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.

Winter work

Wow, it's been almost half a year since I last posted. If it wasn't already apparent, I have an annoying habit of letting work and my own laziness interfere with my extra-curriculars. I used to be online all the time, but these days I'm rarely at my computer. My bagua practice tapered off a bit back in September, thanks to an extended period of time in which I worked a lot of overtime, which is a shame, since it seemed to be progressing pretty well at the time. I've tried to keep up with it over the last several months, but it's been intermittent at best. And, of course, I obviously practice more than I post on here. Perhaps I should figure out the "mobile posting" settings for this blog setup, so I can add posts from my phone while I'm at work with nothing else to do.

Happily, this return to my journal coincides with a renewed effort in my bagua practice. I've been trying to steadily increase my level of conditioning in recent weeks, that way I can more easily jump back into practice. On a side note, I've also been spending some time doing tai chi, mostly for stress-reduction purposes (I need to stop reading about politics).

So, I have something resembling a game plan for structuring the time I spend with my bagua practice every day. I'm implementing it in a small scale, which I'll gradually increase, but my initial mid-term goal is to eventually spend about three hours per day on bagua practice. Spend a few minutes doing standing postures, one hour on strike training, one hour for forms work and one hour of circle-turning. That's a tall order at the moment, since I'm out of shape in general and have not yet gotten to the point where I'm working with the bagua for extended periods of time. My bagua practice today lasted from about 10am to 1pm, though there were significant periods of rest interspersed throughout. But, as always, it's a work in progress.

Kicking it up a notch

So, following some kind advice from a YSB guru in Colorado, I spent today trying out a reformatted form of my standard workout.

Suggestions for standing: 5 min. per side, total of 20 min., new posture
What I managed: Lion representative posture -- 5 min. per side (continuous) for a total of 10 min.
Verdict: Amazed I could actually do that. Shooting for 20 next time. Must learn more standing postures.

Suggestions for striking: Line-drill (1-step method) a strike (ex. "rising sweeping strike") for 8 min. (rather than counting repetitions), rest, drill a second strike 8 min., rest, etc. for 5 different strikes.
What I managed: Line-drilling the rising sweeping strike (in my tiny living room, no less!) for 8 min. Rest...yeah.
Verdict: My endurance really needs work. That aside, it was a good experiment. Must learn some new strikes.

Suggestions for circle-turning: convince myself I have to turn for 40 min. + 5 min. warm-up and cool-down.
What I managed: 40 min. New record. And boy do my arms feel weird. They're not quite sore, exactly. They feel kinda like coiled steel springs.
Verdict: I can do this. Holy crap.

Suggestions for forms practice: do the forms slowly, but still fast enough that the feet/hands, step/strike arrive simultaneously.
What I managed: None yet today. Still resting up from the above workout. Still on the list, however.

The end result is that, thanks to this advice, I've done a much more strenuous (and yet much more rewarding) training session than any thus far. And while I'm still coming up a bit short, I have an immediate goal to strive for, and some direction for future training. All in all, I am very optimistic, and I'm having a good deal of fun. Whether my body will agree with me when I have to wake up for work tonight is another story.

Additionally, I downloaded an interval timer app for my android. I rather like it. The ability to create a custom workout of any length and of numerous sessions is incredibly useful. It is also a good external motivator. As Jim in TN remarked a while back, interval timers are "merciless".

Let's just see if I can do this again tomorrow.

On-the-job training

Since it's been some time since my last post, this one will cover several topics. I wish I'd take the time to write down my thoughts when I have them, since it's not easy to remember everything I've done and thought in the last month or so. It would be easier if I took the trouble to figure out how to update this thing from my phone while sitting bored at work, since that's typically when I am most thoughtful about martial arts (when I can least do anything about it).

First order of business: upon looking over my previous posts from the last near year I realized that one thing may not be fully clear for anyone who is actually reading through these. This is the fact that, while when I began this journal I was still working on the dragon system of Yin style bagua, I have for the last several months been working fully with the lion system. There are two main reasons for this: first, because according to He Jinbao the lion system is typically taught first due to the fact that it's practices are most efficient for developing the body, and second, because most of the people in the world who are doing Yin style bagua are doing lion, meaning that if I want to interact with other YSB practitioners and be able to get some decent feedback from experienced people I should be practicing what they're practicing. So, lion it is.

