2010 Lenten Challenge

[RickMatz]

Every year, I throw out the Lenten Challenge to my martial arts buddies. It has nothing to do with Christianity or religion. We are simply using this time as a convenient reminder to rededicate ourselves to our training. It’s kind of hard to miss either Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras, the last day before Lent, which is also Paczki Day!) or Easter Sunday (Bunnies, candy, colored eggs; that stuff). Several of us have been doing this for years now.

The challenge is this: from Ash Wednesday (Feb 17) until Easter (April 4), train every day, without fail, no excuses; even if you have to move mountains. Simple enough said, a little harder to do.

It's not as easy as it sounds; things come up. Some days, you might only be able to get a few minutes of training in; but the point is to do it everyday, no matter what.

It doesn't have to be martial arts training either. Whatever it is that you need to really rededicate yourself to: studying, practicing an instrument, walking, watching what you eat; anything - do it every day, without fail.

In the past on some forums, people have posted what they’ve done everyday. I think everyone who’s done that has become tired of writing, and the others get tired of reading it. How about you just post if you’ve had some breakthrough, or you’ve had to overcome some unusual circumstance to continue your training? Maybe just check in every once in a while to let everyone know you’re keeping at it, or to encourage everyone else to keep at it.

If you fail, we won’t hate you. If you fall off of the wagon, climb back on board. Start anew.

For those of you who insist that you really do train everyday anyway, by all means continue and be supportive of the rest of us. For the rest of us who intend to train everyday, but sometimes come up short due to life’s propensity for unraveling even the best laid plans, here is an opportunity to put a stake in the ground and show your resolution.

As a gesture of solidarity with my Orthodox friends, I usually keep it up until the date Easter is marked on their calendar, but 2010 is one of the years where the two church calendars line up.

Won't you join me?

Best Regards

Rick

[David Jamieson]

I propose that you switch it to a Chinese New Years challenge!

It's more appropriate to Kungfu and who the heck can remember all those christian religious dates? lol

easter? lent? what the heck are those? lol

[Xiao3 Meng4]

Also, why not make it 108 days?

... that's enough time for all of our old blood cells used to our old habits to be replaced by new blood cells accustomed to new habits.

[Lucas]

im down

:)

[Lucas]

I propose that you switch it to a Chinese New Years challenge!

It's more appropriate to Kungfu and who the heck can remember all those christian religious dates? lol

easter? lent? what the heck are those? lol

thats what im going to do. i know easter but i dont know lent. now i have to do math and find out what 108 days from 2.14.10 is

[RickMatz]

A friendly reminder: the Lenten Challenge begins tomorrow!

"Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a ragitong waterfall. Follow the stream in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you."

Sheng-yen

[Mr Punch]

Rick, mate, to be honest, I haven't really stopped since last year's! :D That's why my posting has been really scant of late. I've only really stopped when I've been really in pain through my injuries, and thankfully, those times are getting scarcer thanks to training more, and more sensibly.

I probably won't be joining this thread for the same reason, except maybe to encourage others every now and then!

Thanks for the impetus!

[Mr Punch]

Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a ragitong waterfall. One Q: WTH's a 'ragitong waterfall'?!

[Lucas]

is meant raging?

[RickMatz]

How is the Lenten Challenge going for you?


For me, it's been very good. I've been practicing regularly, I've been focused, and I believe I'm making headway.


When practicing the form, it's easy to just "go through the motions." While this is better than nothing, it's not a lot better. You have to have your mind in the right place when you practice.


I am doing a deep dive on the Wu Style Taijiquan Square Form, and my goal is to consistently not make any mistakes in the sequence, all the while trying to apply internal discipline and exploring the potential for internal discipline within the form and myself. That ought to keep me busy for a while, huh?


My goad towards performing he TCC form with no errors in the sequence is coming along. It's a test of paying attention to what I'm doing. If I'm paying attention, I shouldn't make an error. If I'm just going through the motions, anything can happen.


Lately, I have been making just one error, one lapse of attention per round, and never in the same place twice. It is at the same time both encouraging and very frustrating.


In the past, I did nothing but the standing practice for several years. Before beginning the form, and after just ending it, I just stand. Sometimes I stand only briefly. Other times I stand for a good long while. Whatever fits at that time.


When I feel like I'm getting to a point where I'm putting "enough" time into my Taijiquan practice, I'd like to rejuvenate my standing practice, or zhan zhuang, the fundamental practice of Yiquan. Not because it would somehow improve my Taijiquan, but because I just like it. It'll be a good long while before I'm putting in "enough" time into Taijiquan.


Something else I'm about to put a lot more energy into after along break in my Japanese Language study. I haven't hardly spoken Japanese at all in nearly a year. I'm planning on my study a jump start with Rosetta Stone Japanese, then continue to my study by reading a few collections of Japanese short stories I have, as well as subscribing to the Hiragana Times, a Japanese/English magazine created just for this purpose.


I found a few nifty FREE tools to help me out on the internet. One is Excel@Japanese, which is a very clever Excel application that helps you to learn Kanji. It's a free download. Another is a plug in for Firefox, called Rikaichan. Once you install it, you can go to a web page, hover the cursor over a kanji, and get a translation.


