26th of september : Nice weather is always motivating

Amituofo!

The weather was beautiful today, far too nice to spend the day indoors.
And since I have not been training enough last week I went for a nice hour of training at Kopse hof.

I did a quick rope jumping warm up (man rope jumping is hard when you haven't done it in 20 years) and some Ji Ben Gong with the stick and straight sword. After that I practiced Yin Shou Gun, Da Mo Jian, and Zhen Shan Gun.

Coming evening I will spend 30 minutes on stretching, and I want to make a habbit out of that, will be very good for my flexibility.

More Chi, Train Harder!

Amituofo!

25th of September : Where are the enthusiasts?

Amituofo!

I trained for to little last week. No lunch break sessions, anyway... just flow with life as it pushes you forwards....

This evening it was finally time for training again. We are really looking into the details on friday trainings now. Again spend a lot of time on improving Tong Bei Quan.

It was almost a private lesson. Only 3 students in training this evening, Sam was ill. Tom all of a sudden got a pain in his knee and couldn't bend his leg anymore, he felt pain under his knee and pulling all across his leg. Looks like he might have some problem with the Musculus sartorius where it attaches to the lower leg. Hope it's only irritated and it will go over soon. Tom is my 'gun' buddy (Stick practice), we have sort of the same flow and can really work well when performing Yin Shou Gun or Zhen Shan Gun.

We really need some more new enthusiastic students like Rael, who joined a couple of months ago and is there nearly every training! So if you feel like improving quality of your life, mind and body, just join us!

Amituofo!

22nd of September: Working hard

Amituofo!

Today I had to visit the physical therapist again. This time he really made me sweat. Did a power workout of half an hour. He wanted to make my muscles tired before evaluating how well I did the exercises he gave me 2 weeks ago...
The fun thing was he looked a bit amazed about my progress... Actually he thinks I progressed so much that I can start running again :). For the coming weeks I still have to do the strengthening exercises and I can start adding an interval scheme of running to it. If that goes well then in 2 weeks I will have my last session with him :)

That's some good news finally!
Training hard early in the morning has as advantage that you are really awake and have a clear head after that. Therefore I really made some great progress today on some research that I currently am doing for work.
In the evening I still felt energized and we luckily we had Kung Fu training planned as usual on Tuesday evening. This morning I thought that I would take it easy in the evening but of course that didn't happen. Just trained at full intensity (as far as the knee allows of course) :)

I hope tomorrow will also be such a great day :)

Amituofo!

19th of September : Punch ball practice is fun!

Amituofo!

One thing I miss a bit in Shaolin Kung Fu training is application practice.
So today I practiced some applications on the punch ball. Normally I stick to a more practical style of Kung Fu, Wing Chun, for punch ball practice. But today I combined it with some Shaolin application practice.

I always like to have an idea of the application of a form. Of course there are many applications since I think Tao Lu are nothing more than practice sets of a certain style, but I like to have some idea of what I am actually doing and where to put the accents in the moves and which muscles should then be tense or relaxed. This is far easier to practice with a partner, but without a partner you can always fall back on a punch bag, ball or even some padding on a tree or something like that.

So today I did 45minutes of punch ball practice :), with some Tong Bi Quan details we discussed in yesterdays class...

 
Always fun to do!

More Chi, train harder!

Amituofo!

18th of september

Amituofo!

Friday evening, training evening!
Not much to mention on this one, this was a typical training.

First Shi Yan Ming warm up, then Ji Ben Gong, push-ups, sit-ups, some punching speed practice and after that Tao Lu practice.

We focused on Tong Bi Quan this evening. Last 15 minutes we also did practice Yin Shou Gun stick form.

Can't wait till next training!

Amituofo!

16th of September : Rainy day. Great day for training outdoors

Amituofo!

Today was a beautiful day for training body and for training mentality. It was raining pretty bad... but that is no reason not to go training. Just think of yourself as grass, grass loves rain :)

Today I did things a bit different. Since we spend more time in our kung fu lessons on basics and on details, we have less time for multiple forms.
So I did Qi Gong and after that the new exercises my therapist gave me for my knee. After that I practiced the forms that I don't often get to in kung fu classes:
Lian Bu Quan, Ba Bu Lian Huan Quan, Wu Xing Quan, Zhao Yang Quan and Tai Zu Chuan Quan.

Felt good to do it like this, so I think I'll do so more often.



By the looks of it I need to do a lot more practice on the details of Zhao Yang Quan as well!
More Chi, Train harder!

Amituofo!

15th of September

Amituofo!

Yesterday we did our regular Tuesday training.
Sam has added some additional fitness exercises in the training, which is quite much fun :)

Yesterday we did a bonus spider-crawl race where we made 2 teams and tried to spider crawl as fast as possible to the goal, and back (in reverse, which was really fun to watch :) ). The loosing team had to do push-ups... but since it was a foto-finish and both teams cheated a bit... everyone did extra push-ups :).
Further the training was as usual. Warm Up, Ji Ben Gong and Tao Lu practice.

