It has been 2 years since I’ve regularly practiced Wushu. The last class I attended was around Christmas 2009 when I took Caralyne, but I had stopped around early June of 2009 when most of the class left for China.
Over the past year, my conscious mind has told me it really enjoys just going to work, and then back home, with no interruptions. It has told me that I’m not young enough, or good enough to continue with martial arts, and I might as well accept that and embrace my more passive hobbies. Read More...
I signed up for Muay Thai at Crosley Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Brentwood. I’ve been eyeing the place for a while now, it seemed to be one of the few well established school in the Antioch/Brentwood area. I was looking specifically for some type of boxing program, and they have both western boxing and kick-boxing.
It also helps that the price is right, I pay about 90 a month for two classes. Read More...
Patti called me on Friday, and invited me to come Sunday for a workout and food. This has always been a nice little tradition at Wushu West, Patti likes to do this around the holidays.
I was pretty excited, I haven’t been to wushu since June/July, when they all went to China for the summer. I have sort of enjoyed my free Tuesday and Thursday nights, and so has Caralyne. Read More...
Patti called me on Friday, and invited me to come Sunday for a workout and food. This has always been a nice little tradition at Wushu West, Patti likes to do this around the holidays.
I was pretty excited, I haven’t been to wushu since June/July, when they all went to China for the summer. I have sort of enjoyed my free Tuesday and Thursday nights, and so has Caralyne. Read More...
Wow, what an awesome class!
It was nice and warm tonight, so it was really easy to get warmed up and stretch well. That was a bonus though, there were a few really killer parts to tonights class:
We had some nice and quick basics
Jumps! which I have not done in a while
James taught me part of the Baji set he learned
I had to change my shirt twice, and that means I got a good workout :) Read More...
Tonight was Mark’s last class before he leaves for Idaho for a month. Last week, he joked that he wanted everyone to still be recovering when he gets back in June… He tried his best to make that happen, and I think Patti bailed us out in the end :)
We got some time to warm up for a few minutes, I think he wanted us ready by 7:20, so we jogged around for a bit and did some light stretching. Read More...
Saturday was the 17th annual Cal Martial Arts Tournament, at Cal Berkeley. For the 4rd year in a row I went, and as the last three years I was solely a spectator. I took some footage, and snapped a few pictures, but I wasn’t into staying from 8am till 11pm running around to each ring trying to film everyone. My experience with that last year solidified the idea that no matter what, someone (usually more than one too) will be unhappy with what you’ve worked hard to do, and I wasn’t interested in repeating that thankless job. Read More...
It’s long overdue, but Mark, Shahaub and I finally got together for a movie. All three of us are movie geeks. Mark was part of the industry with Jet Li and Rotten Tomatoes, Shahaub is in film school right now (and posted a few demo reels, like this one, on vimeo.com), and I like to watch them and then write about what I watch. Our conversations immediately started off with George Lucas movies, Arrested Development, and then oddly to my fear of Bees and Black Widows. Read More...
I’ve gone from using Movable Type -> Roller Weblog -> Wordpress over the past 3 years. I’ve missed converting a few entries so today I went through my old MT blog (which is buried on m87-blackhole.org that I even forgot about it). So below are links to my china trip in 2006, which I still reminisce about.
China Trip - Arrival and Settling In
China Trip - Day one and two Read More...
I didn’t know, but this class marked Mark’s 14th year wushu anniversary. Thats awesome, he remembers the exact day, time and the fact that it was partially cloudy outside. Sheesh, I remember mine was around October 2001, around the time The One was released in theatres, not the exact time and day though. With that, congrats Mark!
The rule for showing up late is that you have to do 20 burpee’s. Read More...
I didn’t know, but this class marked Mark’s 14th year wushu anniversary. Thats awesome, he remembers the exact day, time and the fact that it was partially cloudy outside. Sheesh, I remember mine was around October 2001, around the time The One was released in theatres, not the exact time and day though. With that, congrats Mark!
The rule for showing up late is that you have to do 20 burpee’s. Read More...
Another awesome class of basics with Mark.
I like the basic wushu movements now more than ever, for two reasons.
I’m so out of it now, I can’t remember an entire form, so its all I can do.
If you can do basics well, then all of the rest comes a lot easier. Its something we should always work on.
What I also like are little combination, you know, not a full section, but just a short string of punches, kicks, and stances. Read More...
Another awesome class of basics with Mark.
