January 8, 2008 by george.

Being Present.

One must be able to fully concentrate, fully focus, be fully aware and have the ability to be fully in the moment. This is both a both a trained skill, and a prerequisite to long term success in the arts.

All of us have had the experience growing up through grade school while sitting in one’s English class, and just zoning out. Or you might spend that class time doodling, writing notes, or staring out the window. Many people continue to go through life like that.

Examples:

Coming to class and not really paying attention to what you are doing or what you should be doing. I have often seen students come to class and then proceed to “play around.” The teacher might demonstrate one technique and explain how everyone should practice it, then a student might do that once or twice, maybe not even try, then proceed to just dawdle around or do whatever it is he/she might want to practice at the time instead of what the teacher is trying to get across. Not only is this disrespectful to the teacher, it is disrespectful and causes other students to not be able to pay attention. It is also hurting the student themselves. One thing that I have noticed that often separates the experts from the masses is attention to detail, repetition, and willing mastery of the basics. Its not the ability to do “advanced” or flowery, cool techniques that defines one as having become expert, it is their mastery of the basics. There can never be too much attention and focus paid to what one is doing at that moment.

When practicing, one’s mind should be fully present on what one is doing. One should not be daydreaming of the past or future. One should not be distracted by what happened at work or on the way to class. One should concentrate. Awareness. Focus.

One should not bring baggage to class or to practice…

I refer to this in two ways, one is personal, emotional, and psychological baggage. This is one of the most difficult things to accurately access and deal with in practice. It is often a long term project. It is also often never even considered by most teachers and practitioners. It is my belief that the Internal Martial Arts should be beneficial to one’s entire being and life. The mind does not get free escape from this attention. It is often that one’s own “issues” have a deep effect on the way they train, the way they deal with their classmates, the way they carry themselves in life, the way they approach fighting and naturally the way they approach their life.

The second is one’s past experience. Although previous training and athletic ability can be a great boon to one’s success in martial arts, it can also be an impediment. Although many people treat the old maxim as cliche’, there is great wisdom in the need to recognize how one should “empty one’s cup so that it may be filled” in approach to every class and every lesson. It is often seen that a student will bring their ego to the school and approach every lesson with something akin to “Oh yeah, that’s just like this from xyz martial art” or “I like to do it this way instead.” While some people make use of a learning mechanism wherein they need to connect everything they do new, with something they have done. This can only get you so far. There will inevitably be differences, its best to take off those blinders and see the whole picture, clearly, as its presented to you.

I’m sure everyone has also had the experience of sitting in that lecture in college and then walking out of the lecture hall having taken in nothing. Your mind was somewhere else or you just couldn’t concentrate long enough to absorb what was being presented. In a college lecture you might be able to ask your friend for the class notes. In the traditional internal martial arts, as my teacher would often remind me, there are many times where you might see something or hear something just once. If you are not present, if you are not aware and focused enough to pick it up, then that is just something you might never get.

Why limit yourself by not being there, in class or in life?

Posted in Xingyiquan, Baguazhang, Training, General Info | 6 Comments »

January 7, 2008 by jleeger.

Good morning Zong Wu Men!

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope the holidays were full of cheer.  Now its time to get back to business.  Since it is a new year, let’s take this time to set some solid goals for ourselves.  Make some serious goals for yourself regarding your practice and fitness level, then stick to them!  Be realistic.  If you can only spare 1/2 hr per day for training, that’s what you have.  If that’s the case, then here’s a good program for you -

Warmup with Jiben Shoufa

Tiangan practice - practice 10 Tiangan each side, for every Tiangan you know.  In between sets, do as many pushups as you can.  Stop shy of failure.

Houtian practice - practice 10 “steps” of every houtian you know.  Between forms, do as many consecutive bodyweight squats as you can.  Again, stopping shy of failure.

Xiantian - practice your circling at the end, as your “cooldown.”  If you have time left after all that,  do as many situps as you can and stretch out.

Get to work!

Posted in Training | 2 Comments »

December 26, 2007 by jleeger.

Go to class tonight!  That’s all!

Posted in Training | 1 Comment »

December 25, 2007 by jleeger.

Sorry!  I missed Sunday and yesterday…been busy hanging out with the family on the holidays.

Tuesday is officially a Max Strength Lower Body day.  If you’re still up out there on the East Coast, and want to burn off some of that Christmas dinner, do this:

5 sets of 5 Squats, with the heaviest weight you can manage

4 sets of 8 RDL, same as above

20 Side Planks, 20 Bicycle Situps, 20 Supermans

Wall sit for time

Rest 2-3 minutes between sets, and practice your houtian during that time.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Posted in Training | 1 Comment »

December 22, 2007 by jleeger.

