Fall comes to Bellingham

Yet again, it's been a hell of a long time since my last post, blah blah blah. I'm not like those people who can have a marvelously relevant epiphany after every workout. Well, I might be, but I certainly can't put any such insights into words with any particular ease. I just know that after doing the standing strengthening postures for a while I feel more solid and strong, and after circle-walking for an hour my movements seem more fluid and graceful, and after doing hundreds of strikes I feel a greater connection to the rest of my body and know how to use it more efficiently.

Consistency has always been my weak point. My wife says that I'm a "binge martial artist", by which she means that I overexert myself one day and spend the next several days too tired to do anything. I burn up all of my enthusiasm in the first day and get frustrated that I can't do as much for the rest of the week. So for some time now I've been trying to take things rather slower. Start small, and ease into progressively more demanding exercises. Lately, I've been focusing more on the strengthening postures, which for me at this point is effectively just the Lion posture. I probably go lower into the stance than necessary, but I find it convenient for leg conditioning, since the straining of the arms somewhat distracts me from the complaints I get from my legs anytime I do the horse stance alone.

One thing that I haven't been doing a lot of is circle-walking, which is shameful, considering I'm doing bagua. I do find it somewhat tedious, but it is still quite a workout. I just need to get into the habit of devoting more time to it than I usually do. My original (and somewhat unrealistic) goal was to eventually spend three hours every day training bagua. We'll see how far we get this time around.

I do have some other things to share, like my plans to join a local martial arts school, and my recent vacation to Pennsylvania, but those will have to wait for another time.

3rd hour

April was not a particularly good month for bagua. Between allergies, the flu, an infected tooth, and an extended busy period at work, I have not had much energy for much of anything. I think the most significant bagua-related thing I did took place when I was down with the flu. I was feeling cold, rather weak, and I couldn't feel my qi, which normally requires no effort. Deciding that my qi was hard at work fighting off the stupid virus, I decided to stimulate it by doing some consistent standing-strengthening in Lion, which is usually enough to give me a good, active qi-flow sensation. Further experimentation is needed to determine if it really had much of an effect, but the objective fact remains that I got over this flu in four days, whereas it bedeviled my wife for nearly two weeks. Then again, my immune system has always been pretty good.

So, as far as current training goes, today I was inspired to get back on the circle and managed a full hour for only the third time so far. Still rather sore from that. Aside from that, not much to report, aside from the fact that I've been spending a good deal of time watching the videos, particularly the Lion Sweeping Strike Applications DVD. Seems I learn something new every time I watch it. In regard to today's somewhat anomalous turning practice, the inspiration largely came from Jim in Tennessee and his recent post on turning the circle. Honestly, if you're reading my sorry excuse for a blog, you really ought to read his. He's got plenty of good advice, and I consider the archives of his blog from over the course of the last several years to be a valuable resource that I often return to for inspiration.

Winter trials

Bringing to mind my previous post, wherein I mention how I too often let my life interfere with my training, this past week finds me stubbornly pushing on with the bagua practice despite a particularly annoying patch of "life" recently. My car is in the shop, so getting that fixed, getting it paid for and dealing with the logistics of how I get to work have occupied more time that I'd like.

I'm still trying to work into a solid training groove, back up to the level I was at several months ago. Might take another few weeks, unless I up the pace, but I feel like I'm getting there. Today had a good amount of solid training. Didn't really get any time on the circle, but I made up for that by giving the sweeping strikes some attention, particularly the capturing sweeping strike, which I haven't worked with as much. In that regard, today might be a good model for days to come, at least for the time being. For the capturing strike I did five-minute sessions each for the stationary, one-step, two-step and three-step drills, for a total of 20 minutes of work with the capturing sweeping strike. Additionally, I spent 5 minutes a piece on stationary drills for the rising sweeping and inward sweeping strikes, which is rather cursory, but as I said, I've spent more time working with them in recent weeks and months. I may continue this through future training sessions, focusing on one strike while doing "maintenance work" on the others, at least until my strength and endurance are at sufficient levels to do justice to all three in a day, or even as far as being able to work on more than one palm in a given training session.

The most stimulating part of today's training was almost certainly the time I spent doing forms work. Up until recently I haven't really paid a great deal of attention to the forms, but in recent weeks I've spent a few minutes here and there doing the "moving with the force" sweeping form at the slow-paced learning speed. Today I decided to dedicate more time to it, and to start into the "practicing with power" stage. It's definitely more of a workout, but it's also a good deal of fun. A large part of the challenge (and the fun) of doing the forms is thinking of them in terms of combat applications, trying to visualize an opponent, trying to predict how an opponent would behave, and determining how you would utilize the basic tools of the forms to repond effectively. I have to say, it really makes the art come alive when you engage it like that. It's even more fun and effective if you have a training dummy sparring partner handy, but I am not so lucky at the moment.

Thus encouraged by today's training, I'll be making an effort to reproduce sessions like these every day for the rest of the week, paying particular attention to the forms work. I think that's just what I needed to reinvigorate my regimen.