I like the basic wushu movements now more than ever, for two reasons.
I’m so out of it now, I can’t remember an entire form, so its all I can do.
If you can do basics well, then all of the rest comes a lot easier. Its something we should always work on.
What I also like are little combination, you know, not a full section, but just a short string of punches, kicks, and stances. Read More...
Mark was back, and when I walked in it was obvious that this is where he belongs :)
Its always one of my favorite scenes to walk in on, and its because I enjoy the immense pain of simple leg conditioning. Mark is casually leaning on a staff, behind a line of the beginner students, calmly calling out
“horse stance…” (pause 30 seconds)
“bow stance…” (pause again for 30 seconds) Read More...
Mark was back, and when I walked in it was obvious that this is where he belongs :)
Its always one of my favorite scenes to walk in on, and its because I enjoy the immense pain of simple leg conditioning. Mark is casually leaning on a staff, behind a line of the beginner students, calmly calling out
“horse stance…” (pause 30 seconds)
“bow stance…” (pause again for 30 seconds) Read More...
This class was the most intense class I’ve had since I’ve been back. Jenny and I did a little jog for our lunch workout, and since I still don’t jog all the time, I was already sore by the time I got to class. Thats good though, I don’t mind, I feel like I accomplished something big.
Our warmup was brief, James led it and since he had a tooth pulled Monday, he wasn’t going to go all out. Read More...
Second class back (don’t worry, I’ll stop the counter there :) ), and I felt I had made a lot of progress since last week. Of course no butterfly-twists, but my muscles held up a lot longer and I worked out the entire class.
Kenny led the warm up, and after a quick jog around the room we did sprint relays for a while and then on to stretching. Last week my hip flexors started to spasm and it quickly became painful. Read More...
Second class back (don’t worry, I’ll stop the counter there :) ), and I felt I had made a lot of progress since last week. Of course no butterfly-twists, but my muscles held up a lot longer and I worked out the entire class.
Kenny led the warm up, and after a quick jog around the room we did sprint relays for a while and then on to stretching. Last week my hip flexors started to spasm and it quickly became painful. Read More...
At last, after a 6 month break, its nice to be back. Once a week for now, but that will be more than enough.
I was thinking Monday night about how I don’t have that persistent aching feeling, and how walking is just that, walking with out a limp. Today is the end of that; my hamstrings are sore, my hip flexors are sore, my back is sore. All of them in a good way and not in the scary injured way. Read More...
At last, after a 6 month break, its nice to be back. Once a week for now, but that will be more than enough.
I was thinking Monday night about how I don’t have that persistent aching feeling, and how walking is just that, walking with out a limp. Today is the end of that; my hamstrings are sore, my hip flexors are sore, my back is sore. All of them in a good way and not in the scary injured way. Read More...
It’s been a looong time since Mark has been in charge of a class, maybe 2005 or so, right before he moved to Shanghai. I had forgotten how relentless he is, even though over the past few years Pierre and I have threatened younger students,
“Oh you think this is tough? Wait till Mark gets back!”
or
“If you don’t stop talking, we’re calling Mark and flying him back here to make you do burpee’s! Read More...
For me, wushu hasn’t always been kick ass and fun. I’ve gone through periods where I hated going to class, and I either wouldn’t have gone at all had it not been for my strong habitual nature ( I run on auto-pilot on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I just show up to class no matter what) or lately I would have found any work excuse to not go. Somewhere along the line, I stopped being excited about wushu, I stopped dreaming about learning cool styles like bagua, fanzi, longfist, etc… Read More...
Let’s back it up a bit and go on record for exactly how I got the nickname, and the insane amount of flexibility in my left leg.
I began learning the newer longfist compulsory with Isao. Stephanie was teaching us the first section. I remember it was towards the end of class and I was exhausted and hungry, probably dehydrated too. We got to the part where you do the jumping inside-kick and land into the splits where I faltered. Read More...
Okay, ham-ish title, and it’s not like it Wushu West is bad now, just me and my motivation.
As I explained before, the first year or so of wushu I was a wushu craving lunatic. I spent a lot of spare time at work searching for clips, which at the time were hosted on furiousg.com and then moved to wushucentral.com. I’m not sure why I don’t watch random wushu clips now, maybe its because youtube has taken all the work out of finding something, but I really take for granted how easy it is today to find any style you want. Read More...