Go to class today!  If you didn’t make it, practice on your own at home…no workouts.  If you feel like you need extra work, aren’t sore, and have the energy, work on the most challenging exercise for yourself.

Posted in Training | 2 Comments »

December 21, 2007 by jleeger.

Max Strength Upper Body Day

1-arm Pushups - 2-5 sets of 3, 2-3 minutes rest - Do one warmup set of regular pushups, rest 2-3 minutes, do  one set of side-to-side pushups, rest, and then do two to five sets of one-arm pushups.  You can make them easier by giving yourself a leverage advantage (do them on a chair seat, or step, etc…).

Chinups - 3 sets of max, 2-3 minutes rest - chinups have your palms facing you.  If you don’t have anyplace to do chinups, do the Chair Rows that Steve Cotter does in the video George posted.

Handstands - 3 sets of max (reps or time), 2-3 minutes rest

Biceps/Triceps Superset - 3 sets of max reps, no rest - Use a band, dumbbell, kettlebell, etc, to do biceps curls, as soon as you’re done, do overhead triceps extensions.

Core - again, you should have done your core stability work in your warmup.  Add three sets of 20 each of these - side planks for reps,  superman reps, v-ups

foam roll, stretch…get ready for class tonight!

Posted in Training | No Comments »

December 20, 2007 by jleeger.

Lower body explosive day…sorry it’s out so late!  I don’t advise doing this workout on Friday or Saturday if you’re planning on going to class those days.  Class can be explosive enough without adding to it.  Wait till you have a day between the workout and class.  Sunday will do.

Here it is:

Warmup (I don’t include a specific one, but have gone over the concept in a past post)

5 sets of 3 each - Box Jump, Vertical Leap, Long Jump - record your best distance for each.  Take 2 minutes of rest between each set of three.  During your rest period, practice one Houtian form for 1  minute, and rest for the other minute.

1-Leg Rear Lunge with Knee Lift - 3 sets of 10, 1 minute rest - get some kind of weight to make this challenging.  Your standing leg should be on a step.  A stair in the house will do (it’s what I use).  Step back off the step with the moving leg and go down into your lunge.  Keep your body upright.  As you step up, bring the back leg all the way up, bringing the knee as high as you can in front of you.  Don’t put the foot back down till you go back into your next lunge.

Band Pullthroughs, or Straight-leg DL - 3 sets of 12 - 1 minute rest- - if you have a band that gives you enough resistance, wrap it around the handle of a dumbbell and put the dumbbell on the other side of a SECURELY closed door.  Pull the band through your legs and up.  You can bend your knees a little, but try to rely on your hamstrings, glutes, and lower back for this exercise.  Similar to a kettlebell swing, which is a good replacement, if you have one of those handy…

Weighted Abs - do 3 sets of 15 of your favorite weighted abs exercise.  Remember - you should already have done your core stabilization work in the warmup!

Cool down, foam roll, and stretch….

Posted in Training | No Comments »

December 19, 2007 by jleeger.

Wednesday is a day off.  Practice your Bagua!

Posted in Training | 2 Comments »

December 18, 2007 by jleeger.

Alright, Tuesday is here, and hopefully George didn’t kick your butt too hard last night.  As promised, tonight is Max Strength for the lower body.  The trick to building max strength is using a weight that you can only lift 1-5 (or 6) times.  For most, 1-leg squats should do the trick.  Check out Steve Maxwell’s form on the YouTube vids George posted.

Superset the two adjacent exercises in the list below.  Do 4 sets of as many as you can of each, with 1-2 minutes of rest beween supersets.

1-Leg Squats and

1-Leg Hip Raise, foot on a chair or bench (if you have a stability ball at home, do it like this: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.oxygenmag.com/content/oxy53/ham_curls.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.oxygenmag.com/main.php%3Fpage%3D1%26id%3D282&h=448&w=247&sz=25&hl=en&start=35&um=1&tbnid=Ah5oh55uYnWXgM:&tbnh=127&tbnw=70&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhamstring%2Bcurl%2Bexercise%26start%3D20%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN)

Odd-Object Rear Lunge, front foot elevated - Put your front foot on a platform of some sort.  A step works for me.  Lunge backward with the other foot.  Keep your upper body upright.  Grab anything that’s heavy in your house so you can only get through 5-6 ea. leg.  It’s tough…for me, I have to wear my weight vest and hold both of the 50lb dumbbells I have…

and

1-leg RDL - again, grab something that makes this more challenging from a resistance perspective.

Finish yourself off with wall-sits for time.  Do three sets of as long as you can manage, resting 2 minutes in between sets.  During those two minute rest intervals, you can work your abs.  Do the following three exercises during each rest interval and one more set at the end:

Bicycle Situps - 20 ea.

