Tag Archives: kung fu

Jumping for joy…

Who’s joy? I don’t even know a joy… whatever.

We were encouraged by Cindy to bring our jump ropes to class today. That is always a good reason for foreboding. Mine is always in my bag, so I already had it. The workout that she had planned today was a good one. It was challenging, but didn’t leave me feeling like death. It was:

  • 100 double unders (or 200 single jumps)
  • 25 weighted step ups (45lb plate)
  • 100 double unders (or 200 single jumps)
  • 25 weighted lunges (45lb plate)
  • 100 double unders (or 200 single jumps)
  • 25 air squats
  • 100 double unders (or 200 single jumps)
  • 25 push ups
  • 100 double unders (or 200 single jumps)

I finished in 11:10. There were a few times where I really wanted to rest during the jump rope. My arches and calves were literally burning, but I am learning when I can push through and when I NEED to actually stop and rest. I am learning that there is more of a difference there than I previously thought.

The follow up was a tiny tababa set of the following:

  • Floor washers (30lb bar for upper body resistance)
  • Sit ups

I got 149 total reps. Sit ups continue to be challenging for me and I get abdominal cramps often while doing sit ups. 90 of the reps came from the floor washers, the rest from the sit ups. You do the math.

As I am off of work today. I am going to take it easy, lay around, and maybe get some reading done.

Ow. My Balls.

Ha.

Today’s workout in conditioning class was very upper body intensive. It was a partner workout so, I’m not quite sure how to score it. You have to do 50 reps BETWEEN the 2 of you, so each person actually does only 25 (if you are fair and evenly splitting tee-hee).

4x

  • 50 medicine ball slams
  • 50 medicine ball sit ups
  • 50 medicine ball overhead throws
  • 50 medicine ball Russian twists

I partnered with Hugh and our combined time was 20:10. Not bad. I was really tired by the 4th round.

As our punishment for finishing before the rest of the class, we were instructed by our slave driver benevolent leader, to do the following:

  • 30s plank
  • 30s rest
  • 45s plank
  • 30s rest
  • 60s plank
  • die

Once I was resuscitated, the follow up workout was 2 rounds of:

  • 1 minute bag work (I held)
  • 2 minutes of hard kata work (1st round – 1st black tiger, 2nd round – 1st road of meteor fist)
  • 1 minute bag work (I attacked)

… I’m freakin tired.

1st Official Crossfit Workout

I didn’t get very much sleep last night. Surprise, surprise. I woke up in a pretty bad mood and very groggy. When we got to crossfit, there was no one there, but eventually Nikki showed up and we got started.

I did have a sense of apprehension about this being my first official workout. I knew that, as the universe operates, it would a workout that was aimed right at my weaknesses. In a rare turn of events, I was actually dead on right. Well… bring it, I guess.

As she was writing the workout on the board, I thought “this sucks, but not TOO bad”. Then she said “hey, let’s go do some tabata sprints outside”…. awesome. I was gassed before the workout even STARTED.

Warm up

– 3x {10 jumping jacks, squats, sit ups, back extensions}

2nd Warm Up (?)

– Tabata sprints, 8 rounds.

Workout

– 100ft Lunges

– 21 pull ups, sit ups

– 100ft Lunges

– 18 pull ups, sit ups

– 100ft Lunges

– 15 pull ups, sit ups

– 100ft Lunges

– 12 pull ups, sit ups

– 100ft Lunges

– 9 pull ups, sit ups

– 100ft Lunges

– 6 pull ups, sit ups

My time: 13:01

V’s time: 14:49

I pretty much sucked wind the entire time during this workout. The ride home was tough too. Because of the lack of sleep, horrible food from cheat day, and nothing in our stomachs, we both felt completely horrible on the way home. It didn’t help that I felt like I hit every red light and got behind every slow person too. What can you do…

V had it worse than I did. When she got home, she had to lay down for a bit and eat a banana. Her blood sugar had bottomed and she wasn’t feeling too hot. After a rest, she felt better.

I went to KF which turned out to be a good thing as there were some people there that needed some pakua help.

Reflections on the last few days…

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, this week/weekend has been a very kung-fu-tastic. Some really good things happened during this time. Additionally, I have had some realizations about some things that I wanted to share here.

Starting off with the “good things”…

1) I tested up to 2nd degree black sash. Yay! Now, it’s time for some new material. I am very much looking forward to learning some Hsing-Ie – Wikipedia from some very talented members of the Shaolin family.

2) Speaking of the Shaolin family, I got to see lots of people that I have a great deal of respect for and are just overall great people and good friends. That is always a good thing and something that makes me happy. I love my Shaolin family and wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

3) I got to be in the Round Rock school’s demo with Master Joe. That was a big highlight for me. I was really flattered that he would as me to do ANYTHING with him for a demo. He’s been a fantastic teacher and someone to show me what martial arts should look like and be all about.

4) I got to re-learn the 1st Road of Meteor Fist (Lui Hsing). As I had learned this 3-4 years ago in Lexington, the seminar wasn’t THAT bad on me, but it was good to be able to help Victoria, Troy, and some others get it down. This is definitely one of the most powerful (not just physically powerful, but powerful in other ways) katas that I have ever seen. I am sure that as the years go on, I will continue to learn from it.