One brief note, explaining the title of this post, is my happy epiphany that there are quite a few opportunities for me to train while I'm at work. Since my job generally involves me sitting around bored for hours on end it seems that would be a foregone conclusion. And, for when I'm not alone at work, I've discovered that there is just enough room in the bathroom to accomodate stationary striking drills. On a good night, I can get in about half a dozen sets of strikes before I ever even get home to do my "real" training. This is good, as it spreads out my training a bit, so that when I train after work I have the time and energy to devote to more things, having gotten a lot of the striking drills out of the way. Normally, I'd have to prioritize more, either by doing all things superficially, one thing intensively or a few things somewhat seriously. This arrangement makes such prioritizing less necessary.

As far as the strike training itself goes, I am noticing progress. Though I'm not always training every day, sorry to say, I am doing it much more consistently than in the past, and that has shown a significant payoff. In my recent experience, I can defnitely attest to the fact that doing a little bit each day is much better than training incredibly hard one day only to take the next week off. This is true if for no better reason than (to inject some psychology into this) the fact that in this particular comparison, say, ten days of light training equals ten nights of post-training sleep, versus only one. Sleep is vitally important for allowing the brain some downtime to go back over the new neural pathways that you blazed throughout the day and solidify them. So, again, every day that you do even a little bit of training, even if it's miniscule, is still preferable to a day of nothing.

Anyway, tangent aside, the strike training is going well. In terms of strike training, I've been working exclusively with the rising sweeping strike, mostly stationary up until recently. I am much more confident in my ability to correctly execute this strike according to the requirements. Last time I posted, I figure that within a given set of strikes I could do about 70-80% of them with a feeling of full-body, connected power and stability. Now, it's more like 90-95%. Bearing in mind all the while that I am most likely making many, many mistakes, which could only be corrected by He Jinbao or many of the people who have been doing this for several years, I still think I'm on the right track. The strikes feel comfortable and easy, but solid and full of strength, making full use of the waist. I imagine that I'm getting close to the point where my progress will slow until I can get correction and feedback. For now, though, I'm continuing to develop the rising sweeping strike as best I can. I've begun training the strike in some of the other methods. There are few convenient places to do the 1-step drill, so I don't do it often. I enjoy doing the 2-step method, since it is vigorous, slightly more interesting than the stationary drills, and can easily be done with minimal space. The 3-step method at this point is a bit advanced for me, I think, and I will hold off on it a bit until I've put more time into the 2-step. In the stationary drills, now that I've become more confident and consistent in the quality of the strikes, I've begun paying more attention to "internalizing" the power, turning the large, gross physical movements into something smaller and more subtle. I can see that in demonstrating the strike in the videos, He Jinbao exaggerates the movements a bit.

Circle-turning is another point that often comes up. When I'm at work and need something to occupy my mind, I often use my phone to get online and read the excellent blog of Jim in TN, whose experiences and insights have proven invaluable if for no other reason than to keep me motivated. In his blog, Jim places a good deal of emphasis on circle-turning, something that is generally scarce in my own pseudo-daily practice. In trying to find ways to optimize my turning, I've considered several strategies, most of which show up at one time or another in Jim's blog. Initially, he would keep track of the number of revolutions he made while on the circle, though in time he more or less abandoned that approach as somewhat arbitrary. Arguably, the best thing you can do when endeavoring to walk the circle is simply to do it until your legs are sore and your arms feel like they're about to fall off, without considering such arbitrary benchmarks as minutes and revolutions. The important things are to 1) maintain the proper focused mindset and 2) ensure that all of the body's various structural requirements are being met at all times throughout the practice. On the other hand, in thinking about this last night, I wondered if there might not be some value to the revolution-counting, at least at an initial stage. Though perhaps an ultimately sub-optimal strategy for long-term practice, in my meager experience I've found that the counting is useful, both for keeping my mind occupied and for measuring progress. If my mind is kept from getting bored, I've noticed, it has less time to complain about how tired and uncomfortable it is. And while the need for clearly delineated progress strikes me as a very "Western" mentality, akin to the need for belt ranks in many forms of martial arts, the fact is that I find great enjoyment in the visible, steady and solid (if incremental) accretion of skill. Maybe that's why psychology was so much fun for me. So I'll try out the revolution-counting, at least until my endurance for circle-turning has gone up and I'm more comfortable with doing it daily and often.

There remains very little else to say today, except that I'm really enjoying this art gradually unfold for me. As always, I might be doing it a bit faster, harder or more diligently, but the enjoyment is there all the same.

Little by little

So while circle-turning today I managed to hit the 30-minute mark for the first time. I feel very pleased with myself. Not too bad, considering I was still a bit sore from yesterday's workout.