Sprinter Situps - 20 ea.

Superman - 20

Posted in Training | No Comments »

December 17, 2007 by jleeger.

Monday is here.  Hopefully you’re planning on going to class tonight.  If not, plan on practicing at home.  After your practice, you can do this GPP workout:

20 Burpees  w/ Jump  and Pushup

2 minute wall-sit

1 minute bear-crawl

50 bodyweight squats

10 pullups

repeat 3-5x, depending on your level of fitness.

Posted in Training | No Comments »

December 15, 2007 by jleeger.

Here’s the plan.

From here on out, I’m going to structure workouts the following way:

Mondays = day off, presumably you’re heading to class, and George is going to kick your butt anyway.  No extra workout is needed.

Tuesday = Lower body Max Strength - since Monday with George is usually a GPP-type workout, we can focus on the Max Strength efforts on Tuesday.

Wednesday = Day Off = practice on your own, and go to class

Thursday =  Explosive Lower Body (since we don’t want to do this type of work tomorrow, and 48 hours should be enough recover time from Tues.  If you find that it isn’t, let me know)

Friday =  Upper Body Max Strength Effort

Saturday and Sunday = Practice practice practice

That being said - GO TO CLASS TODAY!  If you didn’t make it, PRACTICE!

Have fun everyone!

Posted in Training | 1 Comment »

December 14, 2007 by george.

Sorry, couldn’t figure out how to embed two videos in one post without it changing the margins of the written posting area…

Here’s the one with the jumping single leg squats to a table and down.

Posted in Training | 2 Comments »

December 14, 2007 by george.

Here are some pretty impressive “feats” of strength performed by Steve Cotter. I have no knowledge of the man other than through the internet, so I’m not trying to promote the guy or anything, but these are some impressive abilities he has gained. Steve Cotter is also an internal martial artist who trains xingyi, bagua and taiji and won a number of full contact competitions with his xingyi skills. Check out the jumping splits on the bosu balls and the jumping pistols from the floor to a table.

Posted in Training | 1 Comment »

December 13, 2007 by jleeger.

Here’s a good template to use for your daily workout:

Muscle Activation (more about that later)

Core Stabilization (low-back exercises, any static abdominal exercises, etc.)

General Warmup

Main Workout

Foam Rolling

Stretching

We haven’t discussed stretching a lot, but it is something that is critical, and something you should be doing, if not every day, at least after every time you work out.  Research has shown that static stretching before activity leads to decreased muscle-firing rates, so if you do static stretches, save those for after everything else.

Here’s the workout today:

10 Tiangan your choice - go as slow as you can

50 Pushups

10 Jiben Shoufa your choice - again, as slow as you can, focus on the movement

20 Pullups

30 Sprinter Situps

10 1-leg squats ea. leg

Repeat 3x.  Rest as much as you need to, and change the tiangan and jiben each round.  After all that, take a few deep breaths and do:

2 minute static  San Ti Shi hold.  Try to get your posture perfect - sit back as far as you can, let your low-back flatten out like a sitting bear’s, the top of your head is pulled straight up, your body is completely relaxed, with all your weight resting on one leg.

Foam roll yourself, stretch, and relax!

After all that, take a day off tomorrow!

Posted in Training | 2 Comments »

December 12, 2007 by jleeger.

Hi everyone,

Just a quick note on program design again.  I’ve been reading a lot about the Russian Conjugate Method of periodization recently (and actually started implementing it two weeks ago).  It looks to be a highly effective method, applicable to most athletes.  Basically, it looks like this:

Day 1 - Max Strength Upper Body Day

Day 2 - Explosive/Jump Lower Body Day

Day 3 - Off

Day 4 - Endurance Strength Upper Body Day

Day 5 - Max Strength Lower Body Day

Days 6 and 7 - Off

The schedule above is good for the beginning of such a program.  As the “season” moves on, it would become more intricate, incorporating GPP days, agility/speed drills, etc.

This post is inspired by a conversation George and I had about strength.  I can’t remember the exact quote, but Luo Laoshi told George that the stronger person has a better chance of victory.  I think if you combine strength, speed, and power development, in a system such as the above, you put yourself in a much better place than others.

For today, let’s have a Max Strength Upper Body day -

Get a good warmup - 20 burpees will do

5 Sets of 3-5 reps - 1-arm Pushup

5 Sets of 3-5 reps - Pullups (if you can do more, try adding weight to your pullup)

3 sets of 10-15 - Regular Pushups

3 sets of 8-12 - Chinups

2 sets of 12-15 - Scarecrows, or Band Chest Expansions, or Reverse Flyes

Abdominals - 2 sets of 20, of four of your favorite ab exercises

Stretch!

Posted in Training | No Comments »