One evening Michele was a little frustrated with me, about how I never really say anything. I’m a pretty private person even with my own family, so I don’t talk all that much beyond superficial “how’s the weather?”. Well, since I had this secret obsession with wushu, and I figured if Michele really wanted to know what I was thinking of I’d let her in. I believe she thought it was a little far-fetched, again, we didn’t know people who did martial arts especially adults. Read More...
Mark’s Wushu Retrospective journal has made me all nostalgic about my own experience with getting in shape, loosing weight, and starting wushu at our beloved Wushu West.
I had gained a lot of weight right after Michele and I got married in August 2000. Well, after high school (1998), I gained 20lbs, but I proceeded to put on more once we tied the knot. You would have thought it was my second full-time job, eating crap. Read More...
After CMAT I had felt a little extra bit of motivation, it has dawned on me that this past year I had really digressed in wushu. There has been little focus for me, and work has been more and more demanding so I recognize that as an issue. Mostly though, the majority of ‘coaching’ I have received has been about the website and computer work. What I really need to do is to be less passive about what I want and be a little more persistent. Read More...
After CMAT I had felt a little extra bit of motivation, it has dawned on me that this past year I had really digressed in wushu. There has been little focus for me, and work has been more and more demanding so I recognize that as an issue. Mostly though, the majority of ‘coaching’ I have received has been about the website and computer work. What I really need to do is to be less passive about what I want and be a little more persistent. Read More...
Class has been a little laid back for me, which is alright, I haven’t been working as hard as everyone else so it’s not like I can even bust out a section of a form right now. It is a little hard to go to class when everyone is so fired up and is at their peak. Patti is still giving me new moves here and there for the broadsword form, and James said she really wants to give us (those of us who are just learning dao) a really good old school wushu dao form, which is every cool for me. Read More...
Good class tonight.
I did manage to injure my calf when we did our round of sprints, oh but first I just wanted to say how cool it was to get a nice warm welcome from everyone :)
I barely made it all the way through the door and I see Shahaub, James, Pierre, Lynda… pretty much the whole gang, and in unison (almost, its more dramatic if it seems they really were in unison) exclaim “HEY! Read More...
Just a warning, I haven’t been receiving the comments people leave on AnD. So sorry if it seems like I was ignoring everyone :) Since most people are getting ready of either collegiate’s or CMAT, class for Isao, John, and myself worked out a little different. We had a good warmup. I think it is more exhausting when we not only jog around class, but include all sorts of different movements. Read More...
Alright, so since the last update we started ramping up for the three performances. I was only able to make it to one of them, and I’ll be putting what we have on the site soon, and I’ll also post a video on youtube. Classes have been going over really well, we’ve kept up the jogging and circuit training as part of the warm-up. My calves right now are killing me from Tuesdays class :) I’ve also been better about lifting weights at home again. Read More...
I had to drag myself in to class last night. I was exhausted from work, recovering from a cold, and I was in a sour mood from work itself. It’s a scary thought, but I may end up being a dinosaur at my current work. There is a large push to “one platform”, and while that USUALLY means the desktop it can easily leak to the server room. Anyway, things are crappy right now. Read More...
I didn’t fall asleep monday night until 3am the next morning. I really messed up my sleeping schedule over the long 3 day weekend ( had a lot of fun though ), and I really thought I could quickly recover and not miss a class. I’m really bummed that I wasn’t able to go, and now I’m feeling a cold coming on so that is just adding to things.
So I guarded the couch last night, watched Sanjuro until it was time to go to bed at a reasonable hour to wake up early enough to catch a early meeting that was cancelled anyway :)
We have been consistent with jogging FOREVER in the beginning of class, and its actually starting to feel a little better. I also made myself pick up the jump rope along side Pierre and James, and this was right before we did a few rounds of horse-stance, sit-ups, and jump rope. I got warmed up really quick :), felt really good too.
Shahaub joined us, and I’m going to assume he’ll continue to join us again ( at least for Thursday ). Read More...
It has been a nice holiday break, but it was time to go back and get a good workout. I knew it would be tough, I had done some light exercising over the holiday but its just never good enough. We started out jogging for 15 minutes or so, at least that’s what it seemed like, and it was brutal (for me). I did make it the entire time, I wasn’t able to run as fast as Pierre or others ( I did get lapped) but I didn’t stop and that was an achievement in itself. Read More...