Yang Rising

Today has been an excellent training day, by virtually every measure I have. I ascribe most of it to the break in the weather, which as afforded me some much-needed sunlight, which means more energy, more power, and more motivation. Training in the last month has been mostly hit-or-miss, owing initially to a nasty cold and some unwanted shoulder tension, followed by a long stretch of inexplicable depression. Despite all that, there has been training, however sporadic, which until now has not translated into an equal amount of blogging. Much has been learned, however.

First, I have had first-hand experience in why excess tension is undesirable in the internal martial arts, such as bagua. In bagua, at least in the lion system, power is generated through the waist and is expressed in the hands, as opposed to being generated solely by muscle power in the arm itself. When I was dealing with the large knot of tense muscle taking up residence in the vicinity of my scapula I noticed a severe degredation of that expression of power. By now I've gotten the whole "power generated by the waist" thing pretty much down, though not perfect, and the strikes I was executing with my right arm felt very solid, and I could clearly feel the wave of kinetic energy flowing in a mostly unbroken path from waist to palm. In the left arm, however, I noticed just as clearly that the power was not going any farther than my shoulder--just a dead stop. So, much of my focus earlier this month was getting rid of that knot of tension, through a combination of massage, hot showers and qigong (dissolving method). This is a problem that has come up before in my bagua practice, and hopefully I'll figure out how to nip it in the bud before the next time. This will likely involve periodic conscious relaxation (as I get tense easily if I'm not aware of what my body is doing) and taiji. I also really ought to look into the qigong massage materials I have.

So, back to today. As I said, it's been a good training day. I've been focusing at least half of my practice time on standing for development, and thus far today I've exceeded my previous record for total time spent standing. Turning was more difficult. I was very determined to go as long as I could, powering through the complaints of my arm muscles, and turned for what felt like an age, though as I discovered it ended up being only 15 minutes. The problem of my weak arms is becoming less problematic, thanks to the standing. Now, the main issue is my weak will, which is still easily distracted.

As far as striking drills, I didn't really set any records today. I can do a couple thousand in a day if I push myself, but I haven't really been focusing on strikes recently, being more in favor of the developmental exercises. Regardless, I did put in several hundred stationary reps of the rising sweeping strike, and moved on from there to test out some of the more advanced drills. I have to say, for some reason I really seem to enjoy the two-step or "box-stepping" drills. Maybe just because it's slightly new, or less tedious than the stationary drills, or perhaps just because it feels more like how bagua is supposed to feel, when you're striking and also moving. Whatever the case may be, there will be many more of those in the future.

Also spent some time feeling out the Lion's sweeping strike "Moving with the Force" form. I'd played around with this a little bit a couple years ago, but coming back to it with a fresh eye is making me see how awkward and ungainly I still am with it. This will take some time, but with this, at least, I am patient. I never really intended to seriously delve into the forms without first getting a solid grounding in the strikes and their various drilling methods.

One last observation I can make at this point is that even though I have done little training that could be considered strenuous, let alone "intensive," there has been some brief progress, I've noticed. It does seem to be the case that a little bit of practice done on a daily basis is more productive than one intense session every other week. But then again, most people probably already knew this.

As one final note, I did recently manage to procure two new Yin style bagua dvd's: the "seizing & grasping applications" dvd and the "kicking and footwork" dvd. Not sure I'm ready to get into most of this stuff, but any glimpse of Yin style bagua in action is well worth the viewing, and is sure to give my mind plenty of interesting new things to work through. Still need to get my hands on the full set of Lion system dvd's, as well as the new circle-turning dvd. I'm looking forward to the upcoming straight sword dvd as well, though I'm not in any position to be attempting that. Unfortunately, that's not likely to stop me.

Interruptions

Training in the past week has unfortunately been somewhat sparse, owing to a trifecta of physical ailments: first massive leg cramp in over a year (thanks to dehydration), tension in my left shoulder muscles that feels like it's pinching a nerve, and a nasty cold (which probably contributed to the dehydration). I've gotten in a token amount of standing, striking and turning, but nothing substantial. I don't really have much strength at the moment, as it all seems to be focused inward on recuperation. I'm doing taiji more often, and I think that's helping. It may take a couple more days to fully get this out of my system, but I intend not to let this little speed bump alter my forward momentum. After so many years of failing to keep to the training regimen, I feel confident in my ability to keep it up now. It's like they say, "fall down seven times..."