5) I was able to schedule 1 time per week to help one of my good friends with their Tai Chi. I am looking forward to being able to make a positive impact here as my assistance will, through this person, help many others.

 

Now, on to some realizations…

1) The Round Rock tournament felt pretty different from the North Austin tournament. I am not sure what that means, but there’s definitely a palpable difference. I saw some really awesome talent at this tournament as I always do at Shaolin tournaments, but well, I didn’t really feel great about being there.

2) I think that an organizations “feeling” is a direct result of the most influential people at said organization. This isn’t an accident. It may not be planned, but it’s not an accident. Most times you can get the feeling of a place the second you walk into it. Have you ever just showed up somewhere and just felt, “this feels stuffy and I don’t want to here”? This is similar to meeting a person and instantly disliking them for some unknown reason. Anyway…

3) Luckily, Victoria and I got to have some conversations with Grandmaster Sin at varying points throughout the weekend. He is such a happy guy and really, the complete antithesis of what you assume a “Shaolin Grandmaster” would be like to interact with. In talking to him, he’s really just another guy that knows Kung Fu. this is not to down play his importance. It’s because of HIM and subsequently Master Joe that I have this wonderful art that I can practice. It’s because of HIM that I know all of this amazing stuff and have these amazing people as friends. I, we of Shaolin-Do owe him a great deal. Some of my favorite moments from this weekend were just talking to him to get his take on some things. It’s rare that you can meet a person that can laugh like he can. I hope to one day be a fraction of the person he is.

4) Not to be a jerk or anything, but I don’t care about your kung fu. I don’t care if you don’t give you all during class. I don’t care if you CAN do a double-smash kick, but don’t really even try to do it in class or whatever. That’s YOUR choice. I would say that in MOST cases, I do try and give my all even though there ARE days where it’s just not there. Everyone has off days. What I am talking about here is the general pattern of actions. Do you usually give your all or do you sorta kinda half ass it most of the time? Is it really important to you? What YOU did used to be important to me, but I am starting to move away from that.

I feel that this weekend, I got caught up in a few conversations about this and that and this one and that one. Some were started by me, some were not. Part of this realization is that I don’t want to have these conversations anymore and I will do all that I can to not. As my time goes on in Shaolin and, well, life, I find that I am responsible for my journey and mine alone. I can only control what I can control. One of my good friends and favorite teachers at the school says “how you do anything is how you do everything”. It’s a truly powerful saying. 

Don’t get me wrong, if I teach you at some point, I AM concerned about your personal development and will help you with whatever you need help with without ever judging you. However much or little you want to push yourself during a test or class has nothing to do with me. As Morpheus said, “I can only show you the door, YOU have to walk through it.”

5) Grandmaster Sin reminded us today of looking at the said and un-said aspect of everything. I remember him talking about this in Lexington the first time I saw Lui Hsing. I hadn’t really thought about it since then, but it’s really important! How much of what people communicate is un-said?! Quite a bit, I imagine. I will be working on paying more attention to this as time goes on.

6) I need to breathe better. I had a conversation with one of  my Sifus earlier this week. He was talking to me about meditating to prepare for learning Hsing-Ie. I have been slacking on this b/c of time and energy. I always feel like I need to make time for meditation but it just never seems to happen. He started talking about what about right here and right now? Why not just breathe deeply all the time, whatever you are doing?

Since that conversation, I have been catching myself a lot more often falling into that short breathe cycle. I am sure I have gotten a few hours of, at the very least, deep breathing this week.

That’s all for now… I am going to crossfit tomorrow at 530am, then KF at 730am. This week marks some drastic schedule changes. I don’t think that I will be around the KF school so much at night anymore.

Hope you all had a great weekend! I certainly did.

Fight… gone… puke/passout… bad…

Despite going to sleep pretty late last night and being utterly exhausted, I dragged my sorry ass to conditioning class this morning b/c I told Hugh I would be there after testing. Turns out that I am still pretty damn tired, but I am really happy that I went.

We haven’t done a “fight gone bad” in a while. FGB is meant to mimic how an MMA fighter would feel during a fight. The format is 5 exercises done for 1 minute each with a minute of rest at the end, all repeated 3 or 5 times. Today, we did 3. The idea is that after about 1 minute of an exercise, you should be at just about muscle failure, so you stop, change gears, and do something else.

Anyway, today’s workout was 3 cycles of the following:

  • Step ups (20lb dumbbells)
  • Push press (55lbs)
  • Medicine Ball Sit Ups (12lb medicine ball)
  • Medicine Ball Cleans (25lb medicine ball)
  • Kettle bell sumo dead lift high pulls (1 pood, I think)
  • Rest

I was able to get out a total of 295 reps. This is WAY harder than it sounds… Here’s the breakdown of my reps:

Exercise Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Total
Step ups 27 20 17 64
Push press 30 22 21 73
Med Ball Sit Ups 21 18 16 55
Med Ball Cleans 16 12 12 40
KBSDHP 22 20 21 63