Just shy of two weeks now before my next test, and it’s hard to believe that four months have gone by so quickly. I apologize to those who were paying attention and wondered where I had gone to during that time. I wish that I could say that my kung fu practice was taking up a great deal of my time, but the truth is that beyond getting to the kwoon on a regular basis, both for white belt and beginner classes now, I have not been putting in as much practice as I had in the past. Granted, going to both classes regularly means an extra couple hours a week of kung fu in itself.
So, with all that said, and a test coming up, I have taken some time to do a little self-evaluation. The sum of the material for this level is as follows:
- Roundhouse kicks
- Back kicks
- Knife hand strikes
- Ridge hand strikes
- Palm strikes
- Dragon claw strikes
- Finger tip strikes
- Plum Blossom B (all open hand strikes above)
- Beginner form part 1
- Hair grab defense
- Pull away, straight arm grab defense
- Push away, cross arm grab defense
- Fighting salutation
- Formal salutation
For the most part, I feel ready. I am reasonably pleased with the strikes and kicks, though I could certainly improve in most, if not all of those still, and I have reasonably commited the Plum Blossom B and form to memory. This is good. I feel rather strongly that I can pass this test, but I do see some places I want to improve before then.
First, Plum Blossom B. While I know it, I seem to really falter when doing it. Fortunately this is the easiest problem to overcome. I simply must practice it. Daily. Many times daily. The Plum Blossom B pattern of ‘knife hand - ridge hand - finger thrust - palm strike - dragon claw’ is very easy to manage just about anywhere, anytime, however, so I am not overly concerned. I simply need to go ahead and do it. It is probably a good thing that I don’t much care if my co-workers think I’m crazy.
Second is the form. I know it. I can get all the way through it, but much as it was with Yun Tung in white belt, I pause in some places. I still cannot make it straight through. Well enough. I add this to my daily list. Again, I note that I am glad that I am not one to get all embarassed when my co-workers laugh as I find that working my forms after work while I wait for my ride home is very helpful. And yes. Some of them do laugh, but that’s another story.
Those two in mind as where I feel the most need for practice, simply to smooth things out, of the techniques, I find the back kick to be the one which causes me most problems. Simply put, there are a good bit of direction changes, on one foot, and my balance is only so good at this point. I don’t know that I will be perfect in my execution by the time the test comes, but a good deal of practice should at least help to get closer. I also want to work on each of my strikes a good bit. It is less a matter of feeling that any of the strikes are particularly poor and more a matter of wanting to continue to improve my general striking form. Engaging hips on the short strikes, making the adjustment to bow stance properly when striking long, and remembering to cover up with the front hand when the rear hand comes out. Going through all my strikes improve each of them, and the basic form that I need to get down.
And then there is endurance. This is one of those very basic levels of fitness that I have had a hard time with even as a teen, and this is one of the things I have really appreciated about learning kung fu. White belt was a very gradual ramp up, and moving into the beginner class allowed me to again ramp up gradually with the white belt class, then push for another hour in the beginner class. This has had fantastic results for me and I am now quite capable of making it through a couple hours of light-to-moderate exercise where ten or fifteen minutes had been all I could take before. A couple hours a day, a couple days a week has been good in the past few months, but I feel it is time to really start ramping that up. To those ends, I have picked up a little extra equipment here at home and hope to incorporate a bit more endurance training into my regular home practice.
The freestanding heavy bag is one of the more expensive purchases I’ve made so far in my martial arts training. For $99.99USD, I picked up an Everlast bag that is very similar to the Wavemaster bags we use in the kwoon from Sears. This, along with a good warm up, is a great tool for working my endurance and flexibility, while additionally working on my kicks. My current favorites for endurance training both employ the roundhouse kick. In the first, I will kick as many times as I can in twenty seconds with one leg, rest, switch and repeat. As my endurance improves, I intend to add more time to this, probably 5 seconds at a time. This is a speed exercise we do in the kwoon, and it is a killer. Twenty seconds never seemed so long. The second drill I like to do is to work with a one minute timer and kick, position change, kick, position change, repeat. Again, the intention is to increase the timer, likely in 30 second intervals, as my endurance increases. This one works well for long roundhouse kicks as well. I don’t recommend doing these exercises back to back.
The other piece of equipment I picked up was a jump rope. Ever since the first time I saw Rocky, a handful of years after it’s 1976 release, I have considered the jump rope to be an important part of learning to fight. For the longest time I really didn’t understand how it was, but I figured if Rocky pulled that thing out every day, then it must be important somehow. Now that I’m old and out of shape, I truly understand the value of the jump rope, and find it’s insignificant appearance to be entirely deceiving.
From this I come up with my typical 2-3 days a week work out. I spend anywhere from 1-2 hours going through it, sometimes working one or another part more often. My average workout is something like this:
- Warmup and Stretching
- 20 second roundhouse speed drills (both sides)
- Plum Blossom B
- Back kicks
- Open hand strikes
- 1 minute roundhouse endurance drill
- Fighting Salutation
- Formal salutation and form
- Jump rope
In addition to that, if I feel up to it, I like to take some time to work on Plum Blossom A as well as Yun Tung to keep up with my white belt work. I also enjoy just spending a few minutes here and there blitzing on my heavy bag, and taking a walk and/or jog.