I do feel some muscle pain from the spider crawls today, so that is a good sign :)

More Chi, train harder!


Amituofo!

13th of September

Amituofo!

Installed a trial of Matlab/Simulink to try some RF system simulations this weekend... that was good braintraining, so today it was time for some physical practice again.

I Took out the punch ball for a spin today and did a 45min workout practicing stepping, pressure sensitivity, transporting force (rather then blocking force), and punch/block combinations on the punch ball.

I really would like a room (or garden) that I can decorate like a dojo and where I can mount a punching bag on the ceiling, a wooden dummy, and some wall punching bags and such... Maybe some day... for now just will do with my punch ball, which is also pretty versatile :)

More training tomorrow!

Amituofo!

11th of September

Amituofo!

Today another beautiful day, and again made some time for lunch break exercise. Repeated yesterdays workout.

In the evening we had our Friday Kung Fu lesson. Shifu Carl was into the details today. We learned a lot about Tong Bei Quan this evening. Energy coming from the earth, travels through the hip towards the fist, follow the hands with the eyes, first root, then block then punch... etc...

Lots and lots of sweat! Super training! More Chi train harder!

Amituofo!

10th of September : Lovely weather to visit the park

Amituofo!

Finally found some time to go to the park today. Had only 45 minutes but still, better then nothing.
Did a Shi Yan Ming warming up, stretching, new physical therapy exercises that I learned last Tuesday, a couple sets of push ups, and Qi Gong to round it up...

 

Its amazing how energized I immediately felt. I started loving Qi Gong more and more, and slowly but gradually I start to get the hang of why this is so important in Kung Fu. As Shifu Yan Lei says: it massages the internal organs and improves blood flow to the deepest parts of the body.
When you manage to align the breathing and the movement, and you do the breathing right I really feel the difference. I now also understand the concept and purpose of reversed breathing, you can really feel that by doing that you change pressures on points inside your body in a way that you do not feel otherwise. E.g. when you do the exercises with normal breathing or when you do not get the flow of the movement and the breathing aligned.

I can't do it correctly with all exercises yet, but on the once I do I can feel the difference. I guess that is what our eastern friends really mean by Qi (in words without all the mystical Chinese medicinal terms).

Amituofo!

8th of September

Amituofo!

Yesterday we did our regular Tuesday training.
Now that it is official I can share the bad news from last post.
Sifu Carl unfortunately has decided that this will be his last year teaching us on a regular basis. He has good reasons to stop and ofcourse we all understand and support his decision, although we all find it a pitty.

I hope to learn a lot from Carl in the coming year, and I decided that I also want to learn the form that he developed himself. Before I did not want to do that, cause it is a mixed style form, and I like to stick to shaolin, but since Carl has taught me more then any other teacher I had before I decided to want to support to continue his legacy if I can.

Never the less we will keep training hard, may be even harder, since we all want to give Carl something to be proud of in a couple of years time :)

Btw... my knee is doing pretty ok, still some fluid build up, but my physical therapist explained me why that is and that I can expect that for the coming half year (each time I train a bit to hard...). I also overloaded my other knee at the moment, but I am used to that, that has been like this for the past 5 years (old injury which is a bit sensitive for overloads).

I have some new exercises for my for balance and strength improvement.
So still some busy weeks up ahead.

Amituofo!

4th of September : Good news and bad

Amituofo!

Yesterday was our first training from Sifu Carl for this season.
As usual it was a super training session. Learned lot's of things again!

The bad news I cannot say yet... It first needs to be known to everyone that is involved, and its not up to me to do so....

My knee is a bit swollen again... So yesterday was probably a bit too much (also am doing jumping and such again now). Tomorrow I am going to a zen & tao symposium, and I'll hope to do some training in the evening.

Amituofo!

PS. Kung Tao is always looking for new people who want to share our passion for Shaolin Kung Fu and train with us. So if you're interested in training just let us know!

1st of September : New season started!

Amituofo!

Jey, the new season started. Yesterday we did our first Kung Fu training in the gym. Some new people joined, which was really nice!
I always get happy from new people trying out new things, I hope the training was not to much for them and they will return next week.

I have been skipping lunch trainings. Too much fun work to do at the moment, which is a lousy excuse I know... but it is what it is... I'll pick it up as soon as possible. I have to say that my knee is also acting quite ok. Problems are still not over, but I start noticing it less and less...
In yesterdays training I also did a small amount of running and jumping again and I do not feel that it done much harm.

Tomorrow I have a meeting in lunch time, so no training as well... maybe I'll get up early and do a workout in the morning. We'll see...

Amituofo!