is the way i lift alright?

[SevenStar]

Shaolin36, Is there any way you can alternate the nights you lift and the nights you are in kung fu? That might help your problem a little.

"You ain't got enough calcium to have a bone to pick wit me,
like a Gracie, I'll choke a ***** out wit his own gi" - Rass Kass

[Shaolin36]

Sevenstar,
Thanks for the explanation.Excellent

Yes, I am going to reconfigure my schedule so I lift on the nights I dont train Kung Fu, from what I have gathered I will be able to fuel my body better after a workout and not go lose it all at the Temple during training.
I was beginging to wonder if eating fast effected the wasteline. You just confirmed my suspicions, thanks,


Shaolin36
Fan Tou Rui

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

my sifu says the same thing i have heard allot of others say.

training your kungfu 15 mintues EVERY day is far better than 2 hours a couple times a week.

maybe you could train for just a little while (no more than a half hour and go easy so that your aren't fu cking stuff up with your lifting)everyday and then dedicate a day or two where you go hardcore if you still feel its needed.

where's my beer?

[Shaolin36]

GDA,
Did your sifu explain why this is better than doing 2 hours a couple times a week.

Common Sense tells me its because the wear and tear factor on the body. What do you think.

Shaolin
Fan Tou Rui

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

it does take a very long time to get good at. i think that's why he has us do all the other training before we even start. so that we at least have a little bit of a combat base to work with before starting the internal work. most of his students didn't get their first dragon level in under 10 years. you are given this rank once you have actually started to internalize the art (i'm not yet qualified to say what all that entails), show the ability to spontaneously create your own effective movements from a single concept, and (not necessarily the desire but) the ability to pass on what you know at least to some degree. infact, i think there was only one guy who managed to achieve this in under 10 years.

i practice in ohio about 45 minutes from pittsburgh privately from his house. he had a chain of schools about 10 years back but eventually decided that he had to either water down the art so that people would stay or train a handful of students from home who would actually take it seriously. he gave the decision to the couple dragons he had at the time and then shut down all of his schools and got another job.

i'm not sure about the sword thing. it's definitely not a major focus of training at our school, but that could be a change that he has made since we also study pukalan and jujitsu. we don't do allot of weapons work at all, but i have heard him say something very similar about focusing your energy through the sword or staff and making it become part of your body the few times we have worked with them. if i understand your question right it's not really a unique concept to wudang. it's just the idea of throwing a strike with your weapon the same way you would with your hand. completely relaxed, with the energy flowing through your center, and with the only points of tension being the points of impact. so if i understand correctly (again my work with weapons is very limited) you are basically tensing the tip of the staff, by focusing your energy to that point like you said, which is a mindset that is currently beyond me. i'm not sure if most schools work weapons like this, but i'd bet that it's a concept in most internal schools that train weapons. he's pretty **** good with the staff but i haven't seen him do much swords work to say for sure. we don't get to work weapons much as our time with him is limited due to the fact that he has a full time job as well. us newbie's only get to go twice a week, but the dragons come by to train on the weekends as well. he tried opening up saturdays for us too but had class at 8 in the friggen morning. hardly anyone showed up so he changed it back to just tuesdays and thursdays.

where's my beer?

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

he says that daily practice at any skill will ingrain it far better than dedicating more total time to it in spaced out intervals. it's how you really start to make the art a part of you so that eventually it's just like walking and then you can learn to run.

he also said that 2 hours of daily practice isn't anywhere near as good as 15 minutes of daily focused/perfect practice. like others have said on here, you can throw 1000 punches or 10 perfect punches and your going to be much better off for the latter.

he doesn't say to limit your training to 15 minutes, but to train as long as you can stay completely focused on what you are doing. if you can keep all the rest of your life out of your head for a half hour or longer than tht's great, but once your mind starts wondering you are wasting your time (or at least the rest of your training will only benifit you physically ... it will give your kung fu almost no benifit at best).

it's also not a cario thing the way we train . . which may be different from what you do. when working on our kung fu we do the techniques very slowly and try to feel every single inch of our body while going through the movement with total intent. in this way you are learning what your entire body needs to do through the strike, step, etc. we do allot of pad work and what not too, but he considers it 90% physical and seperate from actually training. there was a topic titled "speed" on the main forum a couple weeks ago about this type of training.

i heard someone else on here say that training kung fu isn't like lifting or working out. you cant train double on tuesday for missing monday. it doesn't work like that. you cant make up yesterday so you are always going to be a day worse than you could have been.

where's my beer?

[Shaolin36]

That all seems logical to me. I do notice that as the latter part of the week approaches I am tired from training/lifting and I will start to get sloppy- and as you said it turns more into a physical workout. I also observe some people that always come late and train more like an hour of the 2(maybe they have this theory in mind)

We do alot of pad work and conditioning as well. Thats good that someone brought that to the forefront for me. I do need to slow down a bit during training. I notice that through every rep I am trying to kill someone(per se) Taking it slow seems more technique oriented. I will incorporate that into my training. There nothing like noticing your growth through training. Its kinda crazy cause my sifu wants me to train harder and harder for next years tourneys.
I will keep you posted. Thanks for the insight.

Shaolin
Fan Tou Rui