Lots of conditioning tonight. We jogged around for what seemed like 20 minutes, I was pretty exhausted after that but then we did some circuit training. Three separate groups, one did horse-stance, another did vertical jumps, and the last group did jump rope. We did 40 seconds or whatever group were we in, then we’d switch to the next group. We did this twice, and two times doesn’t seem like a whole lot. Read More...
I’ve had the misfortune of missing thursday classes lately. I usually have a lot of crap on thursdays, and I missed last thursday because… because… I didn’t want to drive in the rain. I took the day off for Michele’s ultrasound ( we are having another girl! ), and after running all the errands and getting back home around 5pm I decided to just stay home and make sugar cookies for Caralyne’s school. Read More...
Well, around 4:30 Michele called me to say that she would get the kids from my Mom’s place, and she then encouraged me to go to wushu.
YAY!
So, I got there a few minutes after 6, Peter was there with the kids so I did the warm up with them. Jogged around, did a little jump rope, and then really tried to stretch out my very painful right leg. Jane has a similar injury, so we did as much as we could to loosen up our right side. Read More...
As you guessed, it was a small class tonight. I didn’t have ANY coffee either, no headache’s but I also wasn’t moving around as fast as I think I should. I felt very sluggish and heavy.
As before, we did 25 front/outside/inside/snap-kick punch/heel–kick & push-palm non stop, and this time it didn’t hurt so bad. I mean, we all felt it in our legs, but we could finish alright enough. John, or as Pierre insists, “EA Guy” wanted to know what they did in China and asked for preparations. Read More...
Really the highlight of the class was James latest injury: HAHAHUGOSHORTCODE-0xc0006bb900-1-HBHB HAHAHUGOSHORTCODE-0xc0006bb900-2-HBHB
One of the links on his chain whip has a rough edge, the dart itself just popped him, but the link is what made the cut.
Not much else though, but I am writing about it two days later. Work has been too busy to do this sort of thing the day after.
Oh, Kenny has the SOFTEST legs I’ve ever felt. Read More...
I’m really tired, so this will be short.
I spent half the day in Santa Clara for work ( Splunk is a cool log tool!), got back to my office around 2pm and Patti had called. She bought a new laptop and was wondering if we could setup a time for me to get it up and configured. Well, since I blew it last Thursday, and this Thursday I wont make it to class due to a dinner thing, I decided to blow off work :) Read More...
Class started off a little different, we did a quick jog inside, VERY litle warmup stretching, and right into relays. They were nice, we had to jump over 3 staff’s ( they were resting on 2 chairs ), then crawl under, then hop with one foot over them with a medicine ball. It was actually pretty exhausting, and my legs were still sore from Sunday’s weight lifting session.
The we did the drop-stance combo around the room twice, the the 5 stance combo. Read More...
I took Tuesday off to be with Caralyne, so I was happy to come back. Isao had told me that on Tuesday they had worked on a lot of basics. No forms, just basics. So we told Patti how nice that was, to focus on basics, and she agreed that we would do that again tonight.
After a jog outside, warm ups, jogging again, we played dodge ball. Lots of fun, pretty brutal too, and I managed to smash my pinkie finger somehow. Read More...
Since I missed thursday’s class (I had to replace the pilot-light lighter in our water heater), I came in on Sunday to make it up. Since it takes up so much of my weekend to go, I try to avoid Sunday classes, and my body just isn’t used to working hard that early in the day. I was pleasantly surprised though, I really enjoyed the class and I felt good for the rest of the day. Read More...
Good class tonight, those of us doing th Wells Fargo demo figured out exactly what we are going to do:
*Front Stretch Kick
*Outside Kick
*Inside Kick
*snap kick/puch
*push palmm/punch
*Drop stance
*Double body turn combo
*Long fist combo
*jumps
*front
*inside
*butterfly
*cartwheel
*Forms
We also got to watch those who are competing kill themselves, they did their form 3 times, and on the 3rd time they had to do two more sections. Read More...
I had a pretty long night, Pierre was sick and Peter is out of town so Patti asked if I could be there by 5:30 to help get the carpets ready and help out with the beginners class. Thankfully Lynda was there, so really, I just participated in the class like a regular student :)
After some running, dodge ball (with really light foam balls, first time no one got hurt), then a good round of wushu tag everyone had sufficiently warmed up and went on to stretching. Read More...
Most people went to the Crucible’s second showing tonight, so Patti had asked if Jane and I could take care of the beginners class. Pierre and I got there the same time and he helped me roll out the carpets, James dropped by for a few minutes. He gave us a quick run down of the show and said the fight set Wushu West does is incredible. James is also leaving for Thailand for 2 months, so I hope he comes back in one piece. Read More...
