balls of the foot. We slide across in the shuffle step. The tiles in the DC are pretty useful for this, since I can tell when I do my angle step, that I've actually stepped to the 45. A little harder to do when I'm trying to step in straight and angle my punches.

I'm still boggling about the genius of stepping straight in but still out of the center line and punching at an angle.

11:30 pm: Ugh. I think I'm sick. Displayed somewhat less energy in class.

Some important things to realize with this particular teacher. He's been teaching for a very long time, so if students aren't getting something, he's not going to sit there and make you do it a million times until everyone gets it right. He moves to the next thing. Personally, I would rather sit there and do it over and over and over and over and over until I got it right. I guess that gets boring and frustrating for many people. Especially if they think they're doing it right in the first place, no matter what the teacher says.

Some better things today. Minor improvements on the cross kick and resulting punch. Better springy motion in the first hit and springing away. We don't bounce around, exactly, we do stay on the balls of our feet, trying to stay light and mobile during the fighting. There is a lot of keeping up with your opponent, moving when he moves, then attempting to control him with your weapons and positioning.

There was one thing that jumped out at me. This was during the ping chop drill. The ping chop drill goes like this. You start out feet parallel and in a bow stance leaning to the left. Your right arm is sticking out to the front and your left arm is sticking out to the back. Classic longfist. Bring the front arm in for a gwahn-kiu (kick deflect) then bring it up and down for a gwah-choy (back fist), step forward with the right (straight leg) leg and at the same time, punch with the left hand while twisting one's waist into the step. Rinse, repeat for the next arm. Same with stepping backwards. Now, because I wasn't leaning into the bow stance all the way in, something wasn't apparent to me until my teacher pointed it out. The last punch, when you're leaning all the way into the bow stance actually means your head is out of the center line and your punch is coming in from a different angle. It's using angles without having to step at angles, even while your're stepping in a straight line towards your opponent.

GENIUS!!! There's apparently lots of stuff like that. The angle is very slight, but it is enough to avoid a punch and enough to get someone's weak/unprotected side.

But, it requires that my stancework be spot on. Otherwise, I'll get hit.

I mentioned the Wong Fei Hung tournament to Sifu and he said, "Frank Yee's people, eh?". Looks like he doesn't keep himself insulated.

Travels the world.