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WOD 8 and Some General Comments

I’m going to give you all a couple of days off…I’m heading out of town for a little vacation this weekend, and won’t have access to my computer Saturday or Sunday.

For today’s workout, PRACTICE.

It’s hard to dedicate oneself to practice sometimes.  For me, this mostly occurs when I don’t have clarity about why I’m doing it.  If I’m going back and forth in my head about my reasons for practicing, the deliberation stops me from doing anything.

Take the time to list the reasons you practice Bagua.  Really look at those reasons and get to know them.  See if there’s anything you missed.  Then, rate how fully you’ve realized those reasons in substantive form.  I mean, if you like Bagua for self-defense, how good are you really at self-defense?  Can you use Bagua to defend yourself?

Whatever the reasons, break them down.  Rate yourself on a 1-10 scale.  Then, write out what it would be like to be at a 10.  How would it look, feel, sound, taste, smell?  Go through all the senses.

Finally, what would it take for you to get to that place?  Make a plan.

Now you have a goal and motivation, not just for your daily practice, but for the effort you put into classes as well.

George always says “Have a GOAL for class.”  And it took me a while to understand that.  At first, I’d assign an arbitrary goal, like “be smoother,” or “be connected with whole-body power.”  While those goals were ok, what we did in class didn’t always lend itself to me realizing whatever particular goal I’d set for myself.

The process above approaches the idea of goal from a larger sense, but it can get just as specific once you break it down into the smaller steps needed to get to the big goal.  For me, this helped a lot.

Have a great weekend!

This entry was posted on November 16, 2007 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

12 Responses to “WOD 8 and Some General Comments”

  1. brrg says:
    November 21, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    Hello Josh,

    I looked at the blog recently and first want to say thanks for your WOD tips. The comments on goals are a good one as I typically don’t practice with any particular goal in mind. Maybe it is in one of the post and as I am joining late I may have missed it, but I have a question. Do you have a suggestion for how one can perform their own self evaluation? I guess this would have to be a strength and conditioning self-test versus Bagua or Xingyi specific. Or do you think just following along with the WOD would be sufficient.

    Thanks again,
    Steve

  2. jleeger says:
    November 21, 2007 at 7:37 pm

    Hi Steve,

    Thanks for the great question! Glad you’re checking the posts out.

    A good general guide for fitness, that you could perform at home without weights, would be:
    50 consecutive pushups
    10 consecutive pullups
    100 consecutive bodyweight squats
    12 consecutive chinups
    20 consecutive dips
    3 consecutive 30-second crunch holds (hold the up position of the crunch for 30 seconds)

    Don’t try to do them all in a row, but try them on different days, when you’re fresh, and after a good warmup of that area/movement. If you’re lacking in a certain area, you can focus on that in your workouts. Who knows, George might want to test everybody out on these over the course of various nights…

    The WODs thus far have been general conditioning. Later down the line I do plan on getting more focused on targeting specific movements/muscle groups on certain days.

    For an assessment of overall condition (including cardiovascular) you could also add a timed 1-mile run. Anything below 7 minutes is a good time to shoot for.

    Another good general test that includes a cardiovascular effort is to see how many burpees you can do in 5 minutes. The goal is 100, which is REALLY tough.

    That being said, stick with the workout of the day if you can. It will help to get you into general condition, and as we get more specific with movements/body parts, those will develop too…

    I hope this helps! If you need any other info or advice, just let me know!

    Josh

  3. george says:
    November 26, 2007 at 10:53 am

    Josh - that’s another great list above. You should put that up in a separate post or something. I know a lot of people wonder what they should shoot for in terms of general conditioning goals like this. Now they have a great easy list of the minimums.

    Funny too, looking at that list, I’m pretty sure I could do everything on it except the pull ups/chin ups parts. Something I need to work on. I’m going to have to start doing bodyweights rows under my table or something to compensate…

  4. george says:
    November 26, 2007 at 10:57 am

    Actually, reading the rest, there’s no way I’m doing a 7 minute mile in my current condition either. I should try the 5 minute burpee challenge though, sounds fun. Should be a great thing to do on a Monday night… MmmuuuuWahahahahahhahaaa!!!!!!

  5. jleeger says:
    November 26, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    Oh yeah, it’s fun! Lots of stars in your vision, nausea, and total body soreness! Enjoy!

  6. jleeger says:
    November 26, 2007 at 12:37 pm

    A lot of what’s going into this is pretty close to the stuff that’s in the e-book I’m working on right now. But I’ll put together a separate PDF doc that outlines conditioning “rules” for the school, pulling from the different posts on the site.

  7. george says:
    November 27, 2007 at 2:05 am

    Josh -

    I just got home after Monday night class. We did the 5 minute burpee thing. I got to 90 burpees in the five minutes, then I finished up and did the 10 more after the bell for 100. That was definitely pretty insane, but I loved it. Its such a condensed workout, sore muscles and serious cardio kick in the butt!

    I didn’t do them with push ups, just down - out - in - up and repeat.

    I think everyone liked ‘em. Thanks.
    George

  8. jleeger says:
    November 27, 2007 at 12:22 pm

    Glad to hear it! 90 is awesome George!

  9. george says:
    November 27, 2007 at 11:55 pm

    Out of curiosity, what’s your max that you’ve done in 5 minutes, if you’ve ever really tried?

    I’m going to have to keep doing this till I definitely get to 100. It shouldn’t be that much longer to get there.

  10. jleeger says:
    November 28, 2007 at 12:19 am

    Hi George,

    Not sure what I’d do right now. I’ll let you know tomorrow!

    A year ago I did 100 in 4:30, and stopped right there. I felt like I was going to puke for about ten minutes afterward…hahaha…

    Since it’s only a five minute workout, it’s something you can do every day. But try to vary the intensity and the tempo, and take a day off now and then. It’s tough!

    Josh

  11. george says:
    November 28, 2007 at 12:39 am

    You know what, even though I’m pretty sore after doing it yesterday, I actually really feel good. I think it helped to balance some things out in my body or something. I was just running through some bagua at home after the kids went to sleep and noticed it, I guess during the day I just noticed the soreness! LOL!

    I am going to do that more often though. Every Monday night’s class definitely, and hopefully once or twice more a week.

  12. jleeger says:
    November 28, 2007 at 12:21 pm

    3x per week is probably a max. 2x per week is a good target. Give yourself plenty of time to recuperate from that.

    I’ll list a separate post around this, but just say here that it’s a big challenge to sort out training different strength qualities in the same “phase” and still get good results.

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