Wow
Alright, I’ll divulge a bit more information. The class first started off with a good pep talk from Wu Bin, he said he would like to see the US place in the top 3 :) ( because we know who #1 is ). Otherwise, Cao Yue led a almost identical warm up that he did on Sunday. He had us stretch for a while, then made us hold the center splits while he came around to everyone and pushed them a little more. Read More...
When Patti asked me to come early on Tuesday, I figured it was because she was going to be gone and needed help with the younger students. So when I got there, Pierre and I helped with the carpets, changed and then started to warm up with the kids. Peter is back so he took over, and that was nice. Then, Patti came with Cary… and Johnny showed up right after them… and then I realized “oh, tonight is a regular class”. Read More...
Went back for another “Self Defense” class with Ron Dong, so I came around 12:00 to warm up. I got in a few jump ropes when Patti had asked me to help out one of the newer students (and I can never remember her name) with her staff basics. Its actually hard for me to explain how to do something, and according to others, its not just wushu :) I have a hard time saying what I mean with just about everything, from computers to wushu. Read More...
The Beijing Wushu Team are getting ready for a small performance, so we all stayed to watch. I wasn’t sure if taking photo’s was allowed, but then I noticed Patti was recording it. The only problem with this demo is that our classes have been moved from 9am ( which I originally thought was unbearable ) to 8am ( which literally is hell ). So it’s an early bedtime for all of us. Read More...
The Beijing Wushu Team are getting ready for a small performance, so we all stayed to watch. I wasn’t sure if taking photo’s was allowed, but then I noticed Patti was recording it. The only problem with this demo is that our classes have been moved from 9am ( which I originally thought was unbearable ) to 8am ( which literally is hell ). So it’s an early bedtime for all of us. Read More...
It has been a very nice weekend to recover, plus the Beijing Team is back from their competition so Wu Di has been attached to Mark’s hip. Its pretty funny to watch those two. So besides lots of resting up, we’ve gone to a few nice places to eat, went to a VERY large electronic’s “store”
The Fry’s of Beijing
Which resembles a large computer show in the US, except all day every day and the store is 5 stories high. Read More...
It has been a very nice weekend to recover, plus the Beijing Team is back from their competition so Wu Di has been attached to Mark’s hip. Its pretty funny to watch those two. So besides lots of resting up, we’ve gone to a few nice places to eat, went to a VERY large electronic’s “store”
The Fry’s of Beijing
Which resembles a large computer show in the US, except all day every day and the store is 5 stories high. Read More...
Not much happend yesterday (minus the very extreme training), but tonight we went out to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe,
Shahuab cannot take a normal picture
nothing else besides that, so check here for more: http://m87-blackhole.org/photos/China+Trip+06/page/3/
The internet connection here has been down for the last full day, but not much besides training anyways.
It was kind of odd to first walk in the main wushu hall, it felt like I was walking onto a movie set. I’ve watched countless wushu clips of the Beijing team in that same location. Practice was good, we do one morning class (9am - 11:30) everyday, then we alternate an evening (7:30pm - 9 ) and afternoon ( 2:30pm - 5:30 ) every other day. Read More...
The internet connection here has been down for the last full day, but not much besides training anyways.
It was kind of odd to first walk in the main wushu hall, it felt like I was walking onto a movie set. I’ve watched countless wushu clips of the Beijing team in that same location. Practice was good, we do one morning class (9am - 11:30) everyday, then we alternate an evening (7:30pm - 9 ) and afternoon ( 2:30pm - 5:30 ) every other day. Read More...
Hurray, Beijing!
Shi Cha Hai, a sports institute
The flight from SFO was pretty boring, and long, but I had a very hyper 4 year old sitting in front of me to keep me awake. Her name was Odelia, and it took 5 attempts to get a picture of her since she thought it was a game.
4 hours of peek a boo
I dont think she stopped moving the entire flight, she was constantly peeking over and giggling at me. Read More...
Hurray, Beijing!
Shi Cha Hai, a sports institute
The flight from SFO was pretty boring, and long, but I had a very hyper 4 year old sitting in front of me to keep me awake. Her name was Odelia, and it took 5 attempts to get a picture of her since she thought it was a game.
4 hours of peek a boo
I dont think she stopped moving the entire flight, she was constantly peeking over and giggling at me. Read More...