I recently finished reading Effortless Action: Wu Wei as a Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Idea in Early China by Edward Slingerland. I had to put a lot of effort into the reading! It's an expansion of the author's doctoral thesis, and it was well worth that effort.


Well, that's enough for now. Back to work!

[David Jamieson]

well, how about continuing on with the religious themed workouts and pony up with the Pesach Challenge TM. :D

tonight, we focus on getting teh wine opened before sundown!
Make sure the kids eat their Matzoh and Bitter Greens!

[RickMatz]

well, how about continuing on with the religious themed workouts and pony up with the Pesach Challenge TM. :D

tonight, we focus on getting teh wine opened before sundown!
Make sure the kids eat their Matzoh and Bitter Greens!

Adding on a few days is certainly no burden.

I'm in!

[RickMatz]

Technically, we are at the end of Lent. It's been my custom to continue on through at least Easter as it's reckoned by the Catholic Church, usually to Easter as it's reckoned by Orthodox Church (they coincide this year); and this year I've decided to carry on at least until the end of Passover, which is April 5th.

I put my focus on the Wu style taijiquan square form, and I'm not at all displeased how it's come along. A milestone is not only putting an end to going through it too quickly, I'm not forcing myself to be too slow either. I am simply not in a hurry and am instead focused on doing the form correctly.

I'll soon be turning my attention back to the round form which I've neglected since about October. By the end of the year I should have a good foundation for both forms.

I've started working with Rosetta Stone for Japanese, to give my Japanese language study a jump start. I like it a lot. I think it would provide a good base on which to build conversational skills and beyond, if you are willing to look beyond what the course itself offers.

The course can only offer a small variety of common sentence patterns, situations, and vocabulary. If you were teleported to the middle of Japan though, Rosetta Stone would provide you with enough for you to find your way back home.

You hear native speakers a lot, and you speak back to the software to test your pronunciation. There are tools that should out a waveform of the native speaker in comparison to yours, so you can get visual as well as aural feedback immediately.

[Pork Chop]

growing up i always thought lent ran through easter.
got into a discussion today with a coworker who thought it only ran to the friday before palm sunday.
catholic online is saying it runs to holy thursday.

not a huge fan of Rosetta Stone's method.
the phenomena they based the method on really only gets kids up to somewhere between preschool and first grade.

my personal recommendations for good japanese textbooks:

japanese for everybody - all encompassing book that starts at ground zero and goes up through intermediate/upper intermediate. it's one volume & it's cheap. Pretty easy to read too.

genki: an integrated course - 2 volumes, but a bunch of workbooks, and supplementary material. probably the most enjoyable & readable of all the textbooks, but only gets you up to like lower intermediate. i've heard of some people following this up with "an integrated approach to intermediate japanese" because they're from the Japan Times, though they do not seem to bedirectly related.

japanese for busy people - 3 volumes, 3 workbooks. was re-done in 2008 and is much better now than it used to be. used to be pretty much business terms and now the dialogs are much more applicable to daily life. could probably compete with genki in readability and will get you to upper intermediate level.

yookoso - 2 volumes, really thick, covers a lot of ground. very solid. will get you to the upper intermediate level.

nakama - 2 volumes. the old one was chock full of info, but almost information overload, in the end it was a bit of a dry read. the new version's supposed to be more readable. still a bit expensive. if it's anything like the original, the new one will get you upper intermediate.

for Kanji

basic kanji book (1 & 2) - best kanji books out there to get you started on your first 500 kanji. You can follow it up with Intermediate kanji book to break 1000, and/or follow up with Kanji in Context (which is the best book help you get to 2000).

For Grammar:

you're going to want to check out the 3 dictionaries of Japanese grammar available from Prof Makino: Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar, Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar. These 3 books are like the authority on grammar, giving a level of nuance to the language that you're not going to get anywhere else.

I also highly recommend Tae Kim's Japanese grammar site. It's like an online textbook complete with a forum full of people who'll help you if you've got a question.

TheJapanesePage.com is another very nice forum with a lot of resources, and it's tied to theJapanShop.com which is one of the best places to go for learning materials.

Making Sense of Japanese is a tiny little book with some insight on the language that'll blow your mind; especially if you've been studying the language for a long time. Funny thing is that it's insight into some very basic, fundamental things.

Once you can read some Japanese you're eventually going to want to read Saburo's grammar book to see an explanation of Japanese IN Japanese. It's all online and free.

For Dictionaries:

My personal favorite is Kenkyuusha's "green goddess" because of the sample sentences.

After that, I mainly use Jim Breen's EDict online and http://www.alc.co.jp

Don't forget to install Rikaichan (for Firefox) or Rikaikun (for Google Chrome). Makes reading Japanese sites waaaay easier.

If you ever start thinking of the JLPT:

I recommend the Unicom series of books. They were all I really needed for JLPT 3 and probably all I'll need for JLPT 2 once I'm ready to take it (either this year or next).

Some other electronic resources:

anki flash cards

lang-8.com - you write blogs in Japanese & natives will correct you.

mixi - japanese facebook

iknow (last.fm) - premade decks of japanese flash cards, complete with audio and pictures.

japanesepod101 - the definitive podcast series. hundreds of hours of Japanese